Capturing Speed: Nike Photographer Cortney White

02/24/21 • 35 min

Run to the Top Podcast | The Ultimate Guide to Running

Even if you’ve never heard of Cortney White, you’ve probably seen her pictures. Cortney is one of the few female professional photographers snapping shots of elite runners at sporting events. What’s even more impressive is she is 100% self-taught. How good is she? Her photography is all over the internet and she works with Nike’s elite training group in Portland, Oregon, the Bowerman Track Club.

Cortney also lives in a van full time, previously used running as a means of staying fit for all her other athletic endeavors, and has had to combat a serious medical condition affecting her legs called compartment syndrome.

Cortney shares her interesting story with Coach Claire starting with her enjoyment of trail running in college while she studied business and IT, and how surgery on her legs resulted in a move to Portland and a “regular” job at a large accounting firm with running pushed to the back burner.

Cortney quickly realized she wanted to switch careers and seized an opportunity to work at a startup where she fell into the role of photographer for the brand.

Without any career aspirations or professional knowledge, Cortney photographed some friends and others in the Portland running community and fell in love with photography. Within a few months, she was able to quit her job and combine both passions by doing full-time sports photography, including work with the Bowerman Track Club. She quickly fell back into the running community, but this time from behind a lens.

Along with her personal story, Cortney talks about which athletes love to get their picture taken, who doesn’t, and how to get that perfect running picture, which makes for a fun and fascinating episode!

Questions Cortney is asked:

2:31 I first learned about your work on Instagram. I follow a lot of professional athletes and I noticed that your name kept coming up in t photo credits. How did you start photographing runners at the elite level?

3:30 Are you completely self-taught? You just sort of accidentally became a pro photographer?

4:15 When you knew this was going to be more than just a hobby, did you just like fall down the rabbit hole, just obsessed and learned everything you could? Is that how it happened?

5:16 Why running? You were a runner yourself, right?

6:31 I read that you had an injury that forced you to stop running. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

8:34 You film the best athletes in the world and yet you can’t participate in this sport itself. You seem to have a good attitude about it but didn’t that just crush you?

9:42 How’s your injured hand now?

10:23 What is it like shooting the Bowerman Track Club? Can you talk about what the logistics are like shooting athletes on the track?

13:16 Who on the Bowerman Track Club loves getting their picture taken and who doesn’t? Can you name some names?

14:06 Every runner knows this. It’s really tough to look great when you’re running really, really hard and you’re working hard. So I would love to hear your tips, both as a photographer and as a runner, how do you look good in running photographs? How?

16:16 I recall a lot of pictures that I’ve seen you take where you must be somewhere at like the 300m line, like the inside of the curve or something, and you have the trees in the background, and all the Bowerman babes are like all in flight at the same time. Their trailing leg is just back at... like they’re floating in air. And I’m just like, how does she do that?

16:55 How staged are some of your shots outside of the track? You do photo shoots with the athletes too, right? Walk me through some of those. What are those like?

18:39 I’m sure it’s interesting to see the athletes kind of out of their element when you’re doing photo shoots.

19:41 Let’s talk about how things have changed. Obviously 2020 with COVID and the race scene was extremely different last year. The Bowerman Track Club along with other professional groups put on races that were very secretive, very last minute. Can you talk about this scene there with some of those races that they put on? What was it like and how was it different from the previous year?

22:16 You’re the one that’s documenting this craziness that we’re going through. Pictures of their coach Shalane Flanagan wearing a mask, hugging the women at the end. These are pictures that are only going to be during this special, crazy period of time. They’re going to be iconic. Have you thought about that?

24:11 What is your favorite part of the job? What do you look forward to the most when you wake up every day?

25:06 One interesting thing about you is that you live in your van full time. How did that happen and what do you love about van life?

28:12 You’re doing all your editing and everything in the back of the van? Is that how you do it?

29:50 What's next for you?

...

Cortney quickly realized she wanted to switch careers and seized an opportunity to work at a startup where she fell into the role of photographer for the brand.

Questions Cortney is asked:

3:30 Are you completely self-taught? You just sort of accidentally became a pro photographer?

4:15 When you knew this was going to be more than just a hobby, did you just like fall down the rabbit hole, just obsessed and learned everything you could? Is that how it happened?

5:16 Why running? You were a runner yourself, right?

6:31 I read that you had an injury that forced you to stop running. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

8:34 You film the best athletes in the world and yet you can’t participate in this sport itself. You seem to have a good attitude about it but didn’t that just crush you?

9:42 How’s your injured hand now?

10:23 What is it like shooting the Bowerman Track Club? Can you talk about what the logistics are like shooting athletes on the track?

13:16 Who on the Bowerman Track Club loves getting their picture taken and who doesn’t? Can you name some names?

16:55 How staged are some of your shots outside of the track? You do photo shoots with the athletes too, right? Walk me through some of those. What are those like?

18:39 I’m sure it’s interesting to see the athletes kind of out of their element when you’re doing photo shoots.

24:11 What is your favorite part of the job? What do you look forward to the most when you wake up every day?

25:06 One interesting thing about you is that you live in your van full time. How did that happen and what do you love about van life?

28:12 You’re doing all your editing and everything in the back of the van? Is that how you do it?

29:50 What's next for you?

...

Previous Episode

Danny Dreyer and Sinead Haughey: How Mindfulness Can Help You Run Pain-Free

When ultramarathoner and running guru Danny Dreyer attended a tai chi class in 1999, a lightbulb went off.

He believed the martial art’s principles of alignment, relaxation, and balance could allow him to finally make the next leap in training, and he wasn’t disappointed.

After he began incorporating tai chi into his running, Danny not only witnessed dramatic improvements in his performance, but he also wasn’t getting injured anymore.

In fact, he’d finish a run feeling exactly the same as when he started.

Wishing to share his discovery, Danny founded ChiRunning through which he’s helped thousands of runners conquer injury and run more efficiently to reach new levels.

A mindful and process-driven exercise rather than simply a means to an end, ChiRunning is also known as “moving meditation”, and it’s helped both recreational and elite athletes reduce impact for improved health, better performance, and more enjoyable running.

Listen in as Danny discusses the benefits of ChiRunning as well as how to master the technique so many runners swear by today.

Next Episode

Is Running Ruining Your Knees: Yale's Dr. John Fulkerson

What is it with runners and knees? If you run, you’ve heard “I used to run but it hurts my knees.” Although running is not inherently bad for your knees and staying active helps keep your knees healthy, a lot of runners eventually stop running because it hurts their knees too much.

Older runners, especially men, have to be particularly diligent in their strength training and stretching to avoid knee pain. So which is it? Does running cause people knee problems or are certain people predisposed to knee problems and would have issues regardless of whether they ran or not?

To get to the bottom of this issue, Coach Claire speaks with Yale orthopedic surgeon, Dr. John Fulkerson. Dr. Fulkerson specializes in sports medicine and focuses on treating patella instability, which refers to the kneecap sliding in and out of position.

Dr. Fulkerson has been at Yale for over 40 years and he is leading the way in cutting edge technology to help those who suffer from debilitating knee issues. He talks about who’s most at risk for knee problems, what does and doesn’t work for prevention, the simple exercise that you can do today that can help keep your knees running smoothly and pain free, and why those of us who are fortunate enough to be runners should feel gratitude for our running, even on those bad run days!

Dr. Fulkerson received his medical degree from and also completed his internship and residency at Yale University. His awards include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Patellofemoral Foundation, a Sports Medicine Fellow Educator Award from the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Connecticut, Connecticut Orthopedist of the Year, the San Francisco Bay Area Lifetime Achievement Award, U.S. News and World Report Top Doctors, and the Wisdom House Community Service Award (with his wife Lynn).

He founded the International Patellofemoral Study Group and the Patellofemoral Foundation. He has been head team physician for the NHL Hartford Whalers and Hartford Wolfpack, and a team physician for the U.S. Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey and Trinity College in Hartford.

Dr. Fulkerson is known for orthopedic surgical innovation and has lectured worldwide. His publications include Disorders of the Patellofemoral Joint as well as many other chapters and monographs on the same subject. He also published the non-orthopedic book Thin Lines: A Vineyard Journey.

Questions John is asked:

3:00 What every runner wants to know is, is running bad for your knees?

4:44 What other people besides older people need to be careful about running safely? You said that there are some people that maybe aren’t as well suited to running as far as their knees go at least, so who are we talking about here?

5:53 Your specialty is patella instability. Can you talk about exactly what that is and maybe give us a quick anatomy refresher here?

7:11 So patella instability is when the kneecap is actually moving around is what you’re saying?

7:42 The patella groove depth is just genetic, you get it or you don’t? It’s just how you were born? Or does it have anything to do with the activities we do?

8:24 Can you talk about some of the specific problems that runners face with their knees? Give us a definition of what’s runner’s knee?

10:30 You mentioned core instability, and that’s something as I coach I talk to my runners about is that often knee problems are actually a symptom. They’re not actually the problem. It’s something higher up in the chain. The hips, the core, or maybe in the lower part of the leg or the ankles, something like that. Can you talk about how the knee is related to everything else that’s going on in the chain?

11: 57 What are some other exercises besides jumping rope that you recommend that can help with people who complain about knee issues?

12:24 How do you stretch the knee?

13:47 Let’s say we have a runner who complains of knee problems. He is doing everything he’s supposed to be doing, all the stretches, all the strengthening, rock solid core, but still cannot get away from the knee pain. At what point is surgery the best option?

14:59 How does 3-D printing work as a diagnosis tool for knee pain?

16:10 This sounds like cutting-edge technology at Yale. Is this something that is spreading across the country? Are we going to be able to find this in Kansas? Or is this pretty limited at the moment?

17:44 When we’re talking about knees and joints in general and aging, the next thing that tends to come to mind is arthritis. And when I was researching this before interviewing you, I learned that there’s all sorts of different kinds of arthritis which I was not aware of. I thought arthritis was just arthritis but apparently it’s not. Can you talk about arthritis, especially in the knee, that runners are likely to encounter as they age?

20:07 My dad used to jog three miles every ot...