Eternally Conflicted

Photos with lots of emotion are some of the hardest for me to find. I’m usually good at capturing people laughing and smiling when having a good time. A couple of times I’ve even been able to sense the jokester in a group and waited long enough for him or her to crack people up.

But the photos of people breaking down in sadness, or happiness, either do not happen in front of me very often, or I miss them.

I’ve never covered a marathon before, so I had no idea going into the Napa Valley Marathon that I would see so many people getting so emotional. Once I found the area beyond the finish line where runners meet their friends and family, it dawned on me — in one of those “duh” moments — that the participants would be riding a wave of several emotions once the race was completed, and celebrating with the people they were close to would make it that much more intense.

The trick for me was the approach. Do I introduce myself to a runner and hang around until something happens? Or do I wait in the wings and try to capture something from a distance, doing my best not to interfere with the moment?

I ended up choosing the second option for this photo. I could see as she was approaching the gate to meet her family and friends that her accomplishment was hitting her in a powerful way. I just tried to stay back and mildly inconspicuous once she made contact with them. There were tons of people all over, so my sightline was not exactly clear the whole time. The background was awful — a chainlink fence with a sign — and offered nothing to add to the picture. I think I came away with 10 frames when it was all done. I, of course, missed an opportunity at the beginning when she first greeted people, but was able to capture a brief moment with her daughter a minute later, producing the picture below.

All things considered, I think I like the shot. I go back and forth when it comes to shots of emotion that are tightly framed around the subject. I think most of the time I would like to see more, but then again, sometimes a tight shot works. J.B. Forbes of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had this shot from last year that is a great example of how going wide with emotion has its advantages. Willie Allen Jr. of the St. Petersburg Times has a nice example from Katrina that shows emotion in a tight frame.

The story behind her feelings make the picture better, in some ways. She was obese as a child and set a goal to one day be in good enough shape to run a marathon. “My dream came true today,” she told me.