Friday, August 8, 2008

Olympics in Beijing - Opening Night!

They thought that it might rain tonight but that never happened. Although that was good for all of us, it did mean that the weather was very hot and humid this evening. Fighting a little bit of sickness (probably from something I ate last night - I'm not sure what that was!), I headed out for 6 hours of walking and shooting.


As the ceremonies continued for hours upon hours, I walked around and shot pictures of the performers and the building. I headed for my favorite spot on the bridge. This is the spot with the reflection of the Birds Nest. Since all of the photographers had seen images from the practice earlier in the week, everyone who was "up credentialed" and not inside the Birds Nest wanted this same shot. So...photographers got to this spot between 6am and noon and claimed their tripod territory for the midnight show. That is true dedication to get the image!

I, on the other hand, showed up at the bridge at 9:30pm and bribed a photographer from Italy (with a new Lexar 300x 4GB Professional CF card) to let me squeeze my tripod next to his. The weather was not as clear as the practice earlier in the week, but we deal with whatever weather we get. Anyways, I did get some shots of the fireworks but my favorite shot is the one with the lights coming off the office buildings to the left. Very cool lighting.



The final fireworks show was really intense. I had no idea that many of the firework cannons were placed 30 feet behind me, covered by a fence. For ten minutes we experienced the sounds of war. By the time the show was over, all 150 of us photographers (and all of our gear) were covered in gun powder and shell casings. I think that Canon and Nikon were busy cleaning cameras and lenses for most of that next morning.

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