This was a wonderful commission to work on, Eoin according to the42.ie has been crowned the 24-hour and six-day Irish running champion. He placed first at Britain’s ‘most brutal race’ – The Spine – back in January 2016, where he completed the 431km course in just 95 hours and 23 minutes, shaving a whopping five hours and 22 minutes off the previous record. We met at the carpark of Ticknock in the Dublin mountains and had a quick chat about what way we would approach the photography, we headed into the woods busy with mountain bikers whizzing by in a purpose built track for them which was being utilised by bikers, their dogs and their children.
After a few photos in the woods Eoin suggested we go up to the top of the mountain via the back route, after a few stops on the way (I'm a big unit, as Pat Shortt would say and needed a few breathers) a light rain began to fall, this suited us both as I wanted to get across how difficult and enduring Eoin's pasttime is, one of these made the cover above.
I also wanted to convey that Eoin runs through the night and without resorting to Photoshop tricks I used the power of the sun and under exposed a particular shot by almost 4 stops to darken the image to make it look like he was running in moonlight, was happy with the result
I know the book 'The loneliness of the long distance runner' is a bit of a cliche now, but its a great book I read in my teens (Eoin unbelievably hasn't read it) and I also wanted to capture this is some way too, asking Eoin to run down here, and run over there and run up there, and go up there wasn't an issue at all as he so obviously loves running, such a great subject!
We (meaning I, primarily) made up up to the top in one piece and took the road back down, I had a great sleep that night, here are a few more images from the shoot.
