Photographing Breaking (Break Dancing) at the Olympics - Weird But True

This years Olympics appears to be the first and only Olympics to have Breaking as part of the games. Since this is very likely to be a one-time event, I thought it would be fun to try photographing it.

The venue was in La Concorde and pretty small as Olympic venues go, so I figured I would not need a long zoom lens. I went with the Canon R5 MKII (going light again) and both the RF 70-200m lens and a RF 24-70mm lens. This was the right choice for this venue.

This was the first time I ever photographed an Olympic sport over a crowd of people who were allowed to sit right up against the stage. This created unique challenges, because even though the people were told to stay seated on the ground, many would either get up or raise their arms during the performance and that was really frustrating to all the photographers who were positioned right behind them. We had to have the photo managers remind them repeatedly to stay down.

I figured that the movement would be fast, so I kept my shutter speed to a minimum of 1/2000 sec. 

As I looked through the viewfinder, I looked for cool positions before hitting the shutter button. 

I liked zooming in tight to the breaker to create more blur in the background. 

And of course I also zoomed out to include the judges and the Olympic Rings. 

The United States was already out of the final rounds, so I just captured everyone. 

I think she was smiling at me here. 😀

Once I had a bunch of tight images that I liked, I started looking for new ways to shoot this. Again, my goal every time is to try and be unique. I saw that we had a nice sky in the background and decided to switch to the wider lens to show more of the venue. 

I then switched back to the RF 70-200m lens and started capturing more breaking. But I felt that it was getting repetitive. 

Striving for something different, I slowed the shutter speed way down (to 1/15 sec) and tried to capture some of the motion. 

The challenge here is trying to get motion in their bodies without blurring their faces too much. So only certain moves worked out. I waited for the right moments when I thought this would work and fired. 

Sometimes, even though the face was not sharp, I liked the motion shown in the image. 

I did a little more motion blur and then switched back to a faster shutter speed for the remaining photos. 

The format was a little strange (I thought) as the breakers battled each other to move up into medal contention. 

After trying different lenses and shutter speeds, my last effort to find something different was to move to a different location. This shot was taken not from a photo position, the a corner in the public area. One of the photo managers is someone I have known since the Vancouver Olympics back in 2010 and she told me that this might be something different and was allowed. 

I had one of the TV cameras in the background, but I liked that I could see into the faces of the breakers a little more from this spot. 

From this higher position, I could see the shadows better as well. 

I was getting tired and decided to leave before the end. As I was walking away, and heading towards the venue press room (to get my bag which was checked into a daily locker), I saw this view and thought it would show all of you what it looked like from the outside. 

Lots of people were watching the breaking competition on TV monitors which were scattered around the area. I saw this one reflecting in the water of this beautiful fountain, and liked that “something different” view of breaking.

I got a little lost heading back to the press room, but ended up seeing this view of the sunset behind the Arch de Triumph way out in the distance. So pretty. 

One last shot for the night!

And here is an interesting side note: For the first time ever, I wrote this whole blog while at a cafe having lunch today (the images were already retouched and uploaded). It was my only day to walk around the city and play tourist. And it is hot! Nothing like a 12 mile stroll through Paris in 97 degrees heat! 

  

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* Thank you to Canon, Apple, ProGrade Digital, Crucial, Tiffen, DataColor, ThinkTank, Adobe, and CameraBits  for providing loaner product to me for the Olympic Games!

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