Hamilton's Marathon-Photos.com was the first organisation in the world to provide the service of photographing participants in running, triathlon and bike and ski events, and then making these photos available for purchase via the internet.
Francis Kay, a former newspaper photographer, who with his wife, Alison, set up Marathon-Photos in
1999, said: "Fibre optics changed our world. When I first came up with the idea I did wonder how I would get it out there because I just didn't understand the concept of putting photos on the internet.
Initially, photos were taken on film and scanned for transmission via the internet. However, in 2003 Marathon-Photos introduced digital cameras, and now photographers can take 10,000 photos at one event. Videos followed, and a major advance was made when Marathon-Photos introduced the world's first software which identified individual participants within every frame of a video. This enabled the company to automatically combine multiple clips from different stages of a race into a single personalised video of any participant.
Each year, Marathon-Photos photographs over 450 worldwide events and takes more than six million images of predominantly amateur athletes. The massive quantity of digital content means Marathon-Photos relies heavily on IT systems and high-speed data connections. Of their 12 fulltime staff, five are programmers who maintain the software which automates the handling of images and video recorded by their around 750 worldwide contract photographers.
UFB (ultra fast broadband) fibre is currently being deployed in Hamilton under the Government's $1.3 billion UFB initiative, but well before then Marathon-Photos was provided with a 100Mb fibre optic connection from their Hamilton office direct to their internet servers. This enables large personalised video files to be made available to their customers within minutes.
