Thursday, May 21, 2009

LA Marathon Photo Safari


With 25,000 participants and 3 separate events, this year's LA Marathon is a tough assignment for a photographer.  But it's also an exciting one.  There are so many opportunities to capture the drama, excitement and community that make up the LA Marathon, it's almost overwhelming.  To adequately cover all the stories happening on race day takes an enormous amount of preparation, and this week I'm spending a lot of time with our key photographer, Christopher Wray-McCann.  I'll need photos for the press, for our own internal usage, and for all sorts of interactive stuff.  Over lunch the other day Christopher and I discussed a general approach to the LA Marathon.  We talked a lot about giving the race a point-of-view; imbuing our photography with a sense of purpose.  We want to distill the essence of this particular event down to some expressive and compelling images.  How can we capture our mission statement (inspiring athletes and connecting communities) in a picture?  That's what I'm after.

Today, Christopher, his assistant Melissa and I spent a couple hours driving circles around the start/finish area scouting for the best camera angles.  We also climbed onto the roof of a building to check out a soaring aerial perspective.  We'll meet again on Sunday to do a final walk-through of our minute-by-minute plan for race day.  Monday is going to be a very fun day, and if you see Christopher running around with a camera, feel free to give him a shout.  Appreciate all the preparation that goes into getting great imagery.  We'll show you the results next week.

Peter

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