See, around these parts autumn is a season that lasts about as long as a soap bubble at a kid’s birthday party. The trees have been green all summer, and then over the course of a few days everything turns hues of gold and orange and red. The world is glowing.

And then a few days later all that foliage is on the ground, the trees are bare, and we won’t see naught but bare branches until about April.

I get a little excitable when I’m in the trails with my camera and the sun is out and the leaves are turning, and Sunday was just such a morning. We had veered into the local suburban trails, dipping into a nearby creek that drops out of the sprawl and winds through about eight klicks of relatively pristine urban woodland. There are literally parts where you don’t realize you are running through a city of a million people—but then you go around a corner and see that mansion overlooking the ravine and the nearby golf course and you try to stay in your happy place, there on the trail.

We were in the creek and the sun was making the world glow a vibrant orange.

I literally took a hundred photos as we were running. Oh sure, a quarter of them were blurry and it the trail plus trees plus blue sky got a little derivative after twenty minutes or so, but—wow—was I ever distracted, lagging behind, running with my phone in my hand and the camera app open so that I could be ready for the next perfect photo op.

Distraction is not a bad thing. I mean, race season is pretty much over and why are we out there on the trails on a Sunday morning in autumn if not for the experience, after all?

But my focus was not on the run as much as it was on the trees that morning, and I’ve got the photos to prove it.

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.

I’m not gonna be published in a magazine any time soon, but a few action shots of the in progress race from a runners perspective was (in my opinion) worth lugging my phone in hand and popping open the camera a few times.

But I had almost brought a better camera. I had stood there as I was getting ready for my run that morning, holding my GoPro in my hand and overthinking it.

I left it at home.

I would not have been alone, though. I saw more than a few guys—always guys—carrying their action cams out in front of them as they ran the course that morning. Like me, they are probably not compelled by some urge to create content for social media or make bullshit running content online, but rather are driven by a insatiable confluence of hobbies to take interesting photos or footage of their lives as they live them.  These were not influencers—I saw a couple of those too—but rather shaky video guys, nerdy blokes with tech, documenting their latest adventure.

And I’m hardly one to suggest this is bad thing. I do it. Jeeze, do I ever do it. I only left the GoPro at home because I started pondering just how much I realistically wanted to carry through a race given how I was feeling about my health status as the looming heat of the day.

But being the dude with the GoPro in a serious race does mark you out. Are you a runner or a photographer lost on marathon course? Are you a racer—or a tourist?

I wouldn’t change my penchant for photography in these situations, but sometimes I do need to ponder what I must look like trotting along while pointing even a phone camera lens out ahead of me, snapping pics and shifting my focus in those moments I should be enjoying the moment and not the opportunity.