Overview:
For the past three fall cross country seasons, I have served as the sports photographer and videographer for both the girls and boys Milford High Cross Country team.
Towards the end of each season, I upload all finished photos to a Google Photos album and distribute the link to all runners, parents, coaches, and Milford Yearbook Committee members to allow them easy access to share and download the photos as they please.
Both teams have qualified for six years in a row. For the last three years, I have also produced their state pep rally video. (see more in the Milford XC State Video project)
Check out some highlights from the 2023 season below!
Background:
In high school, I spent all four years of high school as a runner on the Milford cross country team. I am very familiar with the team, the culture, meet schedule, competition, and courses. This has helped me greatly within my current role with the team.
When I was in high school, I recall cross country meets being hard to get to for the Journalism and Yearbook committees. This resulted in social media and yearbook photos of the team to be lower quality than the other Milford sports teams.
After graduating high school, my younger sister joined the team the next year as a freshman. As I attended meets in support of her and the teams, I started bringing along my camera. Turns out, not only did I enjoy taking pictures for the team, but the parents, coaches, and runners, greatly appreciated the easy access to high-quality images that they could share on social media.
It didn't take long before the Milford Yearbook and Journalism members were reaching out to me requesting permission to use my photos.
Challenge:
Cross country may be one of the hardest sports to photograph. For most sports, the athletes are confined to a field or court, allowing the photographer to get photos of most or all athletes from a single spot.
In high school cross country, runners take to various 5-Kilometer (3.1 Miles) courses where they may only cross a certain spot once or twice. They don't stop moving, and a photographer may only have a couple seconds to capture pictures before the runners have passed.
This is where my cross country experience came in very handy. I had run on most of those courses before. I knew where the start and finish lines were, I knew how many times runners would cross a certain point, and I knew how far I would have to run in order to make it to the next spot in the course for pictures.
Every meet I attended to take pictures, my goal was to get at least one individual running photo of every high school athlete, one full team shot of both teams, and candid shots of the runners before and after races.
