Photographer Troy Wayrynen just wanted a classic race shot at the Finn Hill 5000, a high school cross country race in Hockinson, Washington, last fall.

“I [could] see it in my mind’s eye,” Wayrynen told Runner’s World Newswire. “And then suddenly, the runners come out and there’s this one runner who is sprinting like crazy."



Suddenly, the runner in the lead pulled out this phone and put it up for a selfie. Wayrynen stood ready with his own camera.

Luckily, Wayrynen was in the perfect position to capture the unexpected moment, and it was announced earlier this week that one of the images claimed first place in the Sports Feature category of the National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photojournalism contest.

Wayrynen didn’t expect to take an award-winning shot that day while covering the event for the Gresham, Oregon, Outlook newspaper, but it ended up being one of his most rewarding photos.



“That’s the wonderful thing about sports photography," he said. "You just don’t know what to expect.”

Wayrynen refers to the image as an outtake—it never appeared in print or on the newspaper’s website—but he submitted the image to the contest thinking it might do well.

“You have this student-athlete taking a selfie right in the middle of a cross country race and I thought, ‘That’s [such] a sign of our times,’" Wayrynen said. “I just thought that was really interesting and humorous at some level.”

The main subject of Wayrynen’s photo, Jacob Gillingham, is a 17-year-old junior at Skyview High School in Vancouver, Washington. Gillingham explained to Newswire that the event was “more for fun than competitive,” as some of the team’s top runners weren't racing so they could rest for the team’s upcoming district meet.

It was one of Gillingham’s teammates who gave him the idea.

“I immediately got excited about the idea and offered to do it,” Gillingham wrote in an email.

Aside from the Skyview runners in the race, no one else, including the Skyview coaches, knew about the plan. While the selfies didn’t take much time, the sprint out to the front ultimately compromised Gillingham’s race. (He faded to 61st out of 81 runners.)

After the race, Gillingham posted one of his photos to Instagram. It was taken right around the moment that Wayrynen was photographing him.

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Gillingham claimed that his coaches took the incident in stride.

“The coaches were supportive after they saw what was going on," Gillingham said. "They thought it was funny but did say that I wouldn’t get away with that at any other race.”

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