On the first Sunday in November, two million people line the five boroughs to watch the New York City Marathon. Somewhere on the Pulaski Bridge there is a person crouched in the gutter with a camera, shooting up at the runners as they crest the hill into Queens. That person is not being paid by the race. They are there because New York has quietly become the most competitive running photography scene in the country.
Why NYC is the center of running photography right now
Three things collided. The run club boom filled every park and bridge in the city with organized groups shooting weekday workouts. The major running brands put their marketing teams in New York, which put paid campaign work within subway distance of the people already shooting for free. And the NYC Marathon gives everyone one enormous shared stage every autumn.
The result is a working community of photographers who came up through the run clubs rather than through sports desks. Here are five of them worth knowing. This is an editorial pick rather than a leaderboard, and the ranking is loose. Every one of these people is publicly working and easy to find.
1. Joe Hale (@jkh_photo)
Hale is the closest thing the list has to a pure track specialist. He ran Division 1 at Manhattan College and started shooting seriously at 18 in the Bronx, which means he reads a race the way a competitor does and is usually standing in the right place before the move happens.
His client list runs through Adidas, Nike, Under Armour, On and Diadora. He has served as official photographer for the Portuguese national running team, spent time embedded with Tinman Elite in Boulder, and shot the 2024 Paris Olympics. His own framing of the work is worth stealing: "Running is a vehicle to show off places, people and things." He shoots the faces and the crowd as much as the finish line.
Look at his work if you want to understand portraiture inside a sporting event.
2. Dave Hashim (@dhash)
Hashim spent 13 years in corporate marketing at NBC before running his first marathon in 2019 and starting to document his friends on runs in 2020. The hobby became a full career. He has shot for Nike, Brooks and Saucony, photographed Eliud Kipchoge at the 2023 Boston Marathon, and built the Perimeter Project, an unsanctioned ultra series covering the perimeters of all five NYC boroughs across roughly 211 miles.
He also co-founded NYC Run Photo, which shoots local races, track workouts and run club sessions around the city. His most useful line for anyone trying to do this professionally is not about cameras at all: "30% of being a photographer is actually taking the photo, 70% deals with meetings, presentations, organizing your life."
3. Tina Bearden (@tinabearden_)
Bearden grew up in a New Jersey running family, ran the 800 and the 400 hurdles in high school, and picked up photography during the pandemic with one of her father's old Pentax DSLRs, shooting friends at Brooklyn Track Club workouts in McCarren Park. She co-founded NYC Run Photo with Hashim while both were training for the 2021 Chicago Marathon.
She has since built a commercial practice as a director and photographer with work for Nike, Lululemon, Arc'teryx, Brooks, Hoka, PUMA, On and Tracksmith. Her work leans into movement, emotion and contrast, often on film, and she is deliberate about slow shutter speeds where most people reach for a faster one. Her advice to beginners is the honest kind: if you want to be really good at something, accept that you are going to be really bad at first.
4. Parker Feierbach (@ideaform)
Feierbach is based in Crown Heights and came to running photography from an anthropology background, which shows. The recurring interest is how one person interacts with the culture around them, so the pictures tend to isolate a single runner inside the noise of the city rather than shooting the pack.
The work has landed on the covers of Runner's World, Esquire, Bicycling and Runaway. Feierbach is also known for shooting one handed from a moving bicycle in New York traffic, which is a good reminder that in this city the hardest technical skill is often mobility rather than glass.
5. Grayson Wise (@grayokay)
Wise lives in Prospect Heights, originally hated running, joined a club in 2022 and now runs marathons. He shoots Dirty Bird Run Club events, campaign work for On, marathon finishers and the bar afterward, which is the part of run club life most photographers skip and the part members actually want to see.
His method is pure New York: "I've gotten pretty good at Citi Biking one-handed while taking photos." If you want to see what documenting a running community actually looks like week to week, his feed is the reference.
Honorable mention: Eddie Cohen
Cohen built a makeshift studio near the NYC Marathon finish line and shot runners immediately before and after the race for a series called Pain and Glory. It is a reminder that the strongest running photo is often taken standing still, thirty seconds after the running stops.
What all five have in common
None of them started with a press credential. Every one of them started by showing up at a track workout or a run club and shooting people who were not paying them. Access came from being a member of the community first and a photographer second. Three of the five are runners themselves, which is why they can predict a move instead of reacting to it.
The second pattern is that they published constantly. The clients came after the body of work existed, not before.
How much does a running photographer cost in NYC
If you are a brand, a club or a race director hiring in New York, expect entry level rates to start around $150 an hour, experienced shooters to sit in the $250 to $400 an hour range, and established names to charge above that. Full day coverage commonly runs $400 to $800 and up, usually including 20 to 60 edited images and a usage license. Campaign work with licensing attached is priced separately and runs well beyond those numbers.
How to get your running photos in front of people
If you are the one behind the camera at your local run club, the missing piece is usually not talent. It is distribution. Surf Snaps costs $0 to join and $0 to upload, with no storage bill, no monthly plan and no upload limit. You keep 90% of every photo sale, so a $25 sale sends you $22.50. Previews are watermarked automatically and the originals unlock when someone pays.
Runners find the photos by searching sport, place and date, which is exactly how someone looks for pictures of a race they ran last Saturday. Running is one of the live sports on the platform. If a club wants to book you for a session, you can publish your rate and hours on your own page and keep 100% of the booking.
One small step
Pick one run club near you and go to a single weekday workout this week. Do not pitch anything. Shoot 40 frames, get every person in at least one, and post the gallery that night with the date and the park name in the caption. That is how all five of these photographers started, and none of them needed a credential to do it.
