Long Beach Middle School Cross Country

This last Saturday I had the opportunity to shoot the Long Beach Middle School Cross Country Championships, which were held at Hartwell park in the city of Lakewood.

Now I've never shot cross country before and really wanted to get out and give it a try. I arrived at the park a bit early so I can talk to the promoters and take a look at the route. After a brief description of the route and walk, I found three spots where I would shoot from. There were going to be six races. One for each of the girls and boys 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Each race was given 30 minutes start to finish.

The first spot was not far from the starting line. I picked a location just past a little rise on the route with a nice background of trees and various foliage colors. I was able to take various group shots as they came up over a very small hill and continued past me.

The second spot was actually not far from my first position. I found another spot about one mile in their route where they were a bit more separated. Once again I picked a location where I had a nice uncluttered background with some trees and nice colors. Also this spot allowed me to take more of an individual shot as they began to separate from this point on.

The last spot was just inside the finish line. At this point I was able to get a shot of almost every runner as they approached the finish line. For each of these spots I sat in the grass, which gave me a nice low perspective and made the athletes appear larger than life.

All-in-all I had fun and thought I did pretty good covering all the races.

Girls 6th Grade

Boys 6th Grade

Girls 7th Grade

Boys 7th Grade

Girls 8th Grade

Boys 8th Grade