Gene Martin

Recently I went to look at Gene Martin's photos on Picasa that he's been taking for FARC for as long as I remember. Bob Lang of the Lion's Club had asked me to share with him some pictures of runners standing around after races for a t-shirt idea, so I sent him to Gene's site. Gene is at most FARC races every year, taking pictures of every one he can. It's not an easy job either. I've tried to take running pictures before with a variety of different cameras, and they usually turn out very badly. Gene has had a lot more success than I have. When I redesigned the FARC website, I included a link to Gene's pictures for all to see.

I remember seeing people make comments on some of the pictures, often times asking how they could buy the photos from Gene. When he replied, he just told people to download them for free! It was amazing. After each race, I would go home and download all the pictures that had me in them. He got around the course too, and I'd often see him in more than one spot getting pictures of me. When he wasn't in a spot or photos of me weren't included, I was happy knowing that it meant he was taking pictures of some of the other runners, those who might not already have pictures of themselves. (I sound very vain!)

Well, it seems as though Gene has finally decided to make a profit from his efforts. His photos have migrated to www.IBGENE.com, a professionally done website that offers visitors the opportunity to buy pictures in print, or just a digital download. I'm not sure whether I think $3 is a lot of money to download the picture or not, but regardless, I've certainly saved a lot of money in the past.

I encourage people to take advantage of this service, and even if it is expensive, get a picture or two from Gene on occasion, when there is a good shot of you. He did it for free for a long time, now we can thank him for his efforts.

It looks as though Gene has allowed people to embed his photos into websites, so I've got some work to do finding all the pictures from my blog that are missing now, to re-embed them with his new website.