It has been a while since I have blogged about images of weird and eccentric sports events like “wife carry races” and “the Highland Games.  So today I couldn’t resist this image by Carlo Allegri of Reuters of a runner in the 38th Annual Empire State Building Run-Up. Here runner is arriving on the 86th floor.  Here runner is looking pained and not so happy.  It is, of course, a lot like running up a small mountain.  Indeed, I had a colleague back in my postdoc days who used to climb mountains and would practice by donning his hiking boots and running up stairs.

When I first look at this photograph, I feel the man’s pain.  But then I started to look at the compositional elements that really make the image.  The application of the rule of thirds and most interesting the repeating theme of parallel lines, all with perfect internal symmetry but all askew from one another.