I was looking through an old scrapbook and came across some photos of runners at various stages of a run. It made me think about what it takes to make a photo stand out from the others and which photos are good enough to make a poster with it. Any photo with you in the picture is always fun to look at. Then the location of the photo can make a difference in whether or not it becomes a classic. Some runners like a photo of a runner out on a country road while others like one in a famous city.
The standard for most newspapers is a photo at the start of the race. This gets the maximum number of runners in the photo and each runner will be looking over the photo to see if they are visible. The other standard is the winning runner crossing the finish line with arms outstretched and a smile on their face. Taking an individual runner out on the course is good if the photographer is in the business of selling race photos to runners after the race. I have a photo I purchased from the Boston Marathon that was not the most flattering of me as a runner but it was from Boston. It was an unusual photo for a me as a runner in that it was taken as I was reaching up to push my glasses up off my nose and the photographer caught the image just as my finger was at nose level. I have to explain to people that I was reaching up to adjust my glasses. The look I get is one of disbelief in my explanation and I am using it as an excuse for the real cause of where my finger is. I bought it anyway since it was a photo of me at the Boston Marathon.
I have two posters of running photos that are at the extreme ends of running photos. The first one shows a runner at the top of a long road out in the country that seems to go for a mile or more. The caption at the top says, “The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep running.” It is just one lone runner with trees and green fields on each side of the hilly road that made it a photo worth making a poster of. The other one shows a crowd of runners at the finish line with everyone standing under water spraying on them to cool off. There is one runner bending over and throwing up and shows the vomit coming out of his mouth. The caption for this one says, “Run for fun!” Both were worth buying.
