Trail Running and Ultra Photography

Trail Running and Ultra Photography Services

Trail runs and Ultras differ from conventional road races because they tend to offer more remote and spread out courses. Our photographers have no issues hiking and running out several miles onto the course to get the best images for your event.

Participant Images

Participant images are a gold standard for events to offer to their racers. Participant images are thousands of images created with the participant in mind. Participant images can either be provided directly to clients or tagged and hosted on our site for simple, quick and efficient distribution to trail running participants.

Trail runs tend to be more spread out than normal road races. Because of this, we usually isolate photographers to as many different points on the course as we can to diversify the photos we capture. Because trail races tend to be more scenic, our photographers usually shoot a bit wider to capture the race environment in as many photos as possible.

Promotional Images

Promotional photography provides you all the super high resolution, unique shots of your event for marketing and promoting your event. Usually, depending on the length of your event, we provide between 100 to 200 high resolution, unique shots, showcasing a mixture of action, scenery, branding, and any shot request you might have. After the event, each image is given considerable individual attention in post processing to get them as close to perfect as possible, and completely turned around within 24 hours of your event, but often on the same day.

For trail runs and ultras, it is often a beneficial (but not required) to provide your promotional photographer with a vehicle or ride throughout the course. Your promotional photographer will hike and run as much of the course as they can during the race to capture all the scenery, action and environment they can on the course. Your promotional photographer will try to maximize branding as well in their photos.

Bib tagging

We can quickly process, edit and tag all your event images after the event. Our tagging application has unique search features to maximize results for each participant. We allow participants to tag each other in photos our team could not find tags, significantly increasing the number of tags we capture each event. We handle the logistics of keeping out spam tags, and the participants enjoy their great images in greater numbers. Participants can search for their and their friends' bib number, filter images by location or time, and choose to only view images without tags to help narrow images when no results are found. Additionally, our team will help all participants dig through the gallery to find images of themselves they could not if they have any trouble.

Post Processing and Marketing Solutions

Unlike many photography companies, John Kelly Photos will apply post processing, filtering, and touch ups to every single participant image. These touch ups correspond to a significantly greater download rate of photos after events, maximizing the value of our photography services.

As a marketing incentive to help our clients secure photo sponsors or increase the value of the service for our clients, our bib tagging and image distribution application can be branded and customized to each event's page. These customizations can include 1, 2 or no watermarks on the image that are dynamically placed on the image only when a participant views the image, meaning you can instantly change the watermarks or sell watermark sponsorships even after the event images are published. Additionally, users can be prompted with a one time, non invasive, call-to-action feature, such as liking a Facebook page, or signing up for a next event. All of our image tagging and distribution application pages can be individualized to your specific event's needs both functionally and in appearance.

Get in touch with us

Send us a message and tell us about your event. We can offer your team a complete break down of what we can provide your event and how we will do it, give you samples of how your images will look after an event, and help you with your branding options without you even committing to any of our services. We offer any combinations of our services to make sure you get the photography your event needs.