08/17/08

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.