February Inspiration
Sometimes inspiration strikes in the most random of places.
Part of the writing I want to do on this Substack is to bring you pieces of my favorite media that I come across and inspire me. Today I’d like to look at some photos that came out of the Black Canyon 100k weekend.
First, I’d like to highlight a photographer I see at many races. He’s very talented and a really nice guy. He’s always good for a warm hello and a quick chat about the work weekend ahead. I’m talking about Miguel who shoots for Craft at every race. Take one look at his IG feed and you’ll see he’s quite good. I’m often inspired by images he takes at trail races. The post that caught my eye contained his photos but was posted on Tim’s feed.
Take a look at the original post for more and bigger photos. It reminds me of the old Pantone swatches I used to play with in Home Depot when I was a kid and my parents were buying paint. The photos themselves are great but this arrangement stopped my scroll and inspired me. It’s such a creative way to bring the physical back into the digital realm.
It also resonates for its storytelling. These aren’t just running photos. They’re photos of the team hanging out before the race, getting their bibs, relaxing with family, being with the team at the start, running the race, hardships throughout, and the finish line emotions. The full story of the weekend. They even used the text on the side that would normally be the Pantone color for extra storytelling.
Craft has another recent campaign that inspired me. They took out full-page ads in a Swedish magazine to print a blown-up face of one of their athletes and an entry of their training log overlayed. They bought 10 ads over 10 weeks of this athlete going for a run and measuring their stress levels. The goal was to show the healthy aspects of getting out on a run.
I love this not just because they used physical media, which I’ve been very into myself lately, but also because they invested in a long-form media project. It took 10 weeks and audiences had to buy the next magazine every week to see her progress. I have no idea if this did well or if the audience even knew what was going on but still was cool. Good job, Craft.
Inspiration Strikes
As with most inspiration, it just sits around in my head until it culminates into an idea. The final straw that broke the camel’s back happened during an interview for the Dipsea Documentary we’re making. We interviewed Sal Vasquez. He’s a legend of the Dipsea race. One of the most winningest people and even has a rule named for him after winning it too many times in a row.
After the interview, he showed us his old Dipsea scrapbook. It contained all the stuff collected over the years of his Dipsea career - race bibs, photos, news articles, etc. We were flipping through and toward the end, we turned the page, and boom! An array of old photo proofs!
So cool! Back in the day, photographers would get all the photos they took printed small so they could proof them and decide which to print bigger. They also would cut out these proofs and send them to the athletes to see if they wanted to purchase a print. I love film and this was an extra step in the long process of delivering photos to people. It's funny that the proofs aren’t much smaller than what we see on our phones nowadays.
I was struck with a bit of inspiration and had the idea to make some of my photos from Black Canyon look like old photo proofs. An old film look already inspires my editing style so adding this “proof look” wasn’t a giant leap. I mocked up a quick film strip in Photoshop and inserted my photos then cropped each photo a bit differently to give the effect of an imperfect scissor cut.
I’m pretty stoked about how they came out. A digital representation of an old physical thing. It would be a lot of fun to try and recreate this with real film next. Something I’m contemplating for the next race I shoot. Big Alta? Canyons? We’ll see!
Miguel is so good!! Love your Black Canyon photos, too!