Capture the magic of your Steps for Life walk!

It’s a flurry of activity leading up to the Steps for Life walk, and we were wondering if we could ask for your help with something?

Each year, we ask volunteers and participants to send us their best photos from the walk. We do this for two reasons. First, we’re not able to BE at all of the walks, and we want to see how #WeWalkTogether in Vancouver, Regina, St. John’s and everywhere in between! Second, we are always looking for photos for next year’s promotional materials. We do our best to share the photos that best represent all of the walks across the country, and that’s only possible with your help!

Ready? Let’s get set!

For the walk committees: Finding a photographer – for some communities, luck and good nature has been on your side and a professional photographer has volunteered their time and expertise for your walk. For the rest of the communities, you are probably scratching your heads and trying to figure out where to even start to look. Outside of asking a
professional photographer, how about checking out if there is a photography club in your city that would be willing to volunteer to take some photos for you? Or see if your local high school, college or university teaches a photography course – then you could approach the instructor to see if any of the students would be interested in taking your photos.

For the individual: When you want photos that will stand the test of time and that can be used for a variety of purposes (both in print and online), it’s important to ensure your camera is set to take high resolution photos. The higher, the better! High resolution photos are larger files, but they also produce a better quality photo. After the photo has been taken, the photo’s resolution can’t be improved, so it’s important to check this setting before you get started.

What pictures should I look to take?

Capturing the magic of your Steps for Life walk can seem like a daunting task. To help you figure out the ‘shot list’, here are a few ideas for what we look for when picking out shots to use in our marketing materials.

Try and get small group shots, close-ups of 2 – 5 people having fun together.
Get close-up face shots of people enjoying themselves or even being reflective of why they are at the walk.
If you see people taking a selfie, capture that.
Volunteer shots. Get photos of the volunteers enjoying themselves too.
Get a couple of shots that show the size of your walk. Are you able to get everyone gathered for a group shot?
Shots of the starting line, with the cutting of the ribbon are always nice. Try to get a variety of wide shots to show the size of the walk, but also close ups of the group cutting the ribbon.
If any special guests (e.g. the walk spokesperson, politicians etc.) have arrived, get some of them interacting with the crowd.
Team photos, both family/friend teams as well as corporate challenge teams. (If you’re organizing team photos, be proactive and get team signage made up for each of the teams that are going to be attending the walk, then take a photo with the sign and a couple without. This way the teams can be identified afterwards.)
Memory Lane signs. These signs are very powerful to read, and make powerful photos too. Try to capture people reading the signs, and if possible get the sign in the shot too – so others can see what they are reading.
Encourage creativity. Allow your photographer or yourself the flexibility of trying different types of shots. Experimentation can produce beautiful photos too!

We think the dogs in T-shirts are adorable too, but we can’t use the photos!
Some of the walk venues do allow you to bring your furry friends (provided they’re leashed, under your control at all times, and cleaned up after!) but unfortunately, because not all of the venues allow pets, we can’t use these photos. You may not think it, but there are some other types of shots that we can’t use, or that don’t make for a good photo. Here are some ideas of what types of photos not to take:

People eating. No one likes photos of themselves with food in their mouths.
Really wide shots. If you are taking shots of large groups, try to avoid getting a lot of sky or grass in the shots, the people are usually too small in these types of shots.
Be aware of your surroundings. When you are taking your shots try to notice where your subject is. Avoid distractive backgrounds and watch for tall items (like a lamp post) to make sure they don’t look like they are coming out of someone’s head. Sometimes you see something that would make a great shot, say a group of people; you should check that there is not a post right in the middle of the group.

How can I send them to Threads of Life?

The walk is over and you are excited to share your photos. There are a variety of ways you can send your photos to us:

By email at [email protected]. If you only have a few you would like to share this is a great way to get them to us.
Through free file share programs. If you have several large photos that total 2GB or less, we recommend a great free service called WeTransfer.com. If you have loads of photos that you would like to share with us, we recommend another great free service that can send up to 30GB called Filemail.com. For both of these services send to the [email protected] address; just be sure to mention where you walked, so we know where the pictures came from!

Now snap away – we can’t wait to see your results!