Running Photography

It’s funny how my mind works. When I’m exercising sometimes it will think of anything but the movements I’m making, which is bad for form, I know, and sometimes it will think of just what I’m doing. Sometimes, there will be a little mixture of both at the same time, like today.

This morning I was at Community Bootcamp when my mind started flashing some of the funniest scenes of “Yes Man”, which is probably the second funniest Jim Carey movie I’ve ever seen. (The first will always be “Liar, Liar”.) Some of the funniest scenes were about one of the main character’s jobs, as a running photography instructor, she lead a group out to run, and along the way stop and take photos.

The movie’s scenes probably came to mind as that’s something I’ve done a bit of lately, used a camera, for the most part that built into my iPhone, to shoot things while running. Which in itself is quite funny as at the time I thought the idea was ridiculous, little realizing I’d be doing it myself someday (though not with large SLRs the way the people in the movie were doing, I would never take such expensive and heavy equipment with me, all photos below taken with my iPhone).

Above is one photo taken of our San Jose Galloway group. Some of the members of the group were doing 18 miles that day, I as a new runner, was only doing 8. It seemed kind of like cheating to be in the photo, especially after a member posted it on Facebook, yet, knowing now how far I’ve come in my training, I’m really proud of it.

This is the first running photo I took. There was such a huge glare on my iPhone, I couldn’t even tell if I had the shot or not, yet, I was so exhausted on this run (I think 14 miles), that I figured it would be good enough, either way. This sign, showing where the pigeons were on one side and the cormorants on the other (and supposedly no birds ever sat on the wrong side), was our half way mark. I was so happy to reach it, it honestly felt like it kept moving further and further away the closer we got.

Here’s a closeup of the sign (cropped from my photo, the prettiest thing I saw all day, as it meant the run was half over):

Though I had my iPhone with me on my first marathon and half marathon, it really didn’t occur to me to try to take photos during the race, not only as there were official photographers, but also as I was concentrating on finishing the races so hard.

When I did my first (and only so far) trail half marathon, I was inspired to take some more, in part by friends on Facebook asking me to post some of the course. Here I am wearing my Dirt Inspires Women race shirt. While I admittedly get really sunburned during races, I still was really red (even after I toned down this shot a lot in Photoshop).

When I took photos in this race it was both to capture the beauty of the course and the markings. Pink tape markers let us know we were going the right way.

This one looked so much like an arrow that I had to take the photo.

Though I knew it was a trail marathon, I was still surprised by all the creeks we had to cross, two of them twice. When I took this photo I remember thinking, wow, another creek, I’m glad I didn’t know about this when I signed up, I may not have chosen to run. My shoes ended up very soaked and dirty after this race.

Lastly, the Nike Women’s Marathon, which I ran for the first time two weeks ago, was filled with inspirational signs. I really liked the message on this one.