Of course, great race photos do exist, but frankly they’re so rare that Zeddie Little became the Internet meme “Ridiculously Photogenic Guy” after a photographer caught him last spring in the Cooper River Bridge Run in Charleston, S.C., looking fantastic. Mr. Little had not seen a race picture of himself before, so he did not quite understand the fuss. “I mean, I knew the picture was funny, but was it really that funny?” he said last week.

Still, Sean Walkinshaw, director of business development at Brightroom Inc., predicts that a third of the runners in the New York City Marathon (there were more than 47,000 finishers in 2011) will buy one of the million photos his company will take during the race. Brightroom’s overall rate is closer to 5 percent, he said, but more people buy photos from destination races because most have already spent a lot on airfare and hotels. (Race organizers said Tuesday that the marathon would go on as scheduled this Sunday, though most likely with fewer runners than in past years because of travel problems and other logistical issues associated with Hurricane Sandy.)

Brightroom photographers will be at 17 locations in New York, including the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, McCarren Park in Brooklyn, Long Island City in Queens, Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, Columbus Circle in Manhattan and, of course, the finish line in Central Park. Some cameras will be aerial, too.

Runners who want to increase the odds of ending up with a good photo would be wise to plan ahead. “The biggest challenge is spotting that photographer, and when you do, channel your inner Kenyan and run really fast,” said Dimity McDowell Davis, co-author of the books “Run Like a Mother” and “Train Like a Mother.” “Think of yourself as really light, suspended from the sky.” Runners with two feet on the ground look as if they are walking. Photographers hired to shoot individual runners aim to capture them in the air on the way down. Ideal images also include the runner’s face and shoulders relaxed, eyes gazing into the distance, lips slightly parted.