Tokyo Olympics - By the Numbers!

I have been home for almost a week now and the Olympics are officially behind us (well...at least for the next 6 months), I am still waiting for that one night of sleep where I do not wake up wide awake at some crazy hour. During one of those early morning quiet moments, I had a thought to share a final summation of the Olympics with all of you. Here are those statistics and some of my favorite photos. 

Total blog viewership: 493,000 views

Total Olympic blog posts: 45

Days in Tokyo: 21 (14 quarantined)

Miles walked: 128 miles

Hours spent on buses: Approximately 40 hours

Images captured during the Games: Approx. 40,000

Images kept: 23,000

Favorite images: 318

Portfolio shots: 45

Camera used the most: Canon R3 (pre-production)

Favorite moment: Women of USA Water Polo winning gold (and getting to put the camera down and celebrate that with them)

It is always an honor and privilege to wear (or even touch) a gold medal, and so I was super excited to have that opportunity once again. You can tell that I was happy at that moment! (Funny story about this photo. I was just going to have someone take an iPhone shot of me, but Rachel Fattal said that she would take it with my Canon R5. I showed her how to use the back button focus, and zoom, and she did great! Photo credit to her.)

Favorite thing in Tokyo: The people (and the air conditioning)

Least favorite thing about the trip: Not being able to eat good Japanese food

Top 10 favorite images:

Ashley Johnson is arguably the best female goaltender of all time in water polo, and this photo shows how athletic she is, but looks calm doing what she does best.

Not having photographed basketball in the past, and having the wrong lens at the time, I was really happy to get this peak of action shot during the USA vs. France game. I love the outstretched arms, expression and backlighting in this photo.

I knew that this photo would be one of my favorites from the moment I captured it. I saw how the Brazilian volleyball player was perfectly framed within the net and loved it. Some planning, and a little bit of luck too!

This was another photo that I knew I liked instantly. Catching the BMX rider high in the sky, with the airplane in the background. More good timing and luck!

Motion panning is really difficult, especially when trying to follow the action at 1/20th of a second. This photo works for me (although there are a couple of others I like almost as much) because of the blur, the clarity of the horse and rider, and the position of the horse in the jump.

I love the concentration that you see in Suni Lee's face in this photo, with the beam and logos below her.

I love using the multi-exposure mode in the Canon cameras, and this one had just the right amount of motion in both athletes. I also love that you can clearly see that it is the American vs the German (with the colors of their masks).

Johnny Hooper has so much strength in his legs that he can kick himself incredibly high out of the water. I was hoping to get a photo of him like this, and it took until the very last game to get it. I also love the trail of water coming off the ball.

This photo shows the incredible emotion in the women's faces after winning the gold medals! (I knew that I would be shooting their team photo from this location after the medal ceremony, and thought ahead to bring a flash. This really helped me get good lighting on their faces without blowing out the background.)

This last photo was taken on the pool deck well after the women's medal ceremony. Due to the pandemic, there would be no team party this time around. But after all the press interviews, we had an impromptu team celebration on the deck afterwards. I asked all the women to sit down and have some fun (to get a more informal team victory photo). 

I would like to thank each and every one of you, once again, for following along on this journey with me. There were so many of you who were kind enough to send emails and leave positive comments, and that means so much to me.  It was your incredible feedback that kept me inspired to write the multiple blog posts every day. Thank you!

Now it is time to repack my bags and head to Tanzania, Kenya and Botswana. I normally do not blog from Africa (since we are on safari all day and the Internet is not very good), but I am going to try my best to blog once a week. I know that we are going to see some amazing sites, and I am excited to share those with you as well. Stay tuned!

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