Olympics in Milan: Photographing the Opening Ceremony!!!

Yesterday was the Opening Ceremony of these 2026 Winter Olympics here in Milan and it was a really good one. Especially after having the disastrous opening in Paris, it felt good to be back in a normal stadium. I am really excited to share the images and stories with all of you. 

The day started much earlier than the 8pm start time of the ceremony. I left the MPC at 4pm, and took the press bus to the stadium. This was the view from the press entrance. I was planning on getting a light dinner at the press room, but there was no concession area or even bathrooms there. When I asked where the bathrooms were, they pointed me outside the room and up. What I did not know was that I would be climbing up 15 flights of stairs, and would have to repeat that minutes later with all my gear. 

As you can see, it was still very light when I arrived. They want us in position hours in advance and I wanted to make sure I had a good photo position to shoot from. What was that position you might ask. I wanted to get pretty close to dead center but I also wanted an aisle seat so I could easily get up and leave before the end of the ceremony (to beat the crowd out). Because I picked the top row, there was also a space for my camera bag behind me, instead of at my feet. Much easier to work this way!

I did get an aisle seat, and as you can see here, the seating was anything but luxurious. Honestly, it was downright uncomfortable and very tight with all of us press crammed into these narrow rows. Luckily I remembered to bring my inflatable seat cushion which helped a bit. I was still hungry, but the line for any food or drinks was over an hour long. I was very lucky that someone got me food and drink while I guarded my gear. Then it was just a waiting game.

This is me about 2 hours before the start of the ceremony. As you can see, it was blue hour (just after sunset) and made for a fun shot. I did not have a jacket on because I was still hot from the hike up to the bathroom and then again to the photo position.

Right before the ceremony commenced, I went into a small hidden area and put on thermal pants, another layer on top, my jacket, beanie and gloves. Now I was ready to shoot!

This is a shot of my fellow photographers in photo section D.  No shortage of camera equipment here!

Before I go through a bunch of my favorite images from the evening, I want to preface this for you all. Us photographers go these events with no background, or "color commentary", that you get when watching this on television. We generally have no idea what each act signifies, or even the story that is being told. 

I am there looking for the best photo opportunities and not thinking about what is actually happening. I know this might sound strange to you, but it is a fact. With that in mind, I am going to take you through my thought process as I was capturing the following images throughout the night.

I went to the Opening Ceremony armed with a Canon R1 with the RF 100-300mm 2.8 lens and a Canon R6 MK III with the new Canon RF 7-14mm fisheye lens. I have done enough of these to know that over packing is the worst mistake ever. I figured that the space would be tight, and I would have to do a lot of walking and stair climbs. For most of these tight shots, I used the Canon R1 with the zoom lens. I would look for nice color and interesting subjects.

I watch very closely for the lighting to be interesting. I also try to avoid shooting when the floor is not lit with color, as the grey floor is really boring.

I am watching the main subjects (or trying to find them) and also watching the interesting shadows.

People often ask me why I prefer using zoom lenses vs prime lenses (lenses that are fixed focal lengths). As you can see from this photo, I zoomed all the way out to 100mm to show the people and get some of the cool lighting in the background.

Other times, I would zoom all the way to 300mm to get in tight to the subjects. I framed this shot to get the woman off center, with the "supporting subjects" off to the right. 

I find that when photographing events like this, it is imperative to shoot everything under exposed so that the highlights are not blown out (too bright). I know that I can lighten the image in Photoshop if I need to.  

I actually brought a 1.4x extender and 2x extender with me, thinking that I would need more zoom than 300mm, but as it turned out, that was not the case. For this shot, I waited for a key moment. When this woman raised her arms (in good light), I fired off some frames.

There were many times when 100mm was not wide enough. For those times, I had the Canon R6 MK III  with the Canon RF 7-14mm fisheye lens right behind me, so that I could grab it anytime I wanted a wider shot.

I saw the paint tubes come down from the rafters and had no idea what would happen. As soon as I saw the colored fabric come out from each tube, I knew that these would be cool shots. I loved all the color. I tried to shoot wide enough to get all three tubes, but the 100mm would not let me. 

I stayed tight and shot a whole bunch of images, highlighting all the colors on the stage.

Then I grabbed the other camera and took some wide shots. The great thing about the Canon R6 MK III  is that it has enough resolution so that I can crop in and still get a nice image like this (even though I was shooting at 14mm). 

This is what the wider shot looks like with no cropping.

I had a cheat sheet that told me the 4 times that there would be pyro in the stadium, but I had no idea if it was fireworks in the sky or something down low. In this case, I happened to be shooting with the wide lens at the perfect time to capture this. This is also a crop from a wide shot, but is still a very useable 8MB image.

For Mariah Carey, I went back to the Canon R1 and 100-300mm lens to try and get some tight shots of her. 

Once again, I waited for the right lighting to make an interesting image.

These tight shots are also cropped images from the Canon R1. This one ended up at 6MB which is still plenty to make a large print and have it look great.

For these next images, I just liked the Italian colors and had some fun with that.

I had no idea who this singer was, but framed the shot to have her "rule of thirds" with all the people in color behind her.

I had to get at least one flag shot.

I always search for a photo that pushes the boundaries, and this was one of those. I saw the woman in the circle standing still while everyone else around her was moving. I quickly changed the ISO of the camera to 100 and the shutter speed to 1/25 sec. That is a really slow shutter speed, but I love how everyone is in movement except for my main subject.

Once the Olympic Rings were formed, I took a wide shot of that.

Having photographed 9 Olympics, you would think that I would have predicted some fireworks at that moment, but I didn't. Luckily I was holding the right camera / lens combination and fired off a whole bunch of images of this. I should mention, for all those photographers out there, there is no lens profile for the new Canon RF 7-14mm fisheye lens. This means that when I open a file in Adobe Camera Raw, it comes up all convoluted. So...if you are using this lens, you will want to turn off lens correction. 

With that said...this morning I went to load that same wide shot (the one before this one), and with lens correction turned on, it looked like this. You know what? I really like this view! It looks like I was shooting right up against the rings. So sometimes even the weird anomalies turn out real winners.

This Opening Ceremony had the longest athlete processional that I have ever seen. It took forever! Knowing that Team USA would come out second to last (since the next Olympics is in the US), I took out my laptop and retouched many of the shots you see here. I sent a bunch to the team right from that cramped seat. After what seemed like an eternity, Team USA made their appearance. 

I really wanted a shot of them coming through the gold circle. I had taken numerous photos of other teams, to practice, and was ready for the big moment. Since I am primarily shooting for USA Hockey, I am trying to see if I can find any of these hockey players in the crowd. I usually get the intro shot like this and then shoot tight on different groups of the Americans, assuming I will get the people I need. As it turned out, I did. Phew! 

I was using the long lens and photographing this group, when they ended their performance by throwing their hats. Thank goodness I was framed correctly to get that. Sometimes luck helps.

This is another one of those photos that I took just because of the color and detail. I was originally shooting tighter, but liked the lighting coming up from the right side, so I zoomed out to capture this.

This is the last photo I took, as Andrea Bocelli was singing. I stayed for half of his song and then packed up and made a run for the nearest metro station.  I knew that leaving early would save me hours of frustration later. 

Here is the funny part. I got back to my hotel room around midnight and thought, that was a good Olympics, as if this was the Closing Ceremony. I don't usually arrive to the Olympics as early as I did this time around and it seems like I am towards the end. And yet, it is just the beginning. The Olympics has a way of bending time in weird ways. Trying to navigate the metro, figure out the venues, staying up late, sleeping at crazy hours, and never relaxing for 3 weeks. But I am ready for it all!

Here we go!

Please excuse any typos. Normally I try to proof read everything before I post, but here at the Olympics, time is a commodity. I definitely miss some things. :)

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