Photographer Brian Knight has spent the last fourteen years involved in sporting events. He has worked his way up from a race volunteer to owner of Swim Bike Run Photography, a business that covers over forty road races, triathlons, adventure races and fun run events a year. A winner of five of the annual Exposed photo contests, Knight shares with us details of the hard work and time it takes to make great race photographs.
You have chosen to focus your business, Swim Bike Run Photography, on sporting events. How did you get into this type photography, and what keeps you going?
In 1999 I started helping a friend with his new company that produced off-road events like adventure races, triathlons, mountain bike races, and trail runs. What began as volunteer work turned into a second, nearly full time job that lasted about five years. I did a little bit of everything, met a bunch of really neat people, and learned a lot about what it takes to make a race happen. Meanwhile, in late 1999, having never really used a camera before, I walked into a Walmart and bought my first camera, a (digital) Sony Mavica which used a 1.44 MB floppy disk for memory and whose resolution maxed out at 640×480 (no need to count megapixels with that baby). I actually used that camera to photograph the first race that we ever produced. It had a really nice lens and I think it might have held as many as 16 images!