As I dig through my archives for older photos of long-past running adventures I’ve realized that at some point—between starting in my trail adventures a couple decades ago and these recent days when I sometimes snap too many photos out on a meetup—I became the running photographer.
I take a lot of photos when we run.
It was a mix of things. I mean, obviously you’re out there on the trails in nature and the sights and scenes are sometimes magical. I wake up in a cookie cutter suburban home, the same old asphalt roads and utilitarian infrastructure everywhere I look, cars and trucks bumbling along commuter freeways buzzing past scrubby weed-filled ditches. It’s ugly as fuck sometimes. But then you drop into the river valley and the sun is pulsing through the foliage of countless trees, the mist rising off the cool river down below and there is this natural beauty that you can only get by running for an hour towards the middle of seemingly nowhere—the camera comes out and, click.
It becomes habit to start looking for moments that embody the vibe of the run.
I almost don’t even think about it anymore. I just see people—friends and running companions—moving through this incredible local setting and, click, I snap a few pictures.
And no, it’s not about the ‘gram or the social clout, either.
It’s about trying to catch a feeling, a moment, a memory of this thing that we are out here on the trails doing together. Running is transient in a hundred ways, not the least of which is that someday we will none of us be able to be out here doing this anymore. That alone is worth framing in a snapshot.
Being the photographer is also a kind of identity, and welcome or not among a group of sweaty strangers I’m not entirely sure how I came about it, but…
I persist and refine my craft, and it is only in looking back on twenty years of ever-improving running photography that I realize taking photos while keeping pace is not natural nor obvious. It does take a certain level of comfort with the sport, an ability to autopilot one’s feet while switching focus to the focus of the scene. It requires minimal preparation, but still forethought of objective to be out there and mindful of the act of snapping pics of the trail and the crew.
I take a lot of photos when we run, and individually they are snaps of something not obviously photogenic, but together spanning over a decade of habit and persistence they tell a strange sort of story that is worth the effort.
