Today, we’d like to introduce you to Mike McMonagle.
Hi Mike, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’m a photographer and runner living in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I’ve found a really fun and rewarding way to start a business at the intersection of those two passions. I’ve been a runner essentially all my life, and I always liked taking pictures, but I thought the photos never did justice to the experience and the scenery of many of my runs.
I got my first camera in 2017 and started learning how to take better photos, and as I got better at it, I realized I could help “do justice” to other people’s experiences. I started by taking a ton of photos of my wife, Leah, on a lot of our trail runs or at races where she was competing.
Then I started taking photos of other people in those races, and I kept getting better, kept learning, and kept growing as a photographer. Ultimately, I realized I had some talent that people could really appreciate, and I could capture really powerful, meaningful memories for them — I could kind of do their experiences the justice that I always wanted from my own runs and races.
I have a really strong love for running; I love what it’s done for my life, for my health, and my relationships with people. I know many people out there feel the same way, so I love being able to help them cherish it and share it with others.
Eventually, a few years ago, I realized I could make some money off this hobby that I loved, so I started a business to make myself a little more official. It was a side gig at first, but after a few job losses, it has become my primary focus for the last couple of years.
Let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
A lot of my photography is focused on the sport of trail and ultramarathon running, which is growing extremely quickly. When I first started taking photos at ultramarathon races specifically, I was often sharing them quickly to social media from onsite so people who cared could get more real-time updates on how the competition was playing out.
There weren’t many people doing that at the time, and there were a lot of races going on that people cared about but had little to offer in terms of live-tracking, so it felt somewhat novel and “important.” But now, when I look back at photos I took even just a few years ago, sometimes I cringe a little bit, but then I realize how far I’ve come and how much I’ve learned.
Fortunately (for a lot of reasons), the sport has grown a ton, and now most of the races that the general trail-running public cares to follow have good runner tracking and even live video streams, so I put less pressure on myself to crank out photos in a “breaking news” style. I can be more thoughtful and purposeful in the photos I take.
As I continue to grow as a photographer, learning the business landscape has been an ongoing challenge. I strongly prefer to make money with my photography from companies/organizations with marketing budgets and not from individuals, so I’m constantly trying to grow relationships and learn how to work with more brands. Sometimes I feel really, really busy and can barely keep up, and sometimes I go through lulls where I feel like I’m not doing any business.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar with what you do, what can you tell them about what you do?
I think I’m mostly known as a guy with a fun Instagram handle who always seems to be running around on the sidelines with a camera at trail races all around the world (I love it when I’m sprinting along a race course with my camera and I hear a friendly, “shitinthewoods!”).
I specialize in running photography, and I think I’m somewhat uniquely suited to capture special photos of people racing in wild places — like the mountains of Austria, the forests of northern California, or the deserts of Arizona — because I’m as passionate about a participant in the sport myself as I am a documenter of it. I take photos of the sport that I have loved for 15 years, the sport, and the community that I feel an intimate connection to.
I’m not the best photographer out there — I think I’m pretty good, but always learning and growing — but I don’t think you could find someone at an ultramarathon who loves it more than I do. I feel extremely lucky to be doing what I’m doing for the community and the sport that I love.
I like thinking about the fact that when I was in college in like 2009, I was cutting out photos from the preeminent magazine in ultrarunning and sticking them on my bulletin board — and now I see my own photos in that magazine sometimes!
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I think my photography started gaining more of a following during a time period when I wasn’t running a whole lot myself as I dealt with some injuries. So I think a lot of people started to know my work in the sport of trail and ultra running without knowing how much I participated in the sport too.
I realized that after I spent a lot of 2022 and 2023 shooting some of the biggest and most important trail races in the world but not standing on many starting lines myself. Later, in 2023, I got first place in a relatively small but still meaningful 100-mile race, and some people told me, “I had no idea you ran these too!”
Contact Info:
- Website: www.shitinthewoods.co
- Instagram: @shitinthewoods
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrmcmonagle/
