At the Crest
This was the sixth day of the relay across the country that I was fortunate enough to participate in. Fernando, on the right, was scheduled to run that leg. Bob, on the left, just ran along for some extra miles. Yeah … extra miles … we runners are crazy.
Anyway, I’ve written here before about the images I took on this trip. How I rarely focussed on actually composition. This is one of the exceptions. For this image, I had a plan.
While we ran over more hills than you can count during the relay, I was very rarely in a position to get shot where everything clicked. I wanted the perfect light, the perfect hill, the perfect background. I saw this one coming and didn’t want to let it slip by.
Fernando started his leg in the early morning and finished just a couple hundred yards from the crest of this hill, with (by divine intervention) a killer background.
In the few minutes I had to prepare for the finish of their leg, I switched to my 70-200mm lens and jogged up near the crest of the hill. I set the focal length at 200mm (around 300mm full frame equivalent on my old D70) to compress the image to get the effect I was looking for. My only concern was that I would catch the runners flat-footed, looking sluggish at the end of their run. No runner wants to look ‘dead’ in pictures.
Everything clicked.
Stunning image Bob. Love the background and the depth of field! well done!
I’m a sucker for great running photos!. This is a sweet one!