Tsuboi Gustavo of Brazil (bottom) and Peter-Paul Pradeeban of Canada playing table tennis in this long exposure from overhead. Photo by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK
I
think that I was followed by the secret police in an unmarked car today
outside of Beijing...but you'll have to read through to the end to get
to that part of the story. Instead I'm going to take you through my day
in chronological order.
The day started rather uneventfully
as I did my due diligence and covered at least one sporting event--but
I was itching the entire time to get out of the Olympic venues to see a
little bit of China and to share that angle of this Olympic story with
you. Little did I know that it might have been a better idea to stay
"clean" and inside the bubble--the artificial barrier that keeps the
journalists well contained within its boundaries and away from the real
world and any potential trouble.
I began the day by spending
3-4 hours at the table tennis venue, and almost immediately I wanted to
run out of there. The sport is incredibly quick, difficult to follow,
and once again the backgrounds were incredibly cluttered. Not to
mention that I had never covered table tennis, and my desire to learn
yet another new sport was significantly hampered by the dark lines
under my eyes. I'm finally starting to hit a bit of a wall here-as most
others are. No matter how much sleep I try to fit in, I just can't
quite feel altogether rested. It's not uncommon to see half or
two-thirds of the bus asleep on any given ride, or volunteers passed
out on the lunch tables at most of the venues. That's something I'm
going to keep more of an eye out for in the upcoming days.
My
first image involved going overhead for a long exposure with a 300mm.
Of course this was a broadcast position, and we weren't allow to be
there even though there wasn't a single video camera present. But I've
learned how to work the system to my favor now by using China's
bureaucracy against itself. When the BOB (Beijing Olympic Broadcaster)
official came to ask me to leave, I asked to speak to a photo volunteer
as they technically have no authority to ask me to move. That took 10
minutes. Then, when the volunteer came up, I escalated it to the
assistant photo venue manager, all the while being cordial and polite.
That took a good 5 minutes. When the assistant photo venue manager
arrived, she did not ask me to move, but instead asked if I had all of
the proper remote paperwork and releases from the overall photo
manager. I responded that I did and that in turn took them 15 minutes
to confirm with the main photo desk via the phone (they were trying to
get me to move on a technicality themselves--this is all a big game of
chess--in hopes that I did not have the proper paperwork and requests
filed...but to their chagrin I did have everything in order.) I must
admit that at this point, I was having a little internal triumphal
moment, seeing how the endless paperwork jam could for once work in my
favor. And when the venue photo manager arrived to confirm that I was
approved to mount a remote--but just not on this BOB spot, which
happened to be the only head on spot of the main table tennis of
course--I very professionally agreed to move, even though he agreed
that it was ridiculous for me not to be able to shoot from an empty
position, simply because BOB had "paid" to reserve the position.
The
point is, I had gotten a full 30 minutes of shooting in, without
breaking a single rule (well, technically I did by standing there) but
I also never upset anyone or acted in any way impolitely to
anyone--there were smiles all around throughout the entire process--and
I got my picture. What could be better?
When I got back to
shooting from ground level, I discovered that photographing table
tennis was similar to covering real tennis--it's incredibly difficult
at first,
quite frustrating, but once you learn to study and dissect the sport
it actually starts to become rather predictable. The athletes tend to
line up at the exact same spot after each rotation and you can adjust
your shooting accordingly. Just as you try to frame the perfect serve,
the same can be done for these guys on a smaller scale--it's almost
literally a miniature version of the big game. Below is France's
Patrick Chila--the entire time I was studying his sever trying to get
the ball positioned just right. I finally got my clown face picture,
and pretty much full frame with a 400m at 2.8. Once I did, I knew I had
carte blanche to go out and explore the world outside of sports for a bit.
France's Patrick Chila serving against Janos Jacob, who he defeated, in table tennis. Photo by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK
The
first picture I took outdoors was just adjacent to the Main Press
Center--not quite out of the bubble yet, but I very much like the
graphic nature of this simple photograph. Here are two volunteers
playing a game of badminton in front of a large air conditioning vent.
I like the way that all of the lines work together, and that they
too--like all of us here--are fenced in.
Photo by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK
Below
is a quick shot of the typical bubble street scene. These are fans
walking past the gymnastics venue, right outside of the MPC.
Photo by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEKI
then got onto the bus back to my hotel. Instead of fighting the fact
that the only part of Beijing that I've been able to see on a daily
basis was through the window of the media shuttle, I decided to
embrace it. I'll keep shooting these over the next few days, and I
think it just might make for a nice little series of "pictures from the
media bus window."
