living and loving the life of a photographer

So the last two times I made any effort to participate in a marathon, I woke up only to see the results in a Yahoo news alert. That's why I, and hundreds of other geeks like me with abused sleep cycles, could easily identify with the concept of a midnight marathon. What a great excuse to pull an all-nighter!

Of course, I was participating as a photographer. I haven't had as much fun since my days in Paris, where community events like these were mandatory target practice for us photojournalism students. This time, it was much more personal to me. I wanted to see New Bangalore in action. Man carrying daughter on shoulders. How often do you see that in Bangalore? Or people willing to pose for a total stranger, i.e. me. My lament that new Bangaloreans are generally unsociable in public places (as in city traffic) was happily put to rest. They were out in full strength, wearing their best humour and imported marathon gear.

If marathons are about stretching physical endurance to the limits, marathon photography poses a similar challenge to photographers. Before taking it on, I drew inspirtion from Alex Majoli's documentary on the 2006 NYC Marathon, titled “One Race. 37,000 Stories”. Majoli isolates every runner from the background to acknowledge them as individuals running their own race for personal, heartfelt, and inspirational reasons.

See the Bangalore Midnight Marathon collection