2012 Summer Olympics: What it is like to be an Olympic photographer

Last night, while riding the bus back to my apartment, I looked back at the day and wrote down exactly what I accomplished (and didn't). Just so that all of you can get a feel for a typical day at the Olympics, here is what my day looked like yesterday:


7:45 Got up (uh oh - no hot water - cold shower)
8:45 Bus to the Main Press Center (MPC)
9:00 Stop at the media food court to slam an Egg McMuffin
9:15 MPC - check in - clean gear
9:30 Go to Canon's loan desk and borrow 200-400 lens
9:45 Run for the bus to the aquatics center
10:15 Shoot swimming preliminaries
1:00 Finished shooting swimming
1:15 Head to basketball
1:40 Slam a BLT sandwich at the media room of basketball while downloading (this is where those 1000x memory cards and USB 3.0 reader really come in handy!)
1:50 Find a shooting position in basketball
2:00 Edit while waiting for the game to start
2:30 Shoot USA vs. France basketball game
4:30 Finish shooting basketball
5:00 Take bus back to MPC
5:45 Download basketball images and post blog 1 (images from yesterday)
6:15 Slam dinner (Fish and chips of course!)
6:30 Take bus to water polo venue
7:00 Set up remote camera
7:15 Get into position (entry to the pool area is limited to certain times before each game)
7:30 Shoot USA waterpolo game
8:45 Shoot images in the mixed zone (an area where the press can interview the athletes)
9:00 Download game shots and interview shots
9:15 Remove remote camera setup from rafters
9:30 Edit water polo images
10:15 Post images to Team USA Waterpolo
10:45 Write blog 2
11:00 Take the press bus back to the MPC
12:00 Take the press bus back to condo and recharge all batteries for tomorrow

Am I complaining? Heck no - I am at the Olympics!


BTW - I am posting this as I slam my dinner and go through images. :)

2012 Summer Olympics: Swimming

Yesterday started with a trip to the Aquatics Center for some swimming action. Since I was shooting images for USA Swimming, I mainly focused on the American athletes. This was the morning preliminaries and the team wanted me to shoot the athletes who might not make it to the final heats in the evening. Here are some of those images.

Breeja Larson swimming breast stroke and doing very well in this heat.

And obviously happy with her results.

Rebecca Soni competing in breast stroke.

Chloe Sutton getting ready to swim freestyle.

Not an American swimmer, but still a cool shot of him pushing off to start his backstroke.

It was great to see the entire swim team from USA supporting their teammates.

Off and running again...

2012 Summer Olympics: Women's Weightlifting

As I mentioned in the last blog entry, I made it a point to photograph sports that I would normally not shoot at home. And this is one sport which doesn't make it to my part of the world very often. So...off I went to the weightlifting venue and took these shots of these women doing their thing.

When this women failed to lift and hold the weight, she tweaked her elbow pretty badly.

And then on her next attempt, she tweaked it even worse.

And this time it really hurt!

I love the stare down aimed towards the judges.

Every time this woman would successfully lift the weight, she would smile as she completed her task. Love that.

I noticed that every time this woman would start her lift, she would clap her hands and the powder would fly. So, the next time she came up to the start, I fired off a bunch of shots anticipating this. The funny thing is...I heard of bunch of other photographers firing shots at the same time, so we all noticed this and thought that it was visually interesting. It just goes to show how hard it is to find something different when you have more than 2000 professional photographers cover the Games.

There she goes...smiling again. :)

All I can say is, damn these women are strong!

Ooops.

2012 Summer Olympics: Table Tennis

One of the great things about photographing the variety of sporting events at the Olympics is that I can shoot sports for the first time. This can be a good thing (since it is a new challenge) and a bad thing since I am not experienced with the idiosyncrasies of sport. But, I always make it a point, when I am not shooting for my contractual team, to branch out and sport new sports. In that regard, I headed out to the Table Tennis venue and shot some images. Here is what I grabbed on my first time out.

 

The venue is really cool with four tables going at one time. I wanted to get high enough to shoot images of the tables, since they all have Olympic Ring legs, but that was not possible with all the referees in position. Bummer.

 

I was intrigued by some of their serving styles. This particular woman got down really low to the table when serving. 

Ahhhh...the concentration shot!

The British girl won her match and the place went crazy. That was really cool to experience.

Next up - women's weight lifting!

2012 Summer Olympics: Women's Fencing

Here are some images from my time at the Fencing Venue.

I was surprised to see that many of the teams have custom face masks now. It looks pretty cool in the photos, but unfortunately, it also means that we can not see their faces anymore. This is new since I shot fencing in Beijing.

I love this shot of one of the athletes taking a break.

It was really great when the American girl took off her mask and made this pose in really nice light. Photo opportunity...

Another shot of her, but this time holding her helmet so that you can see the stars and stripes.