The Sun Run started out over 10 years ago as a fun run from Dee to Manly. Originally run in conjunction with the Cole Classic ocean swim by Fairfax, it has now been taken over by Northern Beaches Council and has morphed into a 10km event that encompasses everyone from elite runners to mums and dads with prams.
For the 2021 event, Northern Beaches Council engaged me to put together a Photography and Videography package for marketing and social media purposes. Another photographer was taking care of the competitor photos, so I was super excited to be able to take on a more creative project. I love capturing competitor photos, but for a big event like this (3000+ competitors), there isn’t much room for creativity when you MUST capture each and every competitor.
This is what the Sun Run is all about!
The brief
Capture the fun, excitement, and community spirit of the event.
Capture all the COVID-safe practices of the event.
Capture some iconic shots along the beautiful Northern Beaches coastline.
Capturing COVID-safe signage was a super-important part of the brief. This was the first mass-participation event to be run in Sydney post-COVID, and Northern Beaches Council needed to prove it could be done!
My approach to the project
With the provided budget, I was able to put together a team of three photographers and a videographer to cover the three hour event.
Photographer 1 - Start line, capturing warm-ups, VIP firing the starting gun, COVID-safe signage etc.
Photographer 2 (me) - Assist with pre-event photos, then be mobile on course. The course is closed to traffic, but with my accreditation I’m able to move along the course on my mountain bike.
Photographer 3 - Finish line, capture the elite male + female podium, capture some weekend warriors finishing, capture some of the recovery area atmosphere.
Videographer - Similar approach to Photographer 2, mobile on course.
Event day
Fortunately for me, the start line was just a short 3km bike ride from my apartment. 4 a.m. alarm, on the bike by 4:30 a.m. and at the start area by 4:45 a.m.
I grabbed my accreditation, met up with one of the photographers and the videographers, and settled in to capturing some pre-event shots. Darkness meant shooting options were very limited, but we managed to capture some cool pre-sunrise shots of the COVID-safe signage and volunteers.
As the sun eventually began to peek over the horizon, we realised that with some high cloud it was going to be a ridiculous sunrise. The light still wasn’t very good for capturing competitors, but we managed to capture some spectacular silhouette shots with the competitors warming up on the beach promenade.
It lives up to the Sun Run name!
Come 6:30 a.m. and it was time for the elite wave to start. I took up position about 300m down the road and captured the stampede of competitors heading up the first (and nastiest) hill of the course. Then began my game of leapfrog on my MTB with an overloaded camera bag.
The event was being run in approximately 15 different waves, starting over a 60 minute period, so there was plenty of time for me to reach a location, grab a couple of shots, pack up and move to another location. It worked out perfectly, with a couple of stops along the coast at Curl Curl, a stop outside the Harbord Diggers at Freshwater and then down onto the Manly beachfront. By the time I reached Queenscliff I was in the mix of the last couple of waves, so I locked up my bike and walked the remaining 1.5km of the course. This allowed me to mix in with the back-of-the-pack crowd and I managed to capture some of my favourite photos of the day; parents with the kids, individuals with disabilities, groups of friends just out enjoying a morning walking together.
Once the event had finished, it was time to collect memory cards from the other photographers, and head back home for a quick cull and edit. 90 minutes later, I had delivered 200+ finished photos to the Northern Beaches Council marketing team so that they could start drip feeding them out onto social media. At the same time, the videographer spent about 4 hours putting together a 60 second edit, ready to go live that evening on social media.
All-in-all, a very successful day and a great morning spent capturing a great community event.