Beijing 2008

Arrivederci

2008-08-25T09:43:00.000-07:00

(please see below for behind the scenes pics)

The Olympics are a frantic frenzy of buses, walking, cameras, lenses, photographs, sweat, bumping & shoving, running, jubilation, action and then all of the sudden it comes to a screeching stop. I think I might have POD - Post-Olympics Disorder, not sure what to do with myself.

The last thing my best friend from high school Eric Fowles said to me via email was "rock china" - well I tried my hardest and China certainly rocked me but it's been a great experience. It's certainly not an original analogy, but the Olympics is definitely like a marathon. Okay, so I've never run a marathon, but I know someone who did (Jessica) and it's one of those things that might not be fun all the time but the greatest reward is making it to the finish line in one piece. Had lots of fun shooting the events, the hard work was the logistical stuff.

I definitely have mixed emotions about these Olympics. Wonderful experience and so thankful I was able to come here. The sad thing is looking ahead to London's Olympics - unless there is a cataclysmic change in newspapers and the economy I can really only see a handful - like 5-10 newspapers in the US sending people to London. Will newspapers even be around in four years. New York Times, Dallas Morning News, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today will send people, beyond those papers everyone else is highly in doubt.

The cool thing is that Athens and Beijing are the two Olympics I wanted to go to, Athens for the historical nature and China for the, well historical nature - but in much different terms.

I just wanted to say some Thank You's to several people, I'm not using last names in case those people don't want to be found:
First a huge thank you to Rachel W - our bureau chief - if it wasn't for her MediaNews proposal to have a bureau at the Olympics I would not have been there (neither would a lot of the other people). Second thank you to my boss Geri M. for having faith in me and asking me to go a couple of years ago (I guess I didn't f-up the first one too badly). Third another big thank you to Elly O., Josie L., and my bro Nol for watching my boy (cat) Whitie while I was gone and giving him lots of needed attention. Thanks to all the picture editor's and designers who used my images, Michael Malone, Jami S., Josie, Ashley, et al. Thanks to columnists Ann Killion and Mark Purdy and reporter-extradinaire Elliott Almond. Thank you to my Mom and stepdad David for their endless support and love. Thanks to my friends for their support and emails. I'm excited to play in the San Francisco Press Photographers Association Golf Tourny with Pat and Sean. A big thanks to our telecommuncations guru Linda K. for setting me up in the 11th hour with the near-life saving blackberry so that I could keep in constant touch with reality via email and internet. And thank you to Brad Mangin for posting parts of these on Sportsshooter.

There are a ton of people who did Olympic blogs and I look forward to finding them and reading them... some people that I know have blogs out there about the Olympics (just google them): Rod Mar, Chris Detrick, Vincent La Foret, Sol Neelman, Kevin German, Zach Honig, David Burnett, Dan Powers and others...

It was really great making some new friends out there Robert Gauthier, Michael Goulding, Mark Reis, Chris Detrick, Helen Richardson, Erich Schlegel and others, and seeing old friends like David Eulitt, Paul Kitakagi, Eric Seals, Michael Macor, Sean Haffey, Wally Skalij, Smiley Pool, Scott Strazannte, Rod Mar... Met a bunch of people briefly whom I didn't get a chance to talk with too much but seemed really cool, John Biever, Kevin German, David McIntyre, Jeff Shaw (I think?), Kirby Yao, Edward Ornelas... Barely ever saw some of my other friends, Jed Jacobsohn, Lucy Nicholson, Robert Hanashiro, John Mabanglo, Harry Walker, George Bridges, Vincent La Foret, etc... Awesome to work along side (or in the same venue with so many great photographers)... the SI dudes Robert Beck, Bill Frakes, John Biever, Al Tielemans, Bob Rosato (there were a couple more whom I haven't met before)... If I forgot anyone don't be offended :)

For all you gear-heads this is what I brought with me. And I will not be the first to proclaim this, but the Nikon 200-400 f4 is the perfect lens for covering the Olympics. That lens was awesome! I used it all but two days and those two days I wished I had had it. Most of the time when we are covering events we can move around. The files are so nice that ISO is irrelevant, I often shot at 2500 an the files looked sweet and tack sharp with that 200-400. Love that lens! During the Olympics most of the time you pick a spot and that's where you sat for the duration. The 200-400 f4 gave me latitude to get images I would have been unable to get with a fixed 400 or a fixed 300.

On a daily basis I rolled the Thinktankphoto airport international 2.0 which I could fit two bodies and five lenses in, including my lovely 200-400 and I carried my laptop in a Pacsafe backpack.

Cameras:
3 - Canon Mark III's
2 - Nikon D3's
1- Casio Exlim camera
1- Canon G9
1- Canon SD790 (point and shoot)

Canon lenses:
1 - 400mm f2.8
2 - 70-200mm f2.8
2 - 16-35mm f2.8
1 - 24-70mm f2.8
1 - 24mm tilt shift lens
2 - 1.4x converters
1 - 2x converter

Nikon lenses:
1 - 200-400mm f4 (awesome lens)
1 - 70-200mm f2.8
1 - 24-70mm f2.8
1 - 14-24mm f2.8
1 - 16mm f2.8 fisheye (yes Mom and David the same lens from college!!!) - used it to make the panoramas

Other gear:
1- Powerbook G4
2 - small harddrives
2 - Canon 580 strobes
1- floor plate
1- magic arm
1- ball head
3 - pocket wizards
* - a bunch of other misc stuff like monopods, clothes, energy bars, etc.

And all that stuff fit into:
1 - Thinktankphoto International Airport bag (carry-on)
1 - Pelican case
1 - Lowe pro case
1 - Samsonite hardcase
1 - Pacsafe backpack

It was kinda crazy - I have five DSLR (digital cameras) with me, two of them, Nikon D3's, I'd only used a couple of times before I left. I also brought a Casio that I'd only used once. A Canon sd790 which I hadn't used before at all. I ended up using the Nikon's the majority of the time mostly due to the 200-400 f4.

What didn't I bring over that I thought I was going to?
-Canon 300 f2.8 - no need to with the Nikon 200-400
-Canon 100-400 - see above, plus the Canon lens is no where near as sharp as the 200-400
-Sony video camera - i have the G9 that does video

Behind the Scenes

2008-08-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

Pics from behind the scenes... captions below the images

(me, Michael Goulding (OC Register), and Robert Gauthier (LA Times) hump it to the water polo gold match)
(Wally Skalij, LA Times, in the moat)
(my opening ceremony ticket)
(Volunteers hold umbrellas so we can get on the bus during a rain storm!!!)
(Wally asked this volunteer to sing a song - so she did!)
(me in the Nest)
(the coolest media workroom you'll ever see)
(Paul Kitagaki, Sac Bee at work in the Nest)
(Michael Macor, SF Chron on the bus from water polo)
(Wally Skalij, La Times, in the moat)
(Erich Schlegel, Dallas Morning News in the moat)
(our bureau, surprisingly without people)
(bus anarchy)
(cafeteria - McD's is on the far left)
(Goulding, Kitagaki, Reis in the Cube)
(A full bus from? basketball maybe)

08/24/08

2008-08-23T19:49:00.000-07:00

2:57 am - back in room ready to sleep for a long time... Eric Seals bought me dinner (thanks dude). I think Schlegal bought my beer I thanks dude!

1:15 am - drinking Weihenstephaner at the swanky mpc bar - how did I not know about this place before... It was right above our heads!

12:30 am - just finished transmitting... Might go grab a beer, still need to edit some audio...

10:32 pm - whoa wait, is it over? Back at MPC - still gotta scan in volleyball, water polo and closing ceremonies... Already transmitted the marathon - that was on deadline...

7:35 pm - sheesh it's packed here and a 1000 degrees - I'm sitting in front of a stobe light that is blowing hot air on me... I hope closing ceremony isn't as long as opening.
(Updated via blackberry)
(The very long and steep stair case up the nest to our shooting spot for closing)

7:20 pm - @ birds nest - had to walk no buses - got cheeseburger on way out
(Updated via blackberry)
(Me, Kitagaki and Goulding walking to the Birds Nest)

5:05 pm - they are playing MC Hammer, can't touch this. the US lost 14-10, oh well. Shooting local dude with medal - wish it didn't take so long for medal ceremony... hungry. Gotta eat and then run to closing ceremony... Then gotta scan all this stuff in!
(Updated via bb)

3:35 pm - oh yeah this is my last athletic event for the Olympics!
(Updated via blackberry)

3:30 pm - just had an apple, feel better - walked out to pool and they are announcing players now... Can't believe timing worked out this well. Hungary has won 8 golds in water polo - USA has won 0... Go USA! Goulding met a family of Gouldings on the way in...
(Goulding meets a Goulding)

2:40 pm - Men's vball final was freaking amazing!!! Thank god they won that last set. Gauthier, Goulding and I in cab on the way to water polo... We should make it with plenty of time - phew, was stressing on that. Haven't had time to eat any thing yet, hungry - but going to shoot the Hungary vs. USA water polo.
(Updated via blackberry)
(Goulding and Gauthier give directions to the cab driver)

1:38 pm - at men's vball usa up 2-1 hope they win this next set cause I gotta leave soon for water polo
(Updated via blackberry)

11:18 am - Gauthier just blew our minds and used the word "cogitate" in a sentence! Reis and I are amazed and impressed he threw it out on the last day. Reis jokingly said "isn't that what you do on your wedding night?". Ha
(updated via blackerry)

10:48 am - Can't believe it's the last day, on a pretty full bus to men's volleyball final, US vs. Brazil riding with with Robert Gauthier and Mark Reis (Colorado Springs Gazette). Bed at 3:30 up at 7 to shoot marathon finish at birds nest. Kenyan won - US 9 and 10, I think.
(Sent from blackberry)

7 am - wake up to cover men's marathon (finishline)

08/23/08

2008-08-23T18:01:00.000-07:00

Slept in again - but didn't go to bed until 4 again - got up around 10 - headed off to the Men's football finals between Argentina and Nigeria. I was pulling for the Nigerians since Argenita won last year (right?). It was a really boring game, at least compared to the women's game the other night. I guess it's because thy control the ball really well so there isn't as much contact as there is for the women. But contact is what makes the for good pictures, or else you just have a dude dribbling the ball all alone... snoozer. I sat next to Tom Fox (Dallas Morning News) the second half and it was freaking hot.

I went staright to the water cube to catch the synchro team final. USA was first and I was hoping to get to photograph from the underwater windw - but it was already booked up.

Smily Pool, Houston Chronicle, is pretty insane, he wanted to break the record for the amount of assignments one can cover in one day - he held the previous record at 5... today he shattered that record and put that number to a staggering 7! Obviously he is not staying for a whole event, but still...

Headed back to the MPC and grabbed a lunch of spaghetti and pizza with? damn, if I forgot who it was it must me Detrick again - haha

Headed to the Women's volleyball final between USA and Brazil. Ran into Paul Kitagaki there - I think this may have been the first time since last week!

The amazing thing is that Brazil had not lost a set, yes a SET, in all of their Olympic games! USA played valiently and even won one set quite handily, a moral victory I guess, they nearly won the fourth set - but unfortunately Brazil finished them off. But USA still got the silver so that's cool?

08/22/08

2008-08-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

Well I think I'm starting to run out of any intersesting stories because my brain is becoming as tired as my body. My mind is a bit mushy right now and remembering details is becoming more difficult - like with whom I had lunch with is getting lost...

So I sort of got to sleep-in today - didn't get up until 10:30 - but I went to bed around 4:30-5:00, saw a little early morning light starting to appear. Ran into Rod Mar (The Seattle Times) as we were getting on the bus to the MPC - we happened to be going to the same place - Men's Volleyball at the Capital Gymnasium. It's about a 35 minute bus ride from the MPC. I headed straight to the bus MB10, I think, when we got the MPC while Rod went over to grab some coffee. He was nice enough to pick up a banana and some almond cookies for me.

It was cool to catch-up with Rod, I'd seen him here-and-there but hadn't had a chance to chat with him, he didn't much of a choice since we sat next to each other.

The volleyball game was pretty exciting. I was disappointed yet again on the merchandising at volleyball they had no volley-ball specific merchandise - how idiotic is that? Sorry Jessica, I wandered all over the venue. Just like freaking the swimming venue didn't have any swimming pins! Sorry Caroline!

After volleyball I headed back to the MPC. Had lunch with Tom Fox, Carlos Gonzales (Minneapolis Star Tribune) and ??? - crap I'm totally spacing out who the other person was - the sad thing is that I actually walked into the cafeteria with that person and happened to run into Tom and Carlos! That's really terrible.

ok, I'm in the workroom at the media village sitting next to Chris Detrick and after several minutes of asking what day was what we figured out that it was he who was the mystery lunch guest.

Well after lunch I headed over to the Yingdong Natatorium where they play water polo, I ran into Michael Goulding (Orange County Register) there. The Men were playing Serbia in the semi-finals. They had lost to Serbia 4-2 and no one really thought they had much of a chance. Supposedly no one outside of Europe has ever won the gold in water polo!

So it was very surprising that they destroyed Serbia 10-5. I shot next to Scot Strazzante (Chicago Tribune) down on the water for the first two quarters and then photographed from a little balcony area for the last two quarters.

Michael was going to head out after water polo but I mentioned that as soon as water polo was over I was planning on heading to track so that I could catch the Men's 4x100m relay - mainly because Ann was writing something about Usain Bolt - the Jamaican guy who had already won two gold medals and set two world records. We jumped on the bus to the MPC and then from the MPC we jumped on the National Staidum bus. It's about a 15 minutes walk versus a 10 minute bus ride, might as well relax a bit and take the 10 minute bus ride.

Got there about 30 minutes beforehand... so it worked out okay...

Several photographers have been attacked by the Beijing bug, with fever like symptoms. Luckily I have avoided that bug pretty well... especialliy considering that I'm pretty beat down. Don't ask me what it is or how one gets it but it's out there.

08/21/08

2008-08-22T10:48:00.000-07:00

"Unforgettable memories" this is the reason why a college majoring in communications decided to volunteer for the Olympics. I was chatting with him at the Women's gold medal soccer game. I did find out that they are not required to work 14 hours (like one volunteer told me) but 8 hours a day for 20 days. But it's certainly possible that some volunteers work longer than others.

The soccer game was pretty sweet - they went scoreless into overtime and our goalie Han Solo - oops - Hope Solo - made a ton of sweet saves. To a Star Wars fan would Hope Solo be Han Solo's great, great, great x10 grandma? There is quite a big back-story revolving around her and the world cup, but I'm not getting into that.

Reverse - taht otni gnitteg ton m'I tub htrof os dna... today was another monster day - my longest so far. Got up at 7 a.m. to shoot the beach volleyball gold medal match and my head hit the pillow around 4:30ish a.m. Today it felt like I hit the wall at 7, I did not want to get up... and looking out my 12th story window at the other media towers and seeing rain pouring down really didn't help my cause.

I have never been as soaking wet as I have been at beach volleyball. My ThinkTankPhoto Hydrophobia did keep my camera's nice and dry but I got soaked despite wearing a waterproof jacket. It was raining so hard that it just went right down my neck and soaked the front of my shirt and eventually my pants.

Robert Beck (SI) had the brilliant idea of wearing swim trunks to the match. I, on the other end of the spectrum of brilliance, decided to wear pants! duh... so if you want to feel what it was like today, put your clothes on, get into the shower and turn the water on and sit there for 45 minutes and watch beach volleyball on tv (please don't bring the tv IN to the shower with you though). The match was a good one and it was also nice and quick - like I said about 45 minutes. The game jube was ok but the medal ceremony (which can be not so good) had some nice emotion since this might be Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor's last Olympics.

The match started at 11:00 am - but our picture editor Jami back in the States was nice enough to get the normal 12:00 pm (9 p.m. in California) deadline pushed back to 12:40 (or 9:40 p.m.) - because it was raining there was no way for me to bring my computer out and transmit. The medal ceremony ended about 12:15 which gave me 25 minutes to run back to the press room and scan and transmit - I raced through 24 images by about 12:45 - which was 9:45 p.m. back in California.

Being the good mother that our columnist Ann is, after I walked into our office in the MPC she instructed me to go back to my room and change - or I'd get sick. I'm really glad I did - I had actually walked out to the buses and then turned around. So after talking with her I walked back to the buses again, luckily I had about 3 hours before I had to head to the Women's water polo match. I even caught a 15 minute nap.

I would have stayed for the medal ceremony at water polo but since they lost and got the silver I decided to book it out of there and catch as much of the gold medal soccer game as I could. I had to go back to the MPC and then catch bus MB13 to the Beijing Workers Stadium. I had thought about grabbing a taxi but it would have been hard to describe where I needed to go - to the media entrance.

I walked on the field about 10 minutes into the game, didn't miss much. I am still amazed the US won because the Brazilians just dominated them the first half. The game was scoreless in regulation. With about 5-10 minutes left in regulation a bunch of the so-cal shooters who were at the softball game (which they lost - and won silver) - sauntered in. "What did I miss," they asked me... I said to them, you bastards, you haven't missed anything! There was a brief time-out before overtime started - which consists of two 15 minute halves - no sudden death. USA's Carli Lloyd broke the tie about 5 minutes into the first overtime and they just had to hold on and have Solo use the force to stop a couple more goals.

A cool, quick factoid, the Women's gold medal was the 1,000th gold medal in US history in the Olympic Games.

Oddly enough the Brazilian players only list one name the roster - not sure if it's their first or last - but one of the players name is Marta - which reminded me of one of the best television shows of all time - Arrested Development - I should have had her autograph my Bluth Company tee-shirt.

none

2008-08-20T11:17:00.000-07:00

David pointed out that I had the unmitigated gall to spell "unmitigated gaul" incorrectly... ugh

08/20/08

2008-08-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

Hi Mom - sorry I haven't called - I meant to but things have been so crazy lately... will call soon!

So I feel like I need to get one of those pollution masks - but it's not for the pollution because the air quality is actually pretty decent right now. It's for all the stinky body odor. I was at synchronized swimming and I was sitting in-between two foreign photographers and one had just rankous BO and the other smelled like rotting roast beef. Yes - super gross. Needless to say I felt a bit nauseous and left as soon as I could. And just to clarify I'm not singling out anyone I know because I don't know anyone that stinky.

Before synchro Mark Purdy and I went to Beijing Normal University to photograph a Make a Wish Foundation kid visiting the USA volleyball team. Well we couldn't photograph the actual practice because it was a closed practice but I was able to get a tiny bit of something afterwards as they were leaving. Practice would have been cool cause apparently he helped the players by setting the ball and doing other things. Oh well. He seemed like a cool kid, I think 16, had some good quotes for a 16 year old - he was voted class vice president and his mom was all proud and he said something like "come-on mom no one was going to vote against me, I have cancer!"

On the way over we were talking about covering the Olympics - this is his 10th! I think this is also the 10th for Robert Hanashiro - I'm sure there are others that have covered the same or more. But that is crazy. They were doing them back when the summer and winter Olympics were the same year - remember that - that must have been just totally brutal to cover summer and then several months later winter!

Afterwards I headed over to synchronized swimming. How can you think of synchronized swimming and not think of the Saturday Night Live skit with Martin Short and Harry Shearer? If you haven't seen it you must. Today was the duet and since there is a Japanese team competing about 75% of the photographers were Japanese. I only saw a couple US photographers and maybe 5ish Russian photographers... the favorite to win - and they did. We had two locals in the duet and they placed fifth. They performed, basically, right in the middle of the same pool that Phelps dominated.

I kinda had a little break in-between synchro and track, mainly tried to catch up on some computer related stuff and chatted with some people in the office like Chris Detrick and Helen Richardson.

Unfortunately there are a lot of events early and a lot of events really late. Beach volleyball and bmx (among many others) often start at 9 - which means a 7 a.m. wake up call. Because each are about 30-45 minute bus rides from the MPC and before that you have to tack on about a 20 minute ride from the North Star media village - with an extra 5 minutes to get that bus via cart! Everything has run so smoothly that those times are pretty consistent. Tracks big races, like the 100m and the 200m (tonight's) start around 10:30 p.m. Indoor volleyball and basketball have games that start at 10 p.m. So that can make for a very long day.

Tomorrow is going to be one of those really long days, beach volleyball, water polo and then soccer - all Women. For some odd reason they put 5 Women's finals on Thursday and some of them even overlap making it impossible to cover all them... well that's annoying. There is bmx, beach volleyball, water polo, soccer and softball - there are also finals for Men and/or Women Track and Field, taekwondo, modern pentathlon, wrestling, equestrian, diving, sailing and swimming (the marathon)... sheesh!

08/19/08

2008-08-20T03:30:00.000-07:00

RED ALERT RED ALERT - among the many misspellings or bad grammar in the past, I had the unmitigated gaul to misspell Kris Deetracks name. It's actually spelled Chris Detrick (k not h) and he's from the Salt Lake Tribune. Sorry dude! So Detrick and I are two of three photographers here representing our respective newspapers and our parent company MediaNews. Helen Richardson is the third photographer from the Denver Post. We're all basically chasing our local athletes and sometimes we run into each other at the same events. Though most of the time were not at the same events. There are a total (I think) of 20 of us here - 3 photographers and the rest are reporters or columnists and our bureau chief Rachel. The Mercury News has two columnists (Mark and Ann) and one reporter (Elliott).

Couldn't believe I was still in China in August - the cart dudes were wearing jackets! And the dude last night was saying "so cold" in English.

Um, I thought now that swimming was over that getting 3-4 hours of sleep was also over with - damn I was wrong on that one - went to bed at 3:30 last night after getting back from the Women's soccer game against Japan and got up at 7 a.m. to make it to the 9 a.m. beach volleyball match. It seemed a little bit early to have music blasting and girls in bikinis prancing around and I'm not talking about the athletes, during the time-outs girls in bikinis come out and dance around. But I survived. David Eulitt said I had to mention that.

Had lunch with David Eulitt at the MPC again and had pizza which is a pretty safe dish. That and their meat on a stick - grilled - I had the chicken, but beef and lame is also available.

Afterwards I headed over to Women's water polo, i'd shot water polo a couple of times already because we have several locals on the team and their superstar Brenda Villa is local - went to Stanford. There hadn't been too many photographers but today there were about three times as many. But that was cool. The US won, so that was good - they advance to the gold medal round on Thursday. But they are guaranteed at least a silver. For some dumb reason they put a bunch of Women's team medal events on the same day and even overlap the times. So Women's beach volleyball, softball, Women's water polo and Women's soccer are all on the same day (Thursday two days from today). Why is that?

After water polo I headed to gymnastics where they had the parallel bars, balance beam and high bar, in that order, going for the apparatus finals. it was a lot busier than i thought it was going to be. So since I didn't need to shoot it I decided to shoot up in the photo positions in the stands to keep out of the way.

Rachel then instructed me head back to the media village and grab some shut-eye :) so I did.

08/18/08

2008-08-19T06:58:00.000-07:00

I totally got seven wonderful hours of sleep (which is what I normally get back home) - it was really great - Today is the first post-Phelps (swim) day... In Athens I didn't cover any swimming (except synchro)... so I never realized how crazy the first week could be. I thought the second week was the tough one - but really the first week is the tough one because EVERYONE wants to cover swimming - now there are so many different sports everyone can focus-on that the pack will be thinned out throughout all of the events. The Men's 100m is also done, so every event will get a little bit busier (photographer-wise) but there really is no ONE event left where everyone needs to be. Well except for basketball for US media. I decided to head over to softball around 11 - it's about 45 minutes away to photograph the US versus China. Rode the bus over with Sol Neelman, chatted most of the way.

We have four players on that team that are local. Though I was talking with the reporter from the Denver Post about that several days ago - Benjamin something-or-other - it's funny how papers consider some people "local." For instance - how long does an athlete have to live in an area to be considered local? A year? Two years? Are they "local" if they only lived a couple of years there when they were a little? If they went to college there?

There were a bunch of US photographers at the Fengtai Sports Center Softball Field. As I was shooting USA's Tairia Flowers at-bat from the field level photo spot, she sent a foul ball right at us (see below). I was standing in-between John Biever and Michael Goulding (hey just like yesterday! weird) luckily I had both eyes open because out of the corner of my left eye (I shoot with my right) I see a foul ball coming right at my head. Luckily I have cat like reflexes (ok, like an old cat not a spry one) and the "soft"ball went flying over my head and hit Michael Goulding's lens hood on his 70-200 that was dangling off his shoulder by his waist, he kinda leaned into but luckily it didn't hit anything too precious - because it was about the height that could have made his voice a couple of octaves higher.

The US scored 9 runs in the first inning - we were wondering when that wonderful mercy rule was going to go into effect - they didn't score any more runs but the game was called in the fifth inning! So I packed up and headed back to the MPC to then head to the Olympic Sports Center Stadium - a wacky looking building in a complex that houses water polo and handball.

Handball is way cool. I don't know why it's not more popular - it only lasts about an hour and 15 minutes, it's high scoring and there is a lot of diving and throwing. It was a lot of fun to shoot. As I was sitting there getting ready for the China versus Croatia game Smiley Pool (Houston Chronicle) and Erich Schlegel sauntered in. It's always nice to see a familiar/friendly face. Handball is pretty much exactly like water polo - well obviously not exactly - but water polo with out the water, well it's not polo - you get my drift.

If yesterday was the Paul Kitagaki Day today was the David Eulitt Celebration as we did all three of the same events - though he arrived a bit late at handball... we had a wonderful lunch at McDonalds, mmm double cheeseburger. And then headed off to the Beijing Workers Stadium. The BWS just happens to be about two or three blocks away from the hotel I stayed at when I came out here a year ago to do pre-Olympic stories. It's the Comfort Inn but it's only the top three or four floors of the 16ish story building. The rest is misc. offices, restaurants and a Hyundai dealership in the lobby.

I met a new friend at soccer tonight. Not sure if my new friend is a boy or a girl but it was very nice and kept me company throughout the first half. Didn't have a whole lot to say but he/she was a good listener. The Japanese photographic contingent outnumbered the US photographers probably 3 to 1. Maybe nothing else was going on for Japan but does a country as small as Japan really have that many newspapers/magazines?

Timed the bus great - as soon as the game was over packed up and grabbed the bus which left about five minutes after I got on it - excellent. Rode in the back of the bus with Robert Gauthier and heard about some crazy Iraq stories from when he was there before and after the invasion. Really puts things into perspective... and from the immortal words of David St. Hubbins (This is Spinal Tap - best movie ever made) - say in a thick English accent: "too much f*cking perspective."

Then caught the bus from the MPC to the Northstar Media Village and ran into Robert Hanashiro (USA Today) and we talked about Saving Private Ryan cause it was on the other night and how his dad was somewhere there on D-Day, pretty amazing...

08/17/08

2008-08-18T10:52:00.000-07:00

Can I just tell you how excited I am that today is over! Last day of swimming! I do enjoy covering swimming - Phelps and Coughlin swim in the Santa Clara Swim Club International Swim Meet in Santa Clara - it's great cause you can go pretty much wherever you want to go. Here once you pick a spot you're basically in that spot for the duration. With few exceptions, it's not possible to get different angles on the same day... some swim strokes are better from lower angles and some are better from higher - but we don't have that luxury here.

Ground hog day - got on the bus and guess who was sitting across the way - that's right Sean! Sat next to Paul Kitagaki - headed straight to the swim venue - left about the same time as yesterday. Got there just after 7 am again. As were were heading in Paul proclaimed it to be the ThinkTankPhoto Roller Race (see documentation below) as the three of us had our rolling cases. Sean won, I got the silver and poor Paul bronzed it. There was another dude with us but I'm spacing out his name but he didn't have a roller anyways (sorry dude it was 7 am!).

So dealing with the medley is tough because of the flags they put up so that the backstrokers know where they are in the pool. The race was totally anticlimactic - we were all very disappointed. I was sitting next to legendary SI photographer John Biever and Michael Goulding (OC Register). We were all hoping that they would do something special for Phelp's eighth medal since his seventh he had really good jube. But alas nothing. Even the Japanese team came out and tossed a couple of members into the water after all was said and done... I guess Phelps was busy with Costas? Someone said Costas has a man crush on Phelps?

I think I should coin today as the honorary Paul Kitagaki (Sacramento Bee) day as we did the same three events together! Swimming, tennis, track and field. Though he covered the Women's doubles match and I didn't - we both covered the Men's singles match - between Nadal and Gonzalez. Luckily Nadal won in three straight sets - that took freaking 3 hours - if the other dude had won a couple that match could have gone on for like five hours! sheesh.

Saw both my former bosses (from KRT - when I was in Athens) - George Bridges and Harry Walker out-and-about today - hi dudes...

I was at the tennis venue and there was some dude here who cut his vest, we are required to wear a photo vest that says PHOTO and then a number - mine is 664 - in large gold letters on the back. The number is on the back so if we do something wrong they can track us down easily. I don't normally wear a vest but oh well. But this dude cut his vest in half (i mean a full half - so that it sits just above his stomach) and I'm trying my hardest not to break out laughing cause he looks like he should be in the movie Flash Dance - I just wish he had a head band on...

After that we headed over to the Women's 100m - a Jamaican won again - crazy...

so we're more than 1/2 through the games now!!!

08/16/08

2008-08-17T00:25:00.000-07:00

Hurry up and wait day - kept getting to events two to three hours early and just sitting there...

Made sure I went to bed early last night cause I knew today was going to be a long day. I got up at 6:10 so that I could catch an early bus. On the way out of the media village as i was going through security I ran in Sean Haffey from the San Diego Union Tribune. So by the way - because it's getting repetitive I am no longer going to say "such-and-such is a supernice guy and a great photographer" - just assume that I feel that way :)

We walked over to the Cube together. So we got there super early cause we thought it'd be busy - you know Phelps tying Spitz's record of 7 golds and all - well take a look... this is the #3 photo spot... no one else showed up for another 45 minutes after I got there...

Sean ended up going to the #2 photo spot and I went to #3. I had been at the #2 spot the last two times I was there and he had been at #3 - so we swapped places. The #3 spot is nice - the seats are much wider than in #2 and the row below us is open to store gear - you can't shoot from down there because there is a metal railing, which isn't too bad but on top of that they put some weird plexiglass and a nice banding of metal on top of that - so it's basically impossible to shoot from there unless you stood up - and then you'd block the second row - so...

Today's race was pretty amazing - Phelps won again - I know you already know this - but got his 7th by .01 of a second - I thought for sure he had "lost" and gotten silver - so he was pretty psyched - broke yet anther world record - ho-hum just kidding, it really was very exciting.

Oh and to correct a post from 08/11/08 Phelps was swimming against the world record holder in the 100m for his leg of the relay and they were in second after the first leg - not fourth - I looked up at the scoreboard and they were in the fourth position - but the scoreboard isn't 100% accurate during the race. A dude emailed me... either way Lezak won that race for them - he totally had to make up at least a full body's length on that last leg...

We both finished up about the same time so we headed back to the MPC, on they way out at 1 p.m. he mentioned that he was going to go and put up his remote for the Men's 100m dash - brilliant idea! The 100m was at 10:30 p.m. I had three hours until I had to go to tennis so I figured I should do that as well.

So we grabbed a bus and headed over there. There were already over 70 remote cameras up and many had gotten there at 6 a.m. to get a good remote spot or shooting spot! So our remotes were basically next to each other, not straight on, but just around the curve a little bit, which is good cause then you can get them jubing around the corner.

Headed back to the MPC grabbed some lunch at MickyD's and then headed over to tennis - sorry Nol - consisted of nuggets, a hamburger, fries (excellent again) and a drink. Boy was tennis annoying. So the matches started at 4, so I thought I'd be out of there by 6, but unfortunately the match I need to cover with James Blake started after the match that started at 4. Luckily that match didn't go to three sets because just the two sets lasted 2 1/2 hours.

I was only able to shoot about 45 minutes of that match - which didn't start until 6:30ish and then headed out to the National Stadium for the 100m. So I got to the National Stadium - shout out to Michael Goulding! (Orange County Register) - it was the So-Cal convention down in front of my remote where I had left my magic arm and lens on a metal bar that runs across the photo moat to reserve my spot. Yes photo moat is just what is sounds like - a moat with photographers in it. Anyway, Goulding, Haffey and Wally Skalij (LA Times) were all in the moat - I wimped out and went upstairs on the press tribune, the pictures are better from the ground but it's easier so see what the heck is going on from up top.

This was my first track event of the Olympics and the 100m is a stressful one. It's a one shot deal - in Athens, if I remember correctly the winner came out of no where - like lane 7 and won... this year I guess the Jamaican aptly named Bolt was heavily favored to win and he was in lane four. Well it was freaking hilarious - he started to jube before he crossed the finish line! I was thinking to myself either he is a total idiot or he's really confident that he's going to win - it's really hard to tell who is winning when they are running straight at you mega fast - but this time it was obvious - the dude still broke a world record - but I think he could have done even better if he had just waited to jube until after he had crossed the finish line! But it was quite funny...

While Bolt was running all over the stadium jubing it up the pool photographers were following him around - at one point they told him to go and have his picture taken with the sign that had his word record time lit-up on it... we couldn't see anything because they all had their wide-angle lenses on but some Italian dude near me was just livid - yelling at them (which there was no way they could have heard) - but I'm pretty sure I learned some Italian curse words...

Oh, can I just tell you that the weather today was freaking awesome - so nice - party cloudy skies low humidity and a very cool breeze - it was almost like being back in the Bay Area!

Afterwards I booked it out of there ran into Chris Detrick on the way out and we took a super packed shuttle back to the MPC - I went straight to the Media Village bus and headed back because I knew I had to get up at 5:45 a.m. for the last day (phew) of swimming - this is the advantage of our deadlines - 12 p.m. here - since I knew I was going to get to the Cube 3 hours early I would scan in my images during that time and still make deadline. So I was able to go to bed at about 1 a.m. and get a solid 4 1/2 hours of sleep.

08/15/08

2008-08-15T05:02:00.001-07:00

The weather today was amazing - bright blue skies and a ton of sunshine, I was so surprised to see this much blue sky I had to go out and do a pano of it... http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2008/08/bluesky.mov

Today was actually a slow day - I only worked a 1/2 a day - that'd be 9 hours. Got up and headed to Women's basketball because Ann's doing a column on two of the players on the New Zealand team that are from Stanford. I thought the game was at 9:30... so I left my room at 8:00 thinking that would be plenty of time. Well unfortunately I missed the 8:30 bus at the MPC so I had to wait until the 9:00 am bus left, so we got there just after 9:30... that's when I found out the game actually started at 9... but it wasn't a big deal cause I just had to photograph those two players.

So here's a good barometer on how the crowds are here, the New Zealand versus Czech Republic (as well as several other Women's bball games) were sold out and the arena was, for the most part, filled to capacity!!! Let's face it, Women's basketball in the U.S. isn't the most popular sport (I enjoy covering Women's college bball) but to have an arena that was filled with fans chanting and cheering for 3-pointers or a good lay-up in the fourth quarter of a 31 point blow-out (Czech Republic won) was pretty impressive. My first assignment in Athens for KRT (knight ridder tribune, sniff) was Women's basketball - the arena there was probably less than 1/2 the size and maybe 1/4 full - and that's being a bit generous.

Afterwards there was actually nothing to do because they were doing some advances for track - obviously couldn't shoot that, and a recap of some other stuff. So I headed over to shoot the semi finals of fencing - the team epee finals. It was pretty interesting, the lighting is pretty wacky, they shut all the lights off except for the ones on the stage. That lasted about an hour - after that is when I headed out to do the pano of the blue sky.

I actually did need to head back here to do laundry - I'm past the 1/2 way point in my trip - and I think tomorrow is the 1/2 point in the games - I brought enough clothing so that I'd only have to do laundry once - I realized this morning that today was my last day of clean unmentionables!

So I was chatting with a volunteer and he was telling me that they make him "volunteer" from 6 to 8! Maybe he meant 8-6, that seems more reasonable to me... Each bus driver has a volunteer who rides on the bus and helps out passengers and never gets to see any of the games. There are like a gillion buses around here. Can someone tell me how many volunteers they have? I bet the number is pretty amazing - like 5,000-6,000, probably more. I'd guess that the best place to volunteer would be at the venues that you'd get to sneak a peak at what is going on. I'm hoping some of these people are getting paid, like the janitors or food prep people - the ones that have the really bad jobs.

08/14/08

2008-08-14T08:39:00.001-07:00

Oh joyous rain! It sucks bad if you're out at an event and it rains... but it makes the temperature soooooo nice and cool.

Deadlines here are weird - have I talked about that yet? Let's say it's Tuesday, August 12, 2008 here in China. I have until roughly 12:00 p.m. to be able to make deadline in the States for the night of Monday, August 11, 2008 (that'd be 9 p.m. there). So that means I can photograph an event on Tuesday morning in China and still make it into Tuesday paper in America! Sometimes it makes my head hurt.

I actually got back to the room and there was still light outside... that's a first, but I still had to do another assignment. Headed over to men's water polo this morning. USA versus Serbia. They lost 4-2. If I had to pick a sport that I would least like to try, it would 100% be water polo. First I'd have to wear a speedo, yes not a pretty picture. Second, I don't like water, don't get me wrong, I have a huge amount of respect for water, so much so that I like to stay out of it. I did a report on water currents in fifth or sixth grade and the picture I drew to go along with it had some dude getting sucked out to sea to his untimely end. (I can sort of swim/float if I have too) And thirdly I'd get claustrophobic - those dudes are always up in each others faces.

During water polo I got a text from Rachel that one of our columnists (Ann Killion) was writing about Table Tennis - so I headed straight there - well, you can't go straight there unless you take a taxi - so I headed back to the MPC via bus and then caught the MB14 bus over to the table tennis venue. According to the media guide it's a new building at the Peking University. I totally passed out on the bus ride there and the nice volunteer had to wake me up to tell me we were there. When I awoke it was raining pretty good too.

At table tennis I saw Jack Gruber (USA Today) and Michael Macor (SF Chronicle) - we were the only US papers there and I realized that we were all from the Bay Area! Weird. On the floor of the venue are eight table tennis tables and the spectators are elevated - take a look: http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2008/08/tabletennis.mov

The US Women's team was playing Nigeria, so we all shot them. Next door was Men's table tennis with Korea taking on Taiwan. Let me tell you it was like a whole different sport between those two tables. I shot some miscellaneous rain features on the way back and when I got back found out that they might be able to use them.

oh and while I was at table tennis I got another message letting me know that of our other columnist Mark Purdy is writing a story about sports bars in Beijing so I went over there tonight. That's why there was daylight when I got back to the room - had to drop off all my gear and grab a taxi from here. I think both ways the taxi drivers kinda took the loooong way. Even though I had a map and an address the dude had no idea where he was going - he drove for like five minutes before calling the bar to find out how to get there - shouldn't he have done that before he started driving?

The bar is in this totally crazy superduper mall with a gazillion boutique shops. If you've ever been to Santana Row in San Jose, it's a new mall that's made to look like some Europeanish place with high-end shops - well that was this place times 10.

Well gotta get up early tomorrow to check out New Zealand Women's bball cause there are some local Stanford players on there...

Oh photojohn, I put up a picture of the MPC at the bottom of this post - the MPC is on the right, the IBC (international broadcast center) is on the left... I'll eventually get around to posting more behind the scenes types of stuff...

08/13/08

2008-08-14T08:17:00.001-07:00

Today was cool - got a solid six hours of sleep - almost felt guilty getting that much! Headed off to the Women's team gymnastics meet. That was pretty interesting, I thought it was going to be packed cause the Men's meet was packed yesterday. But it really wasn't that bad, it was busy - just not overly - I think a lot of people went over to swimming to shoot Phelps get his 11th gold medal... crazy. It sucks when you can basically put the blame on a teams "failure" to only get the silver on one person - that person was Alicia Sacramone - picture below. There was also some discussion in our newsroom as to whether or not Nastia Liukin was giving someone the bird... I personally think she was twirling her hair or something else in her hands but some thought she wasn't being so nice...

I was originally going to try and head to badminton but that fell through because gymnastics went long. It was a bummer that the US team kinda muffed it up. After that I had a lunch break at the MPC and then headed over to USA baseball. It was pretty much like covering any baseball game. It's too bad that baseball doesn't send over any of it's mlb stars instead it sends over minor leaguers. They lost to Korea and apparently snubbed reporter interviews afterwards - there is a "mix-zone" where athletes stop to talk to reporters, they all just walked past and didn't even acknowledge them. Our columnist Ann was supposed to do a story on a local guy but he didn't even look at her even though she called out his name. So no story.

I thought of Brad Mangin, since he loves baseball so much, when I was shooting and I'm betting he can explain why there are no mlb players. A reporter here said a lot of it had to do with the steroid issue another is that the season is going on. But in hockey they let their players go to the Olympics. For goodness sakes America invented baseball the least we could do is send our best players! Basketball sends their best but it's the summer is their off-season I wonder if they would send people if it was during their season.

If you didn't know this is (barring some change) this is the last year for softball and baseball as Olympic sports. Softball seems like an Olympic sport to me - baseball not so much. If you think about it most Olympic sports last no more than a couple of hours - some quite a bit less - like water polo is usually about 45 minutes. Baseball is a robust 3 1/2 - 4 hours. Plus we are inundated with baseball coverage on ESPN and any sports cast or sports page. Most of the sports that are played here (well expect for basketball too) are sports you rarely if ever see unless it is an Olympic year - which makes it cool. Like handball, fencing, table tennis, badminton, etc...

It's really cool when you meet someone at a big event like this cause you can always say - hey remember me we met at... I got to meet two more great photographers today - David Burnett, come on you know him, met him at gymnastics and Erich Schlegel at baseball. If you don't know either of their work then that is a shame. Burnett did the cool Speed Graphic (old time film camera) at the Olympics in 04, go to his website and look at his Olympics 2004 gallery - it's sweet! http://www.davidburnett.com/ Erich works for the Dallas Morning News and I'd easily tag him as one of the best sports shooters out there. Both are super nice.

Bob is all over the place. Bob is not my friend. Nor should Bob be yours. Maybe Bob is male, maybe Bob is female but Bob is all about Bob. I'm referring to Beijing Olympic Broadcasting. I haven't been yelled at by Bob yet, so that is a good sign. Two of those sentences remind me of a song: I'm your only friend, I'm not your only friend but I'm a little glowing friend but really I'm not actually your friend but i am....

08/12/08

2008-08-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

My gawd my french fires were hot tonight, I am a french fry aficionado and tonight's fresh batch were A+ in my book. Ok, I know this is going to sound really weird but, I'm going to say it now, McDonald's has saved my life because if it wasn't for them I'm pretty sure I wouldn't eat anything here. I'm jonesing for the Szchuzuan chicken (which isn't on the menu) at Ma's Restaurant... too bad it's in San Jose! They have different Chinese food every day in the cafeteria of the MPC but let me tell you it all smells and tastes exactly the same (even the one in the media village is the same way) and the really scary part is all the other food selections Grill, Mediterranean, etc. have the same smell too! Uh Nol what might that smell be?

There was a pretty, bright orange blob in the sky that generated a lot of heat, I think it was the sun - imagine that! I even saw a twig of blue peaking out of the white-haze ridden sky.

I got a whole 5 1/2 hours of sleep, I feel nearly fully rested though I really did not want to wake up at 6:30. Got to swimming early again today. Today went much better than yesterday. Robert Gauthier (LA Times) reminded me of some great advice while on the way to waterpolo yesterday, I had heard something similar 10 years ago; don't worry about what the paper does, just do the best work that you can (hopefully that's close :)). I remember one of the best things I ever heard anyone say - though unfortunately I can't remember who - but she said at a conference back in '98 or '99 something to the effect of "don't expect the paper to make you happy." Rob mirrored that statement and helped me decide what to do today... swimming - duh!

Saw a couple of more world records broken. Phelps looked terrible yesterday, nearly cost the 4x100m relay team a medal - today looked like his old self and he kicked ass. A former picture editor of ours, Caroline, is a big (that's an understatement, fanatic is more correct) of backstroker Aaron Peirsol, so when some Euro dude sitting behind me said to someone else to keep an eye out for Peirsol - I thought of her and did so even though he was in lane 2. Anyone who knows anything about swimming knows that the best qualifiers are in the middle lanes so if you're in an outer lane then you're not supposed to do well. Well the dude broke ended up breaking a world record and winning a gold medal and he wasn't even wearing one of those spiffy swimming outfits - so that was mucho cool. I don't know if he is camera savvy or what but it sure is nice when athletes jube in multiple directions - sure gives us a better chance of getting something. Natalie Coughlin also got a gold, she's local since she goes to Berkeley so that's cool. All the pictures were okay...

As I was chatting with Rod Mar (Seattle Times) and Sean Haffey (San Diego Union Tribune) in the press room afterwards we were watching the men's gymnastics meet on tv, they were thinking about heading over to see if they could catch the last part of the meet. Turns out the US Men were starting their final rotation on the pommel horse. They decided to head over since the auditorium is literally across the street.

I decided after a couple of minutes to head over there too. I ran over there and as I walked onto the floor of gymnastics meet I literally say Alexander Artemev - their pommel horse superstar (they had a meet in San Jose a couple of months ago so I'm kinda familiar with some of the team) finish up, and he was the last one. ugh But I stuck around to see if there was any reaction. Two of the teams stars pulled out so this team wasn't expected to do much, but they ended up getting a bronze - so they were excited about that. I was standing right behind them waiting for them to find out and I guess I was on tv - Kyle Terada took a screen shoot... Do I need to clarify which one is me, no, no, I know you guessed the buffed-out dude on the far left, but that's Kevin Tan - he's from Fremont - look to the right, a little bit more... there i am...

Had lunch with Jack Gruber, good talking to him as always, and then headed over to basketball - USA versus Angola. Had a nice little nap on the bus. Now I sleep. Tomorrow will be another busy day, Women's gymnastics, badminton and then baseball.

08/11/08

2008-08-11T07:14:00.000-07:00

ugh, today was frustrating day, went to bed at 4 and got up at 7 so that I could photograph swimming. Why is swimming totally off the map in the "real" world but it's crazy popular for the Olympics - it's weird. I saw three world records today. The 4x100 meters was amazing, Phelps has that dude Jason Lezak to thank for this 8th gold medal cause Phelps swam the first leg and put them in 4th place. In fact when Lezak started his leg - the final one - they were still in fourth place, he somehow over came that in 100 meters and won the event for them, it was crazy! Phelps went pretty nuts, my angle was quasi blocked by a referee and deemed unusable, oh well. Of course the pool (not swimming pool but pool) had it fine, must be nice. I'll rant about that another day. I just can't believe a 32 year-old saved them, I totally thought they were done after Phelps swam. Geez that's practically my age!

For swimming you have to sign up to get a ticket just to get in the building - the Cube. Our bureau chief - Rachel Wilner - has been nice enough to pick mine up when she gets them for the reporters. Inside there are three main shooting spots. 1, 2, and you guessed it 3. 2 is right at the finish/start line and there are only about 30 positions. So for that position you need another ticket. They give those tickets out 2 hours before the start. It usually starts at 10 so you have to be there by 8 at the latest. I got there at 8, I think there were only 5 tickets left after me.

Positions 1 and 3 are first come, first served. Pretend you are a swimmer and about to start your race (all but the 50m) once you get into your start position (oh and disregard the backstroke) if you looked directly to your right you'd see all of us dorky, stinky photographers crammed into a tiny space like sardines. I was next to a French dude who really, really liked to say his friends name who happened to be sitting two rows beneath us. Phillipe was his friends name. I know this because it has been ingrained into my brain. Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, HEY Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, AHHHH Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe!

There are a few overhead spots and of course some pool spots which only the wires have access to... one of those is the straight on spot and the medal ceremony which is held on the other side of the pool.

Afterwards I went to lunch with Paul Kitagaki, Wally Skalij, Jack Gruber, Scott Strazzante, Smily Pool and Michael Macor. Then I headed over to women's waterpolo - did another pano there, I've done like 15 of them! 14 are posted on our site: http://www.mercurynews.com/olympics Right now I'm doing them by hand because I can't set up a tripod so there are quite a few stitching errors, but i think it still looks pretty cool, hopefully the errors aren't too distracting.

The weather is great, no wait, that's too strong a word, let's just say it's super acceptable. Actually the pollution thing isn't the worst thing in the world because it blocks out the direct sunlight, if the sun was out you could easily add 10-15 degrees. But it's been raining the last couple of days - off and on thunderstorms and that has really cooled the weather down to make it quite bearable, if I do say so myself and I do. It is really damn humid here...

I never thought I would say this but: security is awesome! Yesterday I went to three venues, the mpc and back to the media village and I only had to go through one security screening!!! In Greece that would have been at least six screenings, six lines, six times taking off and putting back on all my equipment, etc... it's been great, they worked it out so that as long as you never leave the secured area you don't have to go through security at every building entrance, that saves a TON of time and stress. Getting out of the secured area can be a pain depending on where you are though.

08/10/08

2008-08-10T09:43:00.000-07:00

Yes Jessica you did see me at beach vball sporting a sweet pink poncho! (Joanne saw me too) About 2 minutes after they started it started to rain pretty good. Luckily the photo-helper people brought out ponchos again.

I'm ridding the bus back after shooting three basketball games (including USA vs China), before that I shot synchronized diving and before that I shot beach volleyball! So I've been working 17 1/2 hours and I'll be lucky to be done by 20.

And to top it off I gotta get up early to shoot swimming! So if I'm lucky I'll get to bed about 4 and then I have to get up at 7, oh boy!

I'm so freaking hungry right now that I'm gonna go hit up McDonald's (sorry Nol) for a double cheeseburger meal. Their fries are excellent by the way.

Oh damn it someone just farted on this packed bus - gross

I promise superhappytime pics next time. Hold your breath because I'm about to take it away! (Get it like breathitaking?). Sorry.

08/09/08 part II

2008-08-09T07:34:00.000-07:00

Can I just tell you how freaking nice and helpful everyone is here. So Eric Seals and I got to a photo position at cycling today and he went to look for food, he came back because there was a huge line and he had to shoot the race... so one of the photo people (not manager) went and got us each a banana, some cookies and yogurt!

And yesterday at the opening ceremony not only did the photo helper people bring us water in our seats but at one point they brought us all ponchos because they heard it MIGHT rain!!! It feels as though the Chinese people feel privileged to be hosting the Olympics, four years ago it felt as though the Olympics were a hassle to some of the Greeks (certainly not all of them, but some here and there).

Today was a bit rough because of the sleep thing but also because the only thing I was able to eat all day was the above mentioned items and a cold snickers bar. The food tent sold out of all items except snickers bars and microwave popcorn. Today was not a good culinary experience.

Well tomorrow is going to be brutal. I gotta get up at 6:30 to go to - my stepdad David will be happy to hear about this - Beach Volleyball, then I got synchronized diving, then I got to the Australia versus ??? basketball game and then I cover the USA versus China bball game which doesn't start until 10:15 pm!

sheesh!

You know when your running on fumes you sometimes think odd things, like I wished I had longer arms today.

p.s. Sean pointed out that I haven't been posting peeectures - I forgot I could do that with this here technology... will do it not tomorrow - but the day after most likely...

080908

2008-08-08T21:25:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at The Great Wall of China at the finishline waiting for the men's riders to show up.

Got 3 hours of sleep last night, went to bed at 5 and got up at 8 so that I could catch the bus. The bus and shooting situation is a bit weird, I guess some people signed up for a "special" van ride, but after last oly I know that special ride doesn't mean that much so I didn't sweat it.

Speaking if sweating last night was just so brutally hot. Right now there is a really nice cool breeze.

Rode the bus up with Eric Seals from the Detroit Free Press, super nice guy it was great to catch up with him. He helped me out with some advice when I was starting out... Oops the riders are getting close gotta go...

080808 part deux

2008-08-08T13:01:00.000-07:00

The Opening Ceremony was awesome - at least until the parade of athletes started - that was pretty damn boring and it took freaking forever - like 2 1/2 hours!!! ack The ceremony started at 8 and ended at 12:30. Thank God freaking McDonald's was still open because I was about to die of starvation. My big mac and fries were soooo good.

Everyone said that this was the most they have ever sweated, yeah I know, gross, but it was like a freaking sauna in there. We were seated in front of these large spot lights which had fans that blew super-hot air directly into our faces, so that didn't help either. Eric Seals from the Detroit Free Press said he drank seven bottles of water in like 6 hours and never had to go to the bathroom. Our bodies do amazing things.

Got there like 4 hours ahead of time. Sat in my seat 3:30 hours ahead of time. In Greece I showed up an hour before the start - now I know why every looked at me with contempt - cause they had already been sitting on their butts for several house!

It's 4 am right now and I just finished - sent, get this, 86 images (!!!) (Geri is building a sequence thingymabobber so I need to send a bunch of pattern-type images), 2 360 panoramas and one short video (bad - as in bad not good) done with an intervalometer of the US team entering the stadium. Took me 3 hours to do all that... I guess that's not too bad. Gotta get up at 7:00-7:30 tomorrow, oh boy!!! Get to see the Great Wall - I hope... cycling is out there but I've heard a couple of different versions of how it will work tomorrow - some said that you had to sign up for some "photo van" other said it doesn't matter... so well see, I'm sure it doesn't matter... Just have to get out there...

08/08/08

2008-08-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

Heading off to Opening Ceremonies - I have seat A-1 in the L section - supposedly it's kinda in the middle of the stadium with a good overview... Haven't been inside the stadium yet...

Should be interesting!

It's a bit tougher to post blog stuff here than in Greece because I have no internet access in the room...

08/07/08

2008-08-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

I am soooo disappointed in China's Olympic gift "superstore"... isn't practically everything made in China? So was it too much to ask that their Olympic store to be two football sizes with a gabillion things in it. The Oly store in Greece was huge - at least football sized and it was right next to the Olympic Stadium. Plus when I was here in Beijing last year they had stores all over the place.

Well the store here is about 1/4 (maybe) the size of the Greek store and it is a freaking 15 minute walk from the Stadium! I'm stunned I tell you. They didn't have anything - not only did they have a tiny selection but they had some items that were on display but not on the floor. Four years ago they had a tee-shirt for every sport - all 28 of them (28 right?) - There they only sold tee shirts for badminton, ping-pong - er table tennis (sorry) and athletics. WEAK!

Yesterday I wandered around the Olympic Green again, they really started to ratchet up the security level, it was hard to get to certain areas. As I was heading back to the MPC (main press center) after getting kicked out of the area near the Bird's Nest I ran into Scott Strazzante (Chicago Tribune) and Robert Gauthier (LA Times) as they were heading to the Women's Gymnastics practice so I decided to tag along. Sheesh there were a ton of people there - Peter Read Miller (SI), Smily Pool (Houston Chron), Michael Macor (SF Chron), etc...

There are only two media villages, but one of them is huge, that's the one I'm in, the North Star Media Village which has 14 skyscrapers - I'm on the 12th of 32 floors, the other is much smaller. There are also a bunch of media hotels. When we enter the North Star media village we check in just like you check in to a cruise ship - you wave your credential over some podium like contraption and it checks you in. It's kinda weird cause when we leave to get on the buses we have to go through the metal detectors.

The layout (shape) of the media village kinda looks like (from above) a map Italy or Vietnam with main entrance on to top left. I'm in building C6 which is at the bottom left so it takes about 15 minutes to walk to the front or a 5 minute cart ride. Carts run back and forth but under no schedule.

The room is huge, with a desk, three windows, closet (bureau) and best of all my very own bathroom. No internet access in the rooms but there is a wireless workroom downstairs.

To get anywhere you have to take the shuttle to the MPC which is about a 15 minute ride from here. In front of the MPC is where all the different shuttles will take people to the different venues. More later!

2008-08-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

A couple more Pano's I'll blog about them next time... went to bed at 3 up at 7ish... heading out!

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2008/08/cube_night2.mov

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2008/08/cube_inside2.mov

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2008/08/nat_indoor_inside.mov

2008-08-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

I'm really sleepy. By the way my room is awesome - it's huge and I have my own personal bathroom :) Only bad part is it's a 15 minute walk to the bus that we have to take to go to the MPC (main press center).

I saw a bunch of people I knew today - Paul Kitagaki (Sacrament Bee), Jed Jacobsohn (Getty), Dave Eulitt (Kansas City Star), Terry Schmidt, etc. and also met a bunch of people too... more when I'm more cognizant.

The Cube at night:
http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2008/08/cube_night.mov

Outside of the Birds Nest - I could not get inside:
http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2008/08/birdsnest_out.mov

And the inside of the Cube - which does have some pretty bad stitching areas (on the bottom) but I could not fix them - tried for a while - I might have to go and reshoot it but the main part of this pano is the ceiling anyways....
http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2008/08/cube_inside.mov

2008-08-06T04:32:00.000-07:00

DAY 1
Olympics V 2.0

Ok, so I totally jinxed myself because on the plane I noted to myself that it had been, so far, the best international economy flight I had ever taken for various reason which I will talk about later... Two weeks ago I drove up to San Francisco just to get my equipment declaration sheet signed. I was hoping that that drive - 45 minutes up, an hour to get the sheet signed, 45 minutes back, would be the biggest hassle. Unfortunately it wasn't. When I arrived in Beijing at about 11:00 pm I found that my bags did not make the short connection - we took off 30 minutes late so I only had a 45 minute layover in Hong Kong. So I'm sitting at baggage claim and I see a lady carrying a placard with my name on it, I'm thinking to myself - hey that's neat - well it was merely to let me know my bags didn't make it.

To make a long and boring story short, it took 2 hours to deal with the lost bag people and customs. The worst part is that I cannot have the bag delivered to my room (4 years ago my bags also didn't arrive - but they delivered them) because I have to declare the gear. So I have to make a trip back to the airport just to pick up my bags so that I can properly declare them. Dealing with a lost bag/customs after 17 hours of air travel is not fun.

But the flight to Hong Kong was nice, I flew in on B747-400... when I booked my ticket way back in December of '07 I noticed that towards the back of the plane, where it starts to narrow (bow) down there were only two seats next to the window instead of three because of the shape of the plane. So that is where I booked my seat - I get kinda claustrophobic...

I was super surprised to have the seat next to me remain open! Amazingly there are at least 20 open seats just in the back of the plane. When I booked my flight I could have sworn that the flight was nearly booked... weird.

I had a problem sleeping the night before my flight, not sure if it was the anticipation of finally leaving, the blue pixie stick I ate or the fact that I did a couple of puzzles in my mensa sudoku book? Probably a combination of all three. Nol was nice enough to wake me up at 7:30 on his way to work.

Josie was nice enough to pick me up at home and take me to the airport in the morning. I was a bit stressed because I had three pretty huge bags weighing in at 65 lbs, 50 lbs, and 45 lbs, a 30 lbs carry-on, a backpack and a collapsable cart.

We arrived about 2 1/2 hours before the flight and I was pretty shocked that there was no line at all at the ticket counter. The checkout experience was a polar-opposite to when I checked in at Air France... I'll admit that this was partially my fault because the last time I didn't check on their baggage policy's beforehand (which is super strict). But the people at Cathay Pacific were very friendly, I had to pay $89 for the extra bag and they didn't even charge me to check the collapsable luggage cart! They also have a very generous weight policy - 70 lbs per bag! They didn't weigh my carry-on like they did four years ago as well - so I had to sit at the checkout counter and re-arrange everything, that sucked.

I had the beef stew for lunch, it was pretty good, sorry Nol I forgot to take a picture of it.

I'm back!

2008-08-05T18:46:00.000-07:00

Got here at 11 pm didn't leave airport til after 1am due to lost bag and customs issues. Haven't found internet access yet - hopefully later today (sent from blueberry)

Packing

2008-08-04T01:01:00.000-07:00

Whitie "helps" me pack.

Waaaay too much crap...

2008-08-02T20:28:00.000-07:00

This is what it will be like when I return home... :p

McTester

2008-08-02T11:10:00.000-07:00

This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business... This is a test, it's only a test, please go about your normal business...