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Cameron and Lana Van Hout Graves may have first made their mark on the New Zealand athletics scene thanks to their running feats, but the couple have more recently established a growing reputation for their excellence and creativity behind the lens as talented videographers and photographers.

The path for Cam, the 2019 New Zealand Cross Country champion and Lana, the 2018 New Zealand 10,000m bronze medalist, founding Graves Media Productions began through a shared passion for content development through social media. Describing themselves as “mid-tier influencers” – which range from 20,000-500,000 followers – the couple have worked with leading brands such as Red Bull and Land Rover and in May led the engaging content capture at the 59^th Red Stag Rotorua Marathon including three new innovative events.

“From a content perspective, we developed our videography and photography skills whilst capturing content for our own social media channels,” said Lana. “Off the back of that, we were approached by brands to shoot their content, and things have snowballed from there. We have been able to collaborate exclusively with brands that are authentic to us and ultimately have a similar vision to our own.”

Cam and Lana still harbour strong ambitions in their personal running careers, but their enthusiasm for capturing creative content via social media represents the future and is a huge boost for engagement in the running and athletics markets. It is not something that Cam takes for granted.

“Capturing the trials and tribulations of athletes journey is an honour and we’re here to showcase that in the best light possible!”

How does your running background help you when creating your content?

Being a runner and photographing runners, makes the whole process so much more rewarding and frankly, so much easier. In the past month we’ve shot three big weekend events and after each shoot we’ve been buzzing about catching up with many of our mates who have been racing. Seeing familiar faces on the start line is always a great time. Our friends play up to the camera, they’re more comfortable to interact with us and less likely to become annoyed.

How do you approach balancing running and your careers?

We would love to say we are both incredibly organised and stick to a strict schedule, but the truth is, it does get a tad turbulent at times. Depending on who we are shooting for and what the video campaign entails, our priority often becomes work. It’s a matter of remaining disciplined with our training and being flexible to fit it into our day where we can! It’s not uncommon for us to be heading out for a run together at 9:30 at night. From a running performance point of view, this may not be the best approach, but unless we are in the final build up towards a race, we seem to get away with it.

What advice would you give to aspiring videographers and photographers?

Shoot as much as you can! The more you’re behind the camera, the more comfortable you’re going to become with your gear and confident in your abilities. You want to be efficient changing settings on the fly, so it becomes second nature.

If you were to give advice to your younger selves, what would you say?

Believe in your ability and work towards your goals every single day. The aim is progress, not perfection. You’ve got this!

Why would you encourage other aspiring videographers/photographers to make the same step?

Freelance videography comes with pros and cons. Without going too in-depth the pro’s heavily outweigh the cons. Working for yourself is incredibly rewarding, but the real win is working in an industry you’re truly passionate about! Creating engaging content in the sport industry is super satisfying. If you can’t be on that start line due to an injury, you can be on the sidelines capturing it instead (which is almost as good!)

What qualities do you need to be a good videographer/photographer?

Firstly, you need a decent set of equipment, camera gear is not light, especially after running around with it some days for more than 12 hours. At the Ultimate Athletes, a few weeks ago, I ran 23.5km in sand with my fully rigged out camera. Some might call that solid cross training. To answer your question, you need to be a hard worker and self-motivated.

Thanks for reading an insight into the New Zealand running community. If you have a story you would like to share, please contact Athletics New Zealand Community Manager, Hamish Meacheam, hamishm@athletics.org.nz.  If you haven’t already, be sure to follow Cam and Lana Graves on Instagram – @camgraves and @lanavanhout