Beijing Olympics: Day 5
Day 5 ended up being one of the busiest days I have had since I got here. I started the day off with some wrestling to shoot the two Americans in the Greco-Roman style events. I have shot Greco-Roman wrestling once before, and thought it was kinda interesting. It's not WWF wrestling, but the fact that competitors will sometimes pick each other up and slam them to the mat sure reminds me of it! I didn't get any shots of that happening, because I wasn't at the wrestling gymnasium long enough.... the Americans lost their first two matches and were thus elminiated from competition! Anyways, for this event, I quickly realized that the background from ground level was pretty bad, with judges and stairs, and fans in the way, so I went up so I could get a good view of the many colors of the mat.
So I was at the wrestling gym for about 10 minutes and called in to see what to do, since we didn't expect the Americans to lose so fast! I suggested I go double up our photographer at the women's gymnastics team finals and shoot from high, so off to the National Indoor Stadium I went. I thought shooting from high up would help clean up the images for gymnastics, but it did not really except for a small portion of the floor exercise.
The problem was that in the gym, the ushers and officials would not let us go high enough in the arena to clean things up. As a result, I did not really shoot that much there. I pretty much just followed the action around on the different events until I either saw a competitor tumble into an area with nice signage/clean background, or if they fell - which is exactly what American captain Alicia Sacramone did on the beam (and again on the floor), which effectively cost the USA the team gold. That's got to be an awful feeling....
Once that was over, I finally made it up to the Olympic Green Tennis Center and shoot what has become one of my favorite sports. I think I've said before, I don't quite know why.... it's just as repetitive as many other sports, if not even more so. I think I just like how there are nice "lines" in tennis, and just enough variety in the pictures you can get from it depending on where you sit or what players are doing. Like many other venues, it was pretty apparent that it would be difficult to move around, so it was best to just pick a spot and stay there. Of course, since it was my first shoot at the tennis center, I went up high for most of my time there in order to get a good view of all the Beijing and Olympics signage.
I finished off the long day with two basketball games... nothing that special... just your standard basketball action.
Onto Day 6 and beyond...
So I was at the wrestling gym for about 10 minutes and called in to see what to do, since we didn't expect the Americans to lose so fast! I suggested I go double up our photographer at the women's gymnastics team finals and shoot from high, so off to the National Indoor Stadium I went. I thought shooting from high up would help clean up the images for gymnastics, but it did not really except for a small portion of the floor exercise.
The problem was that in the gym, the ushers and officials would not let us go high enough in the arena to clean things up. As a result, I did not really shoot that much there. I pretty much just followed the action around on the different events until I either saw a competitor tumble into an area with nice signage/clean background, or if they fell - which is exactly what American captain Alicia Sacramone did on the beam (and again on the floor), which effectively cost the USA the team gold. That's got to be an awful feeling....
Once that was over, I finally made it up to the Olympic Green Tennis Center and shoot what has become one of my favorite sports. I think I've said before, I don't quite know why.... it's just as repetitive as many other sports, if not even more so. I think I just like how there are nice "lines" in tennis, and just enough variety in the pictures you can get from it depending on where you sit or what players are doing. Like many other venues, it was pretty apparent that it would be difficult to move around, so it was best to just pick a spot and stay there. Of course, since it was my first shoot at the tennis center, I went up high for most of my time there in order to get a good view of all the Beijing and Olympics signage.
I finished off the long day with two basketball games... nothing that special... just your standard basketball action.
Onto Day 6 and beyond...
posted by Jerry at 8:00 AM
2 Comments:
Jerry,
I've been following your work on the USPW site and then decided you probably have a blog. Nice shots overall. I really liked the handball shots, and the fencing. I'll be checking in for updates.
Mike Sackett
Sacramone didn't lose enough points, even between her two falls, to cost the US the gold. China just outcompeted.
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