Sochi: A first look at the Olympic Park (before it opens tomorrow)

Yesterday, I took a walk around the Olympic Park to get a feel for where everything is located and to locate the press entries at each of the venues. And...of course, I took my camera along to take some photos of the impressive venues. As I mentioned in the last blog post, these buildings are almost the exact opposite of our housing. They are pretty incredible. Well, at least from what the public sees, as I saw some unfinished construction, when in the bowels of the buildings.

Here is your virtual tour of the Olympic Park in Sochi.

I started from the Main Press Center. I have posted an image similar to this one, but the last one was taken with an iPhone, and I felt that it needed to be taken with my big-boy camera. :)

They have these women in the press center. I think they are there to talk about the Russian culture, but I am not really sure.

Many people have emailed me about the security here at the Olympics. Honestly, most of us feel that the security is pretty lax. But, this could change tomorrow when the Games officially begin. This is a photo showing how vehicles entering the park are inspected.

This building is located next to the MPC, and I have yet to figure out what this is for. But, many of us are joking in the press center, calling this the gay pride building.

This is the outside of the Adler Arena Skating Center, which is the long track skating venue.

This is the Iceberg Skating Palace where the figure skating competition is held. I will be there tonight shooting my first competition of the Games. Yes, even though opening ceremonies is tomorrow night, there are some competitions happening today and tomorrow.

And here is the the Olympic Flame, which will be lit tomorrow night. I walked by this again today (with clear skies) and you could see the snow covered mountains behind the flame. I will shoot this again when it is lit.

Some of the many volunteers in the park.

I liked their gloves, so I shot something a little different.

They have these giant Olympic Rings in the middle of the park. Everyone is taking turns standing on it and getting their photo taken.

Here is a view of the Fight Olympic Stadium. This amazing and expensive building will only be used two times during the Olympics. For opening and closing ceremonies.

The real goal of my walk was to locate the Bolshoy Ice Dome, which will be my second home for the next couple of weeks. This is the location for all the men's hockey and the gold medal game for the women.

The inside of the building is really picturesque, especially when it has nobody in the venue.

This is how I enter the building. We, like the athletes, enter under the stadium.

And then I checked out the arena and the photo positions. It is a really nice ice rink, and should be full of energy in a week. I can't wait for the first game!

Another view of the Bolshoy rink, from above the press area.

As I was walking around the vacant hallways, I saw this Sochi graphic and it's reflection on the polished floors, and thought it would make a fun shot.

Here is another view of the Fisht Olympic Stadium, and the building to the right is the Shayba Arena, the home of women's hockey. The first USA hockey game is in two days. I was in this venue today shooting the women's team photo and practice. I hope to post a blog of that too, if I have time.

This is the outside view of NBC Studios, which is located just outside the Bolshoy Ice Dome.

And as I walked by, Matt Lauer was 1 minute from a live interview.

The funny thing is...the viewers at home see two people on the screen and have no idea how many people are behind the scenes of this broadcast.

I hope you enjoyed your virtual tour. More to come!

Photos from behind the scenes in Sochi - The hotel and the Main Press Center (MPC)

OK. Let me say this right off the bat. This is the last post I am going to write about the poor housing. I think the word has gotten out, and I really don't think that much will change. My only hope is that we will get Internet soon. That is killing me!

But, I am a big boy and I am going to make the best of this challenge. I figure that this is a good challenge to build my character a little. And thank you to everyone who has expressed concern and sent kind thoughts. As long as my gear stays put, I will be just fine. :)

Here is the view from my room. From the outside, these places look pretty nice. We are right on the edge of the Black Sea and I have a view outside my window. There are numerous complexes like this one, with approximately 15-20 buildings per cluster.

In the last blog post, I promised a couple of photos from inside the hotel. Here is what I saw when I first arrived at my room. It was a sign of things to come inside. The word here is that they are scrambling so fast to try and get rooms ready for us, that they are not cleaning anything. I even found screws and paint in my room.

This photo is for my wife, knowing that she would cringe at my nice clean tub.  I even washed some of my clothes in my bathtub (once I cleaned it) this morning. My wife would be proud of me.

There are even pieces of half eaten candy (or something like that) in my bathroom. Needless to say, I am not drinking the water or putting my toothbrush on the sink or ledge.

As I was leaving the "hotel" this morning, I saw this group of workers with brooms. I am not sure what they were planning on doing. Maybe they double as IT workers and they are going to install Internet in the hotel.

In stark contrast to my living quarters, the Main Press Center is really nice! This is a view of the MPC just after crossing through security.

The first view inside the MPC. The photo editing room is upstairs and to the left. This is where I am now, enjoying the digs and the Internet.

They spared no expense on this building.

This is a view of the food court.

I am not sure what this area is, maybe just a place to hang out?

Downstairs is where all the services are located. They have a Sochi store for Olympic goodies, but it is very expensive. I looked at a T-shirt earlier and it was $60. Yikes! They also have a postal service, a pharmacy, a laundry service (which is also very expensive), a massage area, a medical services desk...

And, of course, you can't have an Olympic press center without the obligatory McDonalds. :)

Note: I just returned from walking the Olympic Park, and it is really beautiful. Look for those photos soon.

An update from Sochi - everything in the press is true

You know all those articles that talk about the problems in Sochi? Well, guess what, they are all true. Yesterday, my day started off great. The drive to the Moscow airport was perfect, with little congestion and WiFi in the taxi. I got to the airport in Moscow and navigated the system really well, running into some friends from Canon, and I even managed to get my camera bag on carry-on this time.

The flight to Sochi was smooth and we arrived early. I got all my luggage, got my credentials blessed at the airport, found the right press bus and I was feeling great.

Then we got to the "hotel" and I use the word loosely. 

We arrived at a cluster of 16 buildings that look like dormitories. There was no reception area for us to check in, there was just one building which had a large dirty room with people scrambling to get us situated. They obviously did not have rooms assigned to anyone as each of us that showed up were given successive hotel rooms, me in 256, the next person in 257... So my new neighbors and I went up to the 4th floor to our rooms and were shocked when we saw our living space. Remember, these are brand new buildings! The floors are so filthy that I don't think they were ever vacuumed after the construction was done. There is almost no furniture in the room, and what is there is almost unusable. There are small TVs in the rooms, but they do not work. There are no phones in the rooms and worse yet, there is NO Internet at all. No hard wired and no wireless. I am writing this blog from a downstairs common room in a different building (with 15 other pissed off media), and I swear the Internet is running at dial-up speeds. 

How is it that a country that spends almost $50 billion on the Olympics can end up with accommodations like this? Seriously, it is embarrassing. And if I told you how much I paid for this "hotel room" you would choke.

The good news is that I do have 4 walls around me, and I do have a bed. I am not sure if I have hot water yet, since I tried running the sink to get hot water and it didn't work. I found a lady who looked like she might work here and she told me to let it run for 10 minutes. It might get warm then.

I visited some friends at the Main Press Center tonight (which is an amazing building by the way) and they were all laughing about the showers with no shower curtains, the cleaning service which does not exist, and the lack of communications in 20 press buildings. I even heard a story of one of the guys from the USOC who showed up to his hotel in the mountains, only to find a construction site. So I guess I should be happy to have a room.

Starting in a couple of days, I will spend very little time in this building, as the Olympics will be all consuming. But for now, it is incredibly frustrating.

I would post photos but the Internet is so bad that myself and 15 other photographers are just trying to post text. 

Shooting photos at night in Red Square - Moscow, Russia

I leave Moscow tomorrow, for my final leg of the trip to Sochi. Even with all the logistical challenges that I have faced, I am very excited to finally get to Sochi and start capturing photos of the Olympic Games.

But before I start posting photos from Sochi, I wanted to get a chance to shoot some photos here in Moscow.

Yeday started with lunch on a boat with my friend, Alexey, on the frozen Moscow River. The weather was really cold and overcast, and the river was frozen so thick, that the river boat could not do the normal river tour, and so it really did not make for good photos. But we had a great lunch and a lot of fun. I was amazed that we could go anywhere on the river, seeing the very think ice that we were plowing through. I rarely use the video feature of the Canon 5D Mark III, but thought that this would be interesting for you all to see.

I told Alexey that I really wanted to shoot photos of Red Square, and he, rightfully so, asked if I wanted to photograph something so common. But I had seen some photos of this area and, knowing that daytime shots in this overcast weather would be ordinary at best, I thought that it would make for amazing night photos. I told him that I wanted to shoot at night, and he told me that he would pick me up at 9pm. Since he had taken his entire afternoon to show me the city, I did not want him to take more time away from his family. I also wanted to shoot just after sunset (for the best light), so I offered to go by myself. I looked at hiring a car to take me for a couple of hours, but this would have been very expensive and restricted my time at Red Square. So, I opted for the train. The train system was easy to figure out, and I made it to the square in less than 15 minutes from my hotel.

All I can say is, Red Square did not disappoint! I was in photographic heaven in this location.

For me, the most dramatic building in the square is St. Basil's Cathedral. With a combination of amazing colors and interesting architecture, it really stands out. Here is a wide shot of St. Basil's Cathedral framed in a dramatic way. My goal for this photo was to use the red and blue lights in the distance, and the street lights to draw the viewer's eyes to the cathedral. I shot this photo at f/16 to create the starbursts on the lights. (Photographer's note: I shot all these night shots at ISO 100 to get the cleanest sharpest photos possible. I varied the shutter speed depending on the amount of motion blur I wanted for the people in the shots.)

I knew that I would take full length photos of the cathedral, but with Alexey's words echoing in my head, "everyone shoots photos of this, it is very common", I wanted to try and shoot something different from most people.

Most people shoot this type of building in it's entirety, but don't think to zoom in on the details.

Taking advantage of the deep blue sky (approximately 15 minutes after sunset), I isolated portions of the colorful building.

And...as mentioned...I also wanted to take full length shots as well.

While shooting photos of the cathedral, I turned around and saw this part of the Kremlin, with an awesome sky behind it. I quickly turned the Gitzo tripod around and framed this shot.

This was the first building that I saw as I entered the square, and I just loved the dramatic lighting. (I also liked that I could go into this shopping mall to warm up every once in a while.)

Opposite of the cathedral is the State Historical Museum, a structure proving that you don't have to have tons of color to make an amazing building. I shot this at f/5 for one second to get motion in some of the people while capturing others standing still.

After shooting photos of some Hungarian people, I asked them if they could return the favor, since it is so rare for me to have any photos of me in these types of locations.

After all this photography, I decided to go warm up, since it was a balmy 10 degrees F outside. On my way back towards the train station, I saw a restaurant, and decided to sit down for dinner. The plan was for me to head back to the train station, but then I thought to myself "you may not ever get here again" and decided to go back and shoot a little more. I also thought it would be fun to show Alexey (and all of you) the difference between shooting just after sunset (with that amazing blue sky), and late at night when it is a pure black background.

To do something different, I decided to lower the tripod close to the ground and shoot this photo straight along the stripe in the pavement.

Normally Red Square is an open area, but at this time, they have an ice rink set up in celebration of the Sochi Olympics.

After shooting the photo along the wall of the ice rink, I moved to a position where I could have both the cathedral, Lenin's mausoleum, and the Kremlin in one shot.

This image is one that makes me laugh. I had closed up the tripod and was ready to head to the train station, when I saw this reflective material on the back side of the ice rink. I was struck by the cool bending and twisting of the museum in the background, and then noticed that I was in the frame. Normally, I would move out of the way, as to avoid seeing my ugly face, but this time I decided to keep me in. Way to ruin a good photo, huh?

Note: That was supposed to be the end of this blog post, but it is now Monday night in Moscow, and I just couldn't resist going back to the Red Square area and shooting more images from a different perspective. So...here are a few more...

Tonight, instead of taking the subway, I decided to walk the three miles to Red Square from the hotel. It was cold (-8C) but I needed to get out and walk, and I knew the general direction I wanted to go. I aimed for a nearby bridge so that I could get a different view of the Kremlin. First I shot some tighter photos...

...and then I zoomed out to 24mm and shot a couple more, showing the expanse of the frozen Moscow River.

Just on the other side of the bridge, I had a great view of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, so I set up and shot some more photos before the night sky got too dark.

I decided to walk back into Red Square one last time, and this time try some photos rolling the zoom during the exposure. Once again, trying to take some photos that are different than what most people would capture in this iconic place.  I really like the results. I just wish I had done this earlier in the evening, when the sky still had color.

This last image really works for me. There is good clarity in the cathedral, but also a subtle, but cool effect caused by the zoom roll. I was at ISO 100, f/13 for 4 seconds. I kept the Canon 24-105 lens in it's original position for 3 seconds and then did a slight roll of the zoom to add just a touch of blur. I hope you enjoy viewing these as much as I did capturing them.

Next post will be from Sochi!

The first leg of the Olympic voyage - this one has been a challenge already!

Since it is my goal to try and include all of you in the Olympic experience, I want to tell you about this last week, and some of the challenges I have had. With the past three Olympics Games, I had a pretty easy time getting everything organized. Vancouver and London were both English speaking, which meant that it was easier to communicate with the organizing committee. This time has been a challenge for me.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I have been working with the Olympic Organizing Committee for the last 8 months, to get credentialed, arrange a room in the press hotel, get Olympic Internet access, and other details. Well...just last week I got an email message from the people who handle Internet access and they said that they never received payment for my order. They require payment in Russian rubles and I had arranged a wire transfer for the funds months ago. I checked and the money was indeed transferred, but they have no record of it. Now it looks like I may have to pay twice for this service and sort it out later, since there may not be time to investigate this before the Games start.

Then, the day before I took off for London (the first stop on my trip), I realized that I did not have the details for my hotel room in Sochi. I fired off an email to the email address provided by the committee and asked which press hotel I was staying in. No response. Then, after a couple of days, I get an email saying that they have no record of me requesting a room, and no payment. Once again, I checked and the payment (much larger sum than the Internet) was transferred back in August of 2013. I sent them another email (not panicking too much as this point) and sent them a copy of the bank statement showing the wire transfer. Again, no response for a couple of days. I am now 3 days away from my trip to Russia and starting to panic. I get another email asking for my confirmation number, which I never received. I wrote back and told them that, if I had a confirmation number, I would have given it to them in the first email.

Days go by and now I am now laying awake in my hotel in London and trying to figure out a plan B. Would I sleep on the floor in the press center? Would I call some of my friends who were also attending the Olympics, and try and bunk with them? I started reaching out to some of those friends to see if anyone had an extra bed. But, the two photographers who I know best were both staying in the mountain cluster, an hour and a half from where I need to be. That would make life very difficult!

I managed to get a little sleep at 2am and then woke up again at 6am, having nightmares of being "homeless" in Sochi. At this point, I reached out to a friend in Moscow and asked him if he could call them and speak to them in their own language, which he did. I also managed to find a phone number of someone in the press center who handled housing for us. Using Skype on my iPad, I started working the phone system instead of email (which, in hindsight, I should have done earlier).

After 8 hours of exchanging phone calls, and spelling everything out letter by letter due to the language barrier, it was confirmed that I do indeed have a hotel in the coastal cluster. I got a confirmation email as I was about to board my flight to Moscow. To say that this was a relief, is a complete understatement!

Happy to have a hotel, but exhausted from the lack of sleep, I was not the most patient person at the airport. I received some emails last week from friends who had already made their trip to Sochi, saying that there were tough restrictions on Aeroflot Airlines. I knew that my luggage was heavy, and figured that I would just pay a small fee for the overweight luggage. I really didn't care about my clothes, as long as my camera gear was on the plane with me.

Well...as it turned out, the overage charge for the additional 7 kilos was $125 dollars. Yikes! And worse yet, they absolutely refused to let me take my LowePro x200 on the plane, since it was too heavy for the overhead bins. I talked to the manager in charge and pleaded my case, telling them that this bag had been in many overhead bins around the world, but they would not budge. I really was not comfortable checking $25,000 worth of camera gear! So, here is what I did. I removed two of the Canon 1DX cameras with 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses. I moved a bunch of less expensive equipment (mounting brackets, power chargers, monopod...) from my suitcase to the LowePro roller, and evened the load. This saved me the overage charge on the suitcase, and meant that I would only have to pay $60 for the extra bag.

I still was not comfortable checking the x200 roller, but I had no choice. I did have a little peace of mind knowing that I had the most expensive gear out of the bag and that the roller has a cool locking system, which I employed before handling it over.

So...here I was, traveling from London to Moscow with my LowePro backpack (with my 5D Mark III and a bunch of other gear) on my back and two Canon 1DX cameras slung over my shoulders. Yes, I did get a lot of strange looks from people, but that is nothing new for me. :)

I am now one day away from my flight to Sochi, and figure that I will have to repeat this entire process when I fly there from Moscow tomorrow. Hey, at least I know what to expect this time around.

UPDATE: I wrote this blog yesterday, and was waiting to post on Monday morning (to avoid bashing into the Super Bowl). Due to jet lag I woke up this morning at 4am to see a Tweet asking me about my hotel experience. And there was a link to this article in the Washington Post saying that I am not alone in the hotel fiasco. Since I could not sleep, I turned on CNN on the hotel TV and saw them report the same problem. Maybe it is time for me to worry again!!! So...due to the news breaking, I am posting this early.