The men’s and women’s halfpipe competiton of this Winter Olympics would have to have been the most talked about and anticipated events of the entire games. The press conference for the U.S snowboard halfpipe team was held in a 300 seat conference room, and was packed full of journalists, photographers and television crews from all around the world. There’s no question that having somebody like Shaun White competing has helped bridge the gap and make the Olympics watchable for the “X-Games/energy drink generation” and given it some credibility back. First up was men’s halfpipe, and given that the previous week it had rained on Cypress Mountain enough to wash pretty much all of the snow away, it was amazing there was even a pipe there to be ridden. Unbelievably againsts all the odds, the pipe building team at Cypress, headed up by Steve Petrie, pulled together a world class pipe when the world’s media had a magnifying glass on the event, and more importantly the condition of the playing field. Continue reading ‘Winter Olympics part 3′
Published on
February 23, 2010 in
Photography, Snowboarding and Sport.
Tags: Alex Pullin, Dale Begg-Smith, Halfpipe, moguls, Seth Wescott, Shaun White, Snowboard Photography, Snowboardcross, Sport, Steph Hickey, Vancouver 2010, Winter Olympics.
Ok so I’m starting to catch up here. Got about six hours sleep last night and I feel like a new person. There are some great events coming up in the next few days and there have been some brilliant moments in the past few. I’m still behind a bit with my posts, but I will get there!
I have also been photo blogging daily for Mountainwatch.com along with fellow Aussie photographer Jake McBride and you can check it out here. In this post are images of Dale Begg-Smith’s silver medal at the moguls and the men’s and women’s snowboardcross along with some shots from the halfpipe training. Continue reading ‘Winter Olympics Part 2′
I’ve been trying to do this post for at least four days now. Time is not something that is readily available when you’re shooting an Olympic Games. I’ve spent the last week constantly on buses between venues and walking from drop off point to security, then more walking, then a shuttle bus, then more walking – fast walking, trying to get to a good spot as fast as possible. The buses in theory are probably a good place to get some of these blog posts done, but then again they are one of the few chances to get some sleep. Today I fell asleep with a half full cup of coffee in my hand – Tim Horton’s, your coffee clearly isn’t strong enough.
The games are dominated by the big photo agencies, Getty, Reuters, Assocociated Press, and Agence France Presse. These agencies get all the best positions at every event reserved for them, they have card runners constantly collecting their memory cards and running them back to pictures editors to get the shots on the wire before the event has even finished. For all the other photographers it’s a free-for-all. There are limited positions and for the most part, the angle or the shot from those positions isn’t clean and you are squeezing in with 20-30 other people trying not to hit the guy in front on the head with your 400mm lens (sorry to the dude from The Oregonian, or whatever newspaper you were from, it wont happen again!) It forces you to look for a different shot, and that is a damn good thing. It’s exciting hearing 30 cameras’ motor drives chattering away like some crazy summer insect on steroids, it’s cool to talk shop with photographers from all around the globe, it’s great to try to teach newspaper guys how snowboarding works, and even better when they start showing you the shots on their camera, clearly stoked they’ve made a nice frame.
Here’s a bunch from the opening ceremony and the first couple of days of competition after that. Let’s call this part 1! Continue reading ‘Winter Olympics part 1′
Ok so day two of competition is officially over, it’s almost 1am and I’m just getting a chance to think about a blog update with photos that I took four days ago. So far, the Olympics have been pretty amazing, but to be honest I reckon I’ve been so tired that sometimes I just have to stop and look around, and it’s only then that I realise I’m in the middle of something so great that I don’t have any scale by which to measure it.
In the past few days I’ve witnessed so many incredible things that I can’t possibly put into words in one short blog entry.
I was invited to a fancy Australian team welcoming party held by the Australian Olympic Commitee where I got to see some of my snowboarder mates in a different light – as representatives of our country, as Olympians. It’s hard not to get a little tear in the eye with pride!
I got to go to another fancy party, on the same night, hosted by Nikon and Canon for the 700 or so accredited photographers.
I’ve shot about 300 press conferences. Well I’ve shot about 15, but you know what I mean.
I’ve geeked out on the sheer amount of camera equipment hanging off each and every photographer here, and I smile everytime I see Nikon outgunning Canon by at least two to one, maybe even more. This is Nikon’s games – no question!
All this prior to the opening ceremony. The games haven’t even begun. (well they have, but not on this blog yet!)
Oh, and I got my first page one sport photo in The Australian newspaper!
Here’s some photos prior to the opening ceremony (after the cut). Continue reading ‘Playing catch up in Vancouver’
I arrived in Vancouver early on Friday morning after leaving Sydney on Friday around midday. The international dateline does strange things to the body when you’ve been in a plane for 14 hours and you arrive at your destination almost five hours before you left! My good friend Sara was kind enough to pick me up from the airport on a postcard Vancouver winter day (grey and raining), and on our way back to her house we drove past a group of Australians waving placards, flags and boxing kangaroos. My initial reaction was one of embarrassment, but either way it was a great photo opportunity. After being off the plane less than an hour (thanks to Vancouver airport’s express lanes for accredited Olympic media) I was taking my first shots of the Olympic assignment. I found out that the crowd of Aussies was protesting the International Olympic Committee’s order for the Aussie athletes to remove the boxing kangaroo flag from the athlete’s village. The story was making headlines both here and at home in Australia.
After checking in at the Main Press Centre and getting all my accreditation activated, as well as collecting a stack of handbooks, photo guides and other “stuff”, I took a quick walk around the city that even after a six year hiatus, still seemed so familiar it was like I was here only months ago.
On Friday night we headed up to Whistler, where I had lived between 1999 and 2003, for a couple of days snowboarding without the camera gear, before the craziness of the Games started. It was great to be back in Whistler, I have so many good memories of the place and it holds special significance as it was where I shot my first published snowboarding photos, and it sent me on a course that ten years later sees me realising a dream and shooting my first Olympic Games.
I start shooting training tomorrow. can’t wait to bang off a few frames.
Some photos of the first couple of days below the cut. Continue reading ‘First post from Vancouver’
Published on
February 3, 2010 in
Photography.
Tags: Big Day Out, Hilltop Hoods, Kasabian, Ladyhawke, Lily Allen, Live Music, Muse, Music, Music Festival, Peaches, Rise Against, The Mars Volta.
The Big Day Out music festival has just rolled through Australia and I was assigned to shoot it for Australian Associated Press (AAP) when it came to Sydney. The temperature reached a furnace like 41 degrees Celsius and festival goers were dropping like flies due to heat exhaustion. Something like 300 people were treated by ambulance staff on the Friday I was covering the festival, and it was the hottest recorded temperature in the festival’s 18 year history. Given just how hot it was out there, I’m surprised more people weren’t hospitalised! The international acts for this year included Muse, Lily Allen, Groove Armada, Peaches and Kasabian and the Aussie acts included Powderfinger, Jet, Bluejuice, Eskimo Joe and heaps of others. With so many bands playing at the same time it’s impossible to even cover half of the acts in one day.
Click below for a small selection of some of the pictures I filed over the long 13 hour day. Continue reading ‘Big Day Out Festival Sydney’
