Charity Event -- Part 1

[Mike Buckley]

This was my fourth year of photographing the American Heart Association's local 10K, 5K and walk. The photos shown below are of the race.



Photo 1: The four leaders soon after the start of the race




Photo 2: The hoards of racers




Photo 3: Crossing the finish line




Photo 4: Seconds after crossing the finish line

[Digital]

Mike, very good photos. Are you the event's official photographer?


Bruce

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Bruce!

I am the volunteer photography team leader. The team usually consists of about four people including myself. I help determine the shot list. As candidate photographers are recruited, I review examples of their photography to determine whether they seem to have the required skills. I then assign the photographers to the various parts of the shot list and coordinate everything. I'm crossing my fingers that we got the best team of volunteers for this event than for any of the previous six or seven events.

[Manfred M]

Your photojournalist skills continue to mature Mike; series 1 and series 2 go together nicely. Yes, for sure, keep those sponsors happy! It may not always be the most rewarding part of the shoot, but certainly a key one that reminds these organizations to come back and sponsor the next year's event.

Organizing five shooters must be a bit like herding cats, but the event coverage must be superb. I suspect the whole thing hangs together once all of the images are assembled, as we only see the subset of your shots. I assume things like the runners getting ready, the start of the run, the end and of course the aftermath / cleanup.

Well done (as always!)...

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Manfred!

The shot list covers everything except the cleanup. That's the one part that apparently neither the agency nor their sponsors or participants are interested in.

The other volunteers have always been very good about taking direction to ensure that the entire shot list is covered (not at all like herding cats, thank goodness!). Our best photographer from last year's event returned to this year's event. She was qualified to handle all aspects of the shot list, so I let her choose the portion of the shot list to handle before I assigned the other portions to the other photographers.

The shot list was divided into four assignments. I took on the fifth role of a rover -- helping to cover the more technically demanding and most important situations and rewarding myself with the luxury of being able to attend to the types of shots, when practical, that were of most interest to me. That also made me available to take on one of the other roles at the last minute if someone had to cancel for whatever reason. A volunteer had a family emergency on the morning of the event that I previously handled, so this is not at all over-the-top planning.