Lots of Water Polo and VIPs too!

As you all might know, I shoot every game for USA Water Polo here at the Olympics, and I feel so fortunate to do so. Not only are these athletes, coaches and staff incredible, many of them I am lucky enough to call friends. With the schedule of these Games, there is not much down time at all, but I have been fortunate enough to have little blips of time where I can put the camera and computer down and have lunch or dinner and just socialize. But over the last week or two, I have had a couple of those moments with Greg (my good friend and head of communications for the team) and some others, and it has been really nice. 

NBC Bay Area is doing a story on me here in Paris, and two nights ago and they came to shoot video of me working and interviewed me. As part of that interview (which I will post when it runs), they asked me about my relationship with the team and their families. They saw the athletes and their family members  come talk to me and they seemed surprised that the photographer would be part of that community. If you know me, you know that I don't just sit back and shoot, I like to immerse myself in the story and get to know the people. This makes photographing the sport even more fun for me.

I have not blogged many images from the men's and women's water polo games, but I thought I would share some favorites from the last week here in one blog post.

Capturing images of water polo has it's challenges. Here are some:

1. It is fast action.

2. I am only seeing a small portion of the person since most of them are under water.

3. The water splashes up and I have to try and focus on the person's eyes and not the splash.

4. The glare on this pool is tough, making it hard to get a proper exposure on the subject.

For the image above, I locked focus on his eyes and love that he is tack sharp, but you can also see the water coming off his hand in front of his face. Not an easy task. BTW - most of the time, I am not using face or eye detection for shooting water polo. I am going back to the old way of using a small focus point (in servo or follow focus mode) and locking in on their face.

I love telling a story with the photos. Adrian Weinberg had an amazing game last night, stopping 13 shots. I needed to get that in a photo to tell that story.

I love grabbing images of these athletes when they kick themselves out of the water like this. Pure leg power.

Another stop for Adrian. I like that you can see the impact of the ball on his arm in this photo.

Water polo players generally do not celebrate goals like other sports, but once in a while I catch a moment like this. Even though his face was turned away from me, I love the pose and the Olympic Rings in this shot. We don't need to see his face to feel the emotion of the moment.

As I mentioned before, I love photographing Ashleigh Johnson in net. She has strength and grace like no other.

One of the fun challenges when photographing water polo, is capturing the movement of the water. I love this photo with the water perfectly arching off of the hand on a penalty shot. 

The other day, I arrived at the pool a little before game time and the water was perfectly still. I saw this reflection and loved it. Something simple but effective.

It is easier to swim fast when you have an extra arm coming out of your head! :)

Here is Alex Bowen, who is considered one of the best shooters in men's water polo. 

Adrian going one-on-one with a close range shooter.

Before the men's games, they huddle up in the pool and do a little pep talk. At the end of that talk, they all come high out of the water.

Asheigh doing what Ashley does best!

I usually shoot tight on the athletes, but I really liked the giant American flag on the screen in the background, so I shot wider on some photos to include that.

Many times, when the team scores a goal, I will quickly move the camera to photograph the reaction of the other teammates on the bench.

Awesome emotion from the men and the women.

Oh, and this year we have had some star power pool side.

As you may know, Flavor Flav is officially sponsoring the women's team, and he is bringing some friends with him. The other day Spike Lee showed up. We texted Flav and asked them to turn towards me for this photo. 

And after the game, we met up outside the pool to get a team photo with Flav (yeah - we are now on first name basis 😀) and Spike Lee.

A couple of days later, we have Guy Fieri in the house. Once again, we asked them to turn towards me so I could get this photo from the pool deck.

This is what my view looks like every day.

It has been fun for me to meet all these VIPs.

Here is a photo that Greg took of me photographing the FLOTUS last week. It is a big bald head, but hey, it is what it is. Amazing times. 

And now we are heading to the quarter finals and medal rounds. This means that we are no longer at the Aquatics Center, but moving to the Paris La Défense Arena (where swimming is taking place now). I just want to know if the lighting is better and which VIP is going to show up next!

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