Leader of the pack

Before I talk about today’s shot, two bits of good news to report.  Firstly, if you notice the new logo at the top right you’ll see that this blog has been shortlisted for the 2009 Eircom Golden Spider Awards in the Best Blog category, which is something I’m chuffed about.  Also, yesterday my shot of the ceiling of the foyer in Leinster House was shortlisted for the Digital Camera magazine Photographer of the Year Awards in the Man-made category. That’s a pretty big competition, and my shot is one of about 350 shortlisted across ten categories from over 101,000 images that were entered.  The winners of both awards are announced in three weeks time, so fingers crossed!  Now, back to today’s photo.

As I’ve been going through my shots from the Dublin Marathon last Monday I’ve been finding more and more that I want to post, so you can look forward to two more after today – two that are a little more creative than the bulk of the shots I took.  In the meantime today’s image features my father-in-law Brendan as he came up the hill at the 18-mile mark on his way to completing the circuit in an impressive chip time of 3:21:13.  That time saw him finish 877th overall (out of over 10,000 finishers) and 12th out of 256 runners in his category.

He was about two and a quarter hours in to the race when he approached the 18 mile mark, and at that stage it was clear he was going to run well under 3:30.   My brother-in-law (and part time photography assistant) Darragh was tracking him around the course on bicycle and arrived to where I was a few minutes before he did so I knew he was on the way.

With my 50-150mm lens it was just a matter of watching through the lens as the runners came around the bend and climbed the hill, looking out for his orange bib.  The camera was set on continuous focus, meaning that as I half-pressed the shutter release and held it, the camera would track the subject and try to keep it in focus as it moved.  Perfect for a scenario like this where the subject is moving towards the camera at speed.

To keep a good composition I started at the longest focal length of the lens and as Brendan approached, zoomed out towards the 50mm end, taking shots as I did so. There was no time for changing lenses, so once my frame filled at 50mm I was pretty much done.  This is where a second camera with a wider lens would have been useful.

I mentioned yesterday that the light at this spot was particularly good for photographs you can see why here. The sun was clear in the sky and was at camera left, providing strong highlights on the left hand side of all the runners.  The right hand side is getting some fill though from a hint of diffused ambient light that was coming back from the arch into which the runners are just about to run (out of frame)

The bright sun allowed me to work at a low ISO and still keep the shutter speed safe for hand holding.  I opted for a relatively shallow depth of field so as to isolate the first line of runners and keep the shot from being less busy.  Some of the later shots in the sequence weren’t as successful as the auto-focus struggled to lock on for a few of them, but I like this image, which has plenty of movement in it and captures the determination on the faces of many of the runners as they ploughed up the hill.