First post from 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.