Photos

Often as part of larger races, the race director will hire persons to take photos of runners, and make the photos available to runners after the race.  A prominent company that provides this service is MarathonFoto. 

There are many local and regional sports photographers that take and sell race photos as well.  It may take them longer to process their photos and they don’t always have the course coverage of the larger MarathonFoto, but their images can be more interesting and prices are less predictable.

Another company that serves as a marketplace for race photos is Flash Frame.  This company allows people to search races they’ve run, to purchase photos taken at the race.  The company also allows freelance photographers to take photos of runners at a race, and use Flash Frame as a place to sell the photos to runners in the race.  Often the price runners pay for photos is lower, and the amount photographers can receive for photos is higher, at Flash Frame than when dealing with other race photo companies.  However, there is no guarantee that your event will be in their data base.

Photo Books and other Gift Items 

Regarding commemorating race photos via a photobook, or placing photos on other items such as playing cards, t-shirts, mugs, etc. Shutterfly is a company that makes it easy to build nice-looking commemorative items from race photos.  Depending on what you want to print, our experience printing items through Costco has been really good as well.  Skinit allows you to create custom skins for your phone, tablet or laptop.  

Videos and Shaped Collages

Another nice thing that can be done with photos is to build them into a video, and include music in the video if you wish.  There are several easy to use and free programs available that will do a nice job.  Use something that you are comfortable with to get the best results.  Each program will have strengths and limitations.  I have had good luck with Animoto for creating quick, short videos.  They have a large number of templates to personalize your video.  

Shaped photo collages can be a fun way to celebrate or commemorate a goal.  For example, when my runner reached 100 half marathons, I created the following collage using the bib numbers from his races.  {INSERT sample of 100 collage}

ShapeCollage is a free, easy to use collage creation program.