New York City Marathon Shooting Styles

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So today was a perfect day in New York and it happened to fall on the same day a the NYC Marathon. I took the opportunity to get out and photography the NYC Marathon, having looked over the map I saw that the route went through Queens which just happens to be where I live as well so I thought I would try shooting it locally. Turned out to be a pretty cool idea, I went down to the race location and there were quite a few people out but not too many where you couldn’t get right position. Since it was not too busy I was able to get quite a few different vantage points and try out a few techniques, some that worked and others that didn’t. First things first shortly after I got out there and started shooting I realized I should have brought a little more and a little less equipment. When I was shooting with the 70-200 f2.8 my arms were getting tired holding the camera up for long periods of time, for this I should have brought my mono pod to rest the lens on. This could have saved my arms quite a workout today. Secondly I should have left a few things at home, my 100mm Macro lens, my Sekonic L-508 and my Epson P4000, all of these items added weight to my bag without any need. I thought I would point this out just to show you that spending a little time planning your bag can help you while shooting and help you shoulder or back with less weight to carry. So I talked a little bit about some different techniques that I used when I was shooting, I consciously used three different techniques, shooting directly at the runners as they were coming down the street, panning with the runners as they came close and setting up at close distance and shooting them up close. The first of the two were successful but the last of the three was no successful for me today. I think its still a valid technique, it’s jut that I didn’t execute it properly today. Shooting down on the runners was pretty successful in that focus was not hard to achieve as the subjects at a distance so it didn’t change much from when I initially focused to when I pressed the shutter. This lowers the amount of work the auto focus system has to do to keep your subject in proper focus. It also gave me a lot of time to compose my subject, did I want foreground or background in the image, did I want a low or high aperture? I didn’t have to make split second decisions. Just know that if you are shooting in these types of situations you want to make sure you have you auto focus set on continuos focus so as your subject moves so does your autofocus. Next was panning with the runners as they ran past me, this was also a very successful technique and allowed me to get up close and personal with the runners. I was still using the 70-200 lens here for a couple reasons. First it allows me to get close to the runners to see their expressions and two it’s one of the fastest lens out there in terms of focus and image stabilization. So the technique here is to zone in on one person or a group of people as they approach you and keep moving your camera along with them. In my case with the zoom lens on the camera I also had to slightly zoom out as the runners approached as well. This approach was also used when the NY Mayor rolled by in a nice custom car, you can check out that picture below. Last but not least was something I came up with on the fly as I was thinking I was done for the day. Walking back to the subway I saw that the runners were all having to round a corner that was somehow clear of people so I took the opportunity to change lens’ and pop on my 35mm lens. I sat down with my back up against a light pole and was within a foot or two of runners. Now this is about my slowest focusing lens so with only a second that I would be able to see each runner as they passed me I needed to come up with a system to get what I wanted. I started by watching a few runners go by to see the timing I needed and then I set the lens to manuel focus and set it to about 4 feet. Once I had the focus set up I just sat back and worked on my timing, this was more difficult then I initially thought it would be. With such a small window to work with as the runners came around the corner it was difficult to get them right where I wanted them so the focus would be right. But after a few minutes I started to get a little better, I didn’t get anything with this style I would call great but it was an interesting attempt none the less and something that I can improve on in the future. I hope these descriptions help you with some of your photography, leave a comment if you have some questions or want me to cover another style or topic all together.