Peter Winants Sr., a noted equine photographer, author, amateur jockey, steeplechase expert and former longtime editor of Chronicle of the Horse magazine, died Monday of cancer at Sunnyside Farm in Rectortown, Va.
He was 82 and had lived in Monkton.
Mr. Winants was born in Baltimore, the son of Garet Winants and Frances "Dolly" Bonsal Winants, who rode horses and fox-hunted with the Elkridge-Harford Hounds.
After his father's death, his mother married S. Bryce Wing, who was well-known in Maryland thoroughbred and steeplechase circles, in 1939.
Mr. Winants, who began riding as a youngster growing up on his stepfather's My Lady's Manor farm, rode in his first fox hunt when he was 12.
After graduating from the Pomfret School in Pomfret, Conn., in 1944, he briefly attended Princeton University.
During the waning days of World War II, he served in the American Field Service in India as an ambulance driver for the British army. With the outbreak of the Korean War, he was drafted into the Army and was trained as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division.
In the 1950s, Mr. Winants and his brother, Garet "Garry" Winants, established Winants Brothers Inc. in Towson, and later moved the business to Charles Center.
The business specialized in microfilming corporate records, and later expanded into wedding photography and children's portraits.
In a 2007 interview with Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred, formerly Maryland Horse Magazine, Mr. Winants said the work was "boring as hell." Eventually, he was able to photograph horses, his favorite subject, full time.
"I remember Bryce telling me, 'Never depend on horses to make your living - they'll break your heart every time,' " he said in the 2007 interview. "I've been so fortunate. I never regretted going to work."
His big break came in 1965 when he went to England to cover Jay Trump, a Maryland-bred gelding that became the first American-bred, -owned and -ridden horse to win the Grand National in Aintree, England.
His mentor, noted racing writer Snowden Carter, who was editor of Maryland Horse, expressed interest in not only the photographs he had taken of the race, but also an account he had written on the plane ride home, which he later published.
"Fate was on my side many times. I've been lucky to meet people, lucky to inherit these wonderful interests," Mr. Winants said in the 2007 interview. "I hadn't written a thing before Jay Trump - that's the first time I thought I could write."
