2012 Summer Olympics: BMX Competition

For those of you following the blog closely, I apologize for the delay in posting the last 24 hours. Ever since the women of Team USA Water Polo won the gold medal, things have been crazy. Lots of images needed by the team and some of their sponsors. On Monday, you will see one of my images in a large ad in a large newspaper. More news to come on that later, but suffice it to say, that things have been even busier than before. Hard to imagine, but true.

OK, on to the blog post. I made a trip to the BMX track and had fun shooting images of the guys in the qualification rounds.

 

They start from a large ramp and come flying off the start.

The cruise right down over the London Olympic logo, which is pretty cool...

...except that the darned TV camera boom would obscure our shots every time. Ughh!

They would enter a series of jumps and then hit the first turn. 

There were some massive wipe outs on this turn!

I moved to different positions during the different heats of the race. At one point, in between the races, I had a photographer take a shot of me by the track.

And then the racing began again...

Yep - that is the camera boom in the background again. (I can't tell you how many times I have wanted to clone these distractions out of my images, but the IOC forbids us to do so to any Olympic images.)

After shooting the event with a long lens, I eventually started shooting with some wide lenses.

I used a fish eye lens for this shot, to show the riders in the foreground and the Velodrome in the background.

I shot this image to highlight the rider on the track, but also wanted to include the blimp and the finish line in the distance.

This was a very cool sport to photograph. My time on the track was limited but I will make it a point to shoot this again some time in the future.