Technique: Low Perspective, Wide Angle, Landscape, Runner, Drama.

Naturally, I’m not just going to stand there and simply document a runner. Here comes another runner—snap, I got them running, great. One shot of everybody and we’re done. But I can’t do that. It’s just not me.

Choosing Difficult Low-Angle Shots

So I start thinking, what would make this picture kind of cool? A low-angle shot. The problem is, probably nine out of ten of those shots end up being crap compared to the clean, easy shot of the runner smiling at the camera that I could have taken. And so I know going in that if I want something better, most of what I take won’t be as good.

Prioritizing Landscape Over Portrait Value

Then there’s the other aspect—we’re in this beautiful location, hypothetically, and I want to include that landscape in the shot. But when I do that, the runner ends up being tiny, and now they don’t even really have a photo of themselves.

Developing My First Preferred Technique

I’m also not using a zoom lens, so I don’t have that flexibility from wide to telephoto. I’m using an ultra-wide-angle lens because I think that if I can get people close to me, I can have both—the wide landscape and the runner filling a good portion of the frame. Get them really close, get a low angle, make it feel dramatic.

That was probably my first “yeah, I like this.”

Low perspective, wide angle, landscape, runner—drama.

I can live with it. But it does mean I’m not getting many of those happy-go-lucky “look at the camera” shots.

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Mat Coker is a trail running photographer based in Ontario, Canada.