Boston Marathon - Action Day 6 - 04/19/10

Since today was the 114th Boston Marathon, and since I missed the first two 'action' days this week, I thought I would extend the action theme one more day.

(f/8, 1/640 sec., ISO-400)

The wheelchair racers were the first to come down Boylston Street around 10:45 a.m.

(f/8, 1/400 sec., ISO-400)

She didn't even look tired!

(f/8, 1/400 sec., ISO-400)

Bruna Genovese (Italy) - Women's fifth-place finisher, just after turning on Boylston Street.

(f/8, 1/400 sec., ISO-400)

Robert Cheruiyot (Kenya) - Men's Winner of the 2010 Boston Marathon about a half-mile from the finish line on Boylston Street.

(f/8, 1/400 sec., ISO-400)

Ryan Hall (U.S.A.) - Men's fourth place finisher - Hall came around the corner, smiling, to lots of cheering from the American crowd. A helpful crowd member in a gray shirt pointed the way to the finish line, just in case Hall forgot.

(f/8, 1/250 sec., ISO-400)

I picked an aperture of 8 to increase the depth of field and stuck with an ISO speed of 400 - good for the low light of the day but still fast enough for action. Then, I just played with the shutter speed to get the light right.

(f/8, 1/320 sec., ISO-400)

The race was a testament to human kindness, with the crowd cheering on runners who got cramps and had to stop and rest with the finish line in sight. One runner stopped suddenly and began stumbling around in the middle of the road. Two other runners stopped to grab him before he fell and after making sure he was okay, supported him as they all three trotted to the finish.

(f/8, 1/125 sec., ISO-400)

A view of the crowd and Boylston Street from the Prudential Center.

I'm very proud of how all of these pictures turned out because I was on manual the whole time, including manual focus. I used my macro lens because it was the only lens besides my telephoto with decent zoom. (I left the telephoto at home because I wanted to get some crowd shots and I don't think it would have been wide enough for those.) The only issue with the macro is that it would not stick with a focal point. It would stutter between infinity and macro about twice a second, useless to me. But focusing manually proved to work all right. I was mostly at infinity the whole time anyway.