Editor's note: Chip Mooney is a photographer, runner and New Balance community ambassador based in Melbourne's inner north. We caught up with him for Grey Days to talk about his neighbourhood, the crews he runs with and the places he loves to take pictures.

Early on a wintery morning at George Knott Reserve, the nearby streetlights struggle to cut through the fog that’s settled low over the Collingwood track. The floodlights that tower over the red lanes remain dark. Runners appear and disappear in the murk, breath trailing behind them. Among them is Chip Mooney, though he’s as likely to be pointing a camera as he is clocking laps. For Chip, these mornings are where two passions converge. Running pulls him here. Photography gives him an extra reason to focus on the moment. 

Chip’s entry into running is a familiar one in the post-Covid era. He’s been doing it for about five years, since Melbourne’s second round of lockdowns. With gyms closed and social life on hold, running became the outlet that stuck. He took a camera with him from the start. “It just became an extension of something to do in lockdown,” Chip says. “Obviously, being a photographer, practice is important. It’s like running: the more you do it, the better you get.” 

The two pursuits have been intertwined ever since for Chip, which has led to him becoming a New Balance community ambassador. We spoke to him for Grey Days, a month-long event that brings together the brand’s family of ambassadors and athletes for a range of special-edition products, events and stories that highlight the unique and timeless qualities of the colour grey. 

“Running photography just evolved from taking my camera with me when I went out for runs on my own,” he says. “And then, as I began running with crews, I naturally started taking photos of other people running.” 

Two crews, one neighbourhood

These days, Chip splits his running between two crews, both based around Collingwood in Melbourne’s inner north. “Crews in Melbourne are very fluid,” he says. “You’ll get people that run with different groups on different days.” 

With Ate Miles, which meets fortnightly for social 5Ks, he’s one of the crew’s leaders, part of what he describes as “a very big group effort”. The crew head out from MAAP LaB on Wellington Street; from there they might head down by the Yarra River for a taste of trail or push through the city. On one of those recent runs, Chip and some of the gang put the New Balance Grey Days FuelCell Rebel v5 through its paces. 

Then there’s AM:PM.RC, a longstanding Melbourne crew that gathers at George Knott Reserve on Thursday mornings. “There’s a lot of creatives among that crew, and everyone’s really talented,” Chip says. “It’s always nice to be able to shoot people down there on a Thursday morning.”

The neighbourhood on foot

Home for Chip is Thornbury, on Melbourne’s north side, tucked over near the Darebin Creek Trail. It’s where he does most of his solo running, and he’s a vocal advocate for the area.

“Underrated,” he says of Darebin Creek. “One of the nicer trails in Melbourne, I think.”

From there, the trail network fans out – south into the Darebin Parklands, connecting through to the Yarra River or looping across to Merri Creek, where Chip used to live and where he first started running during lockdown. It’s a patchwork of green corridors that lets you stack serious distance without touching a traffic light.

“The trails are Melbourne’s strong point for running,” he says. Between the creeks and the track, Chip can choose trail, Tartan or tarmac on any given morning, and that variety keeps things fresh. 

He runs George Knott year-round and watches the place transform with the seasons. It might be “hot summer mornings or foggy, dark winter mornings”, and each week brings a different mood.

There’s also the matter of his greyhound, who ensures Chip explores his local area on foot even when he’s not running. “That’s probably when I explore the neighbourhood most,” he says of walking the dog, camera in hand, down the creek trails and quiet streets near home. The dog, predictably, won’t be joining him for any runs. Greyhounds might sprint, but they never jog. 

Framing place

Ask Chip what makes a good running photograph and his answer is candidness. Campaign work has its place, and he does that too, but it’s the unposed frames he keeps reaching for. “Those raw, candid moments always shine through,” he says. “They convey emotion a bit easier.” 

Chip recently returned from a trip to Japan and Korea, and his images from both countries carry that same neighbourhood scale: quiet compositions, street-level details, runners and pedestrians moving through parks and backstreets. The locations change but the approach doesn’t: keep it local, keep it candid, stay on foot. For Chip, running is as much a way of seeing a place as it is a way of moving through one. “Running is the best way to explore a place or a neighbourhood,” he says. “And bringing a camera along just melds them both together.” 

It works in reverse, too. The fresh eyes that travel gives you can be hard to replicate at home, where familiarity invites complacency. But Chip recognises the trap in forgetting to look closely at one’s everyday environment: “You live in your own neighbourhood and you’re exposed to it every day, but other people still may find those photos interesting.” 

New Balance and what’s next

Chip came on board as a New Balance community ambassador at the start of this year, a partnership that’s still in its early days. One of the first things the brand did was kit out Ate Miles’ Ballarat Marathon squad in matching gear.

“That was really generous of New Balance,” Chip says. “Just doing a race together and being able to wear the same kit. It was like we were doing it together, even though we were all running our own race.” 

This weekend, Chip heads to Launceston with a group from Ate Miles for the half marathon. One of the crew members’ parents live down there, so they’ll stay with them and make it a family affair. Even when they leave the neighbourhood, Chip and the gang like to keep it low-key, communal and local in spirit.