Race #1 in the Highlands Ranch Race Series is a wrap.

It was so much work, but I really enjoyed it. Trying to juggle shooting the event as well as managing a booth with prints for sale, and a raffle was a big challenge. It would have been a complete fail without the help of my wife and kids, who without even being asked stepped up to the plate to help out the old man.

The booth needs some fine tuning, but it was a great experience to mingle with so many people. It was a great first effort. Selling wildlife and landscape prints to a bunch of runners who are just finishing a 5K is an almost laughable uphill battle, but we managed a few sales (two bluebird and one rattlesnake) despite the odds. Having a regular presence at all of the races going forward will be a big help.

I placed this ad in the race packet (it was electronically delivered – very slick):

We got a lot of great exposure, including the company logo on 900 shirts. That was very cool to see!

Tons of people took business cards and really enjoyed looking through everything we had on display. In the past I have not had much of an appetite for the business side of the equation, but I am enjoying this process. It’s a fun challenge in a problem-solving kind of way to try and figure out what resonates with folks and how to overcome certain hurdles.

Of course the main reason I was there was to take photos of the runners. I set up early and stayed late to capture as much of the action surrounding the event that I could.

We announced the winner of our drawing for the lightning photo at the awards ceremony. The guy that won seemed genuinely thrilled and in disbelief. He let me snap this quick shot with my cell phone. That whole process was very satisfying, I’m looking forward to doing it again!

The next race is the Saturday before Mother’s Day, so we’ll come up with something good for that drawing.

A few more images can be seen here, and a large batch of low-res unedited jpegs can be found here. They are ideal for blogs and Facebook. They are more of the ‘snapshot’ variety, and not really reflective of my style – but I wasn’t using them for my needs, so I figured I would make them available to the runners for sharing, etc.