Rock & Roll Marathon

This is the Savannah R & R Marathon, one of 32 in the U.S., Mexico, Canada and Europe. Here it draws about 20,000 participants. This is the third year here. One leg of the race comes within a short block of our house. It is easy to step out and get a snapshot of runners, until you run out of card room!

I have never been near the start of this, which I suspect is the best place to get a picture en masse. Too many blocked off streets and downtown madness to even think about getting close; at least for an old geezer with a bad back. In the "Hood", one can only get a small vignette of the runners, wherever one positions oneself. Still, this photograph is a good sampling of runners: the eager, the hurting, the "out of their league" and the "smooth striders". It is fascinating and vicarious to see them all busting their buns to get as far as they can.

Thanks for looking. I would love to hear ideas about photographing something like this. I am a bird, blossom and butterfly photographer, and I struggle with people shots. BTW, I pasted in two runners to beef up the crowd. See if you can tell which they were.

Image Quality: Lossless Compressed RAW (14-bit)
Camera Info: Nikon D7100, HH
Lens: VR 16-35mm f/4G
Focal Length: 35mm
Focus Mode: AF-C
AF-Area Mode: Single
VR: ON
Aperture: f/4
Shutter Speed: 1/1250s
Exposure Mode: Manual
Exposure Comp.: 0EV (shoulda' been about -1.0EV. Light was pretty harsh)
Metering: Matrix
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 800
53% of full frame
PP in LR 5.2, PSCC