It all started in 1982 when Ivor Ginsberg ran his one and only Comrades Marathon . He finished in 10:59:59 – literally one second before the ( then ) 11-hour cut-off – and afterwards said to his running friends it was a pity there was nothing to commemorate their run . “ In those days there was a company photographing Comrades , but it took them forever to send out contact prints for runners to make their orders from , and Ivor decided there must be a better way ,” says Johanna . |
“ He said , why not just send out the actual prints and trust the honesty system amongst runners to pay for their photos , or send them back . So , we established Portrait Place and started with some smaller events , and then the 1983 Comrades , where we sent out about 2500 runners ’ pics . Right from the start we did it right , too , by adding a printed overlay in gold embossing with the race name and year , and the athletes told us they were overwhelmed when the envelopes with their pics arrived in the post . By 1986 we had added the Cape Town Cycle Tour , many more events followed , and we ’ ve just grown and grown from there .”
Today Portrait Place trading as Jetline Action Photo ( JAP ) photographs close to 150 events a year , including about 20 overseas races through its Action Photo UK subsidiary . “ Currently we ’ re the only company in SA doing this work on this scale , and as far as we know , we ’ re the only company that identifies all the pics and then makes them available to the athletes ,” says Devorah “ There are some individual photographers and smaller companies who do similar work , but they usually upload their pics in time slots from the event and athletes must really search for their photos .”
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DETAILED LOGISTICS
Photographing a big race like the Comrades is a massive and costly undertaking . Firstly , JAP has to pay a substantial fee for the rights to photograph the bigger races , and must then sell photographs to the athletes to recoup that outlay . The planning then starts months before the race , with up to 50 photographers booked for an event of that size in order to cover start , various points on the route , finish , medals , permanent numbers and PR shots , and transport and accommodation must be booked for those team members who come from out of town . Most of the photographers used are freelancers , but they all use JAP equipment on the day , set up in the same way to ensure consistency , so 50 cameras with all their lenses , batteries , flashes , etc , and up to two terabytes of memory cards , must be checked , packed and transported to Durban .
Johanna , Devorah and the team then do a route recce to choose the best shooting positions , taking into account lighting and backgrounds . “ We take great care to look for locations that represent the event , and really try to give the athlete the best possible product . We spend a whole week sorting out route access and shooting positions , and on the day our photographers must be there until the last athlete has passed ,” says Johanna . “ After the event , all the cards go back to Joburg , where our magnificent team of 15 full-time staff members is expanded to 30 and we work non-stop in shifts to identify and upload all the photographs ,” continues Devorah . “ This year it took us one and a half weeks to sort 300,000 pics from Comrades , and we couldn ’ t do it without such a great team ”
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THE BOTTOM LINE
Of course , the million dollar question is how JAP reacts to complaints from runners that race photos are becoming too expensive . “ We try to explain to people the kind of outlay we make just to be there , and how much goes into getting those pics . Most of the time they understand ,” says Johanna . Devorah adds that “ Customers also sometimes think that ordering pics from a previous year should be cheaper , but in order to keep those pics available , we need to store them on servers , which takes up hundreds of terabytes of expensive server space . But we don ’ t add a surcharge for older pics .”
In the meantime , the company is introducing new technology and concepts , like Pic2Go , which allows the free upload of pics straight to an athlete ’ s Facebook page , simply by using a barcode on the race number . This was used for the first time at the JointEze Irene Ultra earlier this year . “ The runners love it , because they already have a start or finish pic on Facebook an hour after the race . We still upload all the pics to the website for normal orders , but if a race sponsor wants to go the extra mile , we offer this service ,” says Johanna . “ We just want to give runners a great memory of their races , and it is terrific to have some people telling us that they still love their pics from 20 years ago .”
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Images : Jetline Action Photo & Sean Falconer |