Friday, August 08, 2008

Beijing Olympics: Opening Ceremonies

According to the emcees, 4 billion people around the world were watching. While that may be a bit of funny math by the Chinese, there is no doubt that 8pm on 8/8/08 will go down as a night to remember as Beijing opened up its doors to the world and officially launched the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (2008 Summer Olympics in real words).

The buzz surrounding the event was that this would probably be one of the more memorable and spectacular opening ceremonies that the world has ever seen, and the Chinese sure did not disappoint.




We had three shooters at the ceremonies (well, actually four if you count one guy outside shooting fireworks)... we had one in the upper deck, one in the front row, and one kind of in the middle. I was the one in the front row. From the front row, you could get a good close view of some of the dancers, but it was impossible to get a overall view of what was happening on stage. So I couldn't see any of the patterns that were developing during the show, just the performers on the edges of the stage. Maybe for the closing ceremonies, we will switch it around and I will go up higher so I can get a better view of what is going on down on stage.




What the front section was really good for, however, was for when the athletes did their march into the stadium. I was able to get a pretty clear shot of many of the athletes as they entered... assuming they even bothered showing (ahem... Michael Phelps and USA women's gymnastics team).



My spot also gave me a pretty good angle on the final stages of the torch relay, as well as the lighting of the Olympic cauldron.





So that was the opening ceremonies in a small nutshell. Tomorrow, the games begin!

1 Comments:

Blogger Adam Kadela said...

Was this as amazing as it seemed in person? Dana and I are so jealous.

11:42 PM  

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