Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

For those of you that are just waking up in the U.S., The "Redeem Team" won gold today against Spain while you were sleeping.  It was the NBA's—I mean Team U.S.A.'s—first gold medal since the 2000 in Sydney. I must admit I wasn't expecting much action or reaction at the conclusion of this game,  but boy was I wrong.  It was a pretty good game, and I've rarely seen such excitement out of NBA players even at the end of an NBA Final.  Spain gave them a good run, and early on they were ahead, but at no point did I see Team U.S.A. break that much of a sweat—they just played solid basketball and had great performances from Dwayne Wade, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. It was a real treat to see those three and their teammates so genuinely excited at the conclusion of the game and when they received their medals.  I'm at the closing ceremonies and getting ready for that—so I'll just drop a few quick pictures in for now. 

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

 

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

 

It’s the morning of the last day of the Olympics and I’m getting ready to hit the road and go home. As much as we’ve all looked forward to this moment there’s always a feeling that something important is over. Regardless of the trials and tribulations of the last two weeks, I’ve enjoyed the Beijing Games. Although it has felt like a rather sterile Games with the events and media being kept within the Olympic bubble I can’t fault the volunteers that have helped us do our jobs everyday and made us feel welcome.

I’ve put a selection of my work together here, it’s still too soon to do a proper edit and only time will tell if this work stands up. I’ve found I need a little space from the event to edit work without the emotion of the day. Thanks for following along and sending me e-mails with your comments. They were all appreciated.

Cheers,
Mike

Photograph by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

 

Photograph by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

 

Photograph by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

Photograph by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

 

Photograph by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

 

Photograph by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

China's Liang Huo competes in the men's semifinal of the 10 meter diving competition. Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

Sometimes, the Olympics throws you a bone.  Today the sky was clear and the sun was beaming down on the translucent roof of the Water Cube venue where the 10 meter diving semi-finals were taking place. This made for a beautiful day of shooting, both from overhead and from the side.   The bone in this case, is not only the nice light but also the fact that the one guy who is favored to win the competition has the longest hair of the group and tends to keep it wet before he dives.  Therefore, when he does, water drops shoot out on an almost perfect black backdrop--a photographer's dream. There wasn't a single photographer worth his/her salt who wasn't looking to take advantage of this convergence of factors and make a nice frame. Here are two other versions of Liang Huo.

China's Liang Huo competes in the men's semifinal of the 10 meter diving competition. He was in first place and favored to win going into the final. Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

The two frames above were shot with a 300mm 2.8 - at 10 frames per second on an EOS 1D MKIII--a 1/2000th of a second to freeze the water drops and at f 2.8 to blur out the background (and at 1000 ASA.)  The tighter frame below was shot with a 400mm 2.8 at the same settings--you lose body parts, but can appreciate more details, such as the water coming off of the fingers on right hand at the top of the frame.

So it was a good start to day fifteen of the Olympics for me--there's never anything better than when the elements line up for you just right. At that point you just have to recognize them, figure out where to shoot the picture from, with what lens and settings and just sit back and "spray and pray" as we say. This happens maybe 1% of the time--most of the time you really need to work much harder at "making" and image as opposed to just sitting back and "taking" one. What I mean by making is that while you in no way help to create what is happening in front of you (i.e. you can't set things up--you can't tell someone to go here in this spot of light, do this or that in a certain way that might make a better picture, or do something again--that is forbidden in U.S. photojournalism and any editorial work you'll see shot for NEWSWEEK. Portraits are the one exception.)  Therefore the only thing you can do is to get very involved in studying the smallest nuances of every movement in an athlete, backgrounds, lighting and every other details. You have to take them all as they are and work hard at getting that perfect image. If the light sucks, you need to find a way to shoot the image in a way that will not emphasize that. Same goes for the backgrounds, etc. Motion blur and shooting wide open with long lenses to minimize depth of field are two of the tricks photographers use to de-emphasize ugly backgrounds. Shooting from overhead is another common solution as well.

Back to diving. I got a few nice comments about the overhead shots that I made of the female divers yesterday. My wife, who I tend to listen to--she's a photographer and photo editor and we work very closely together--really took to those images and suggested that I consider making a series of "portraits" if you will (albeit of real action--nothing set up) and try to put a series together.   My first instinct was that I had already made one or two nice frames, and I didn't really look forward to going back up to the catwalk as it's extremely hot and humid up there and I tend not to like shooting the same thing two days in a row. But, as usual, I think she was right. When you look at these images, it's like looking at fighter pilots in their G-suits, training to fight the effects of the high velocity moves they perform in their jets, which put incredible gravity forces on their bodies. Or maybe it just looks like those images of people in wind tunnels. Either way, I've always wondered what it must feel like to be diver doing these routines. While I'll hopefully never find out what it feels like first hand,  these images will give you an idea of what it looks like. Without further ado--here is my series of portraits of the 10 meter divers of this 29th Olympiad. 

What a day--I'm amazed that not only I, but also my cameras and lenses survived. At 6 a.m., after only two hours of sleep, I got a call from Simon Barnett to strategize on the remaining four days of the Olympics. Little did Simon know he was cutting into 1/3 of my bedtime for the night. But it was time to go anyway--even though I would have bet a healthy sum of money that there was absolutely no way that the gold medal match of women's beach volleyball was going to be played in the conditions I was seeing out of my hotel window. The rain was torrential.

There's only one thing that a photographer dreads more than going hours early to a game/event that s/he knows will most definitely be rained out--and that's getting up ridiculously early to do just that! You get there 2-4 hours early and sit and wait forever--never quite getting a chance to make up for that lost sleep. And there's just nothing more miserable than having to go out to make a "rain feature." You get wet, cold and if you have them--your glasses completely fog up. Every time you pull out a lens cloth to dry something--you're never really sure if you're going to help things or end up making things much worse by smudging goo all over your lenses.

This morning, every bone in my body told me there was absolutely no way they would play beach volleyball in these horrid conditions--let alone a gold medal match. Nonetheless, I called the venue manager for the site--and he insisted that the games would go on. The communication over the phone was far from perfect as usual--but it wasn't the fear of things lost being lost in translation that caused me to second-guess him and to call a second time--I just didn't want to believe that they could possibly play in these conditions! "We play in much bigger bigger storm few days ago" he told me--and so I headed onto the early bus--RELUCTANTLY. You just don't want to be "that guy" that missed the gold medal win because he chose to hit the snooze button and adhere to common sense.

The image above was made with a fisheye lens. It's a shot I thought of making early in the morning before I left the hotel because I knew how unusual it seemed to me to have such an important contest fought in such adverse conditions. Hey--its' BEACH volleyball!!!   I set the lens to f22 and used the hyperfocal to get the drops in focus as much as possible... one Italian photographer just didn't understand that I was purposely allowing the waterdrops to fall on my lens... he kept screaming at me to cover the front element of my lens with my towel... that was actually the last thing I wanted to do.

As I arrived at the venue the rain was actually dying down. Suddenly I felt so relieved not to have followed my instincts to bag this assignment and go back to sleep. But as the match was about to start, the sky turned a much darker shade of gray and within minutes we were all absolutely completely and utterly soaked. Two photographers were better prepared than I was:  Robert Beck of Sports Illustrated and Erich Schlegel of the Dallas Morning News were smart enough to show up in their swimming trunks--now that's being prepared!

One of the reasons that photographers hate shooting in the rain is the rain covers we use. I own three brands, and none of them work 100%. In fact, they're a total nightmare.  They're designed to keep your camera and lens dry, but they make it impossible to quickly change lenses (doing so  exponentially increases your change of shorting a contact point or getting the rear lens element of your lens wet anyway) and shooting can be close to impossible at times. If you hold you camera upright for even a second, you now have rain drops on the front of your lens, decreasing image quality to a good degree. Hold it downward and you have raindrops--or in this case, sand--in your rear eye-cup. On more than one occasion I couldn't even reach the zoom ring on my lenses, as I was fighting the elastics on the rain covers for control. It's frankly a total disaster to shoot with these things and toward the final point I just ripped everything off. Problem was: most of the covers had the camera straps put through them, so I couldn't get them off and out of the way, and then the covers got in the way of the lenses etc. Total, total disaster...I'm very lucky that I did not miss more shots than I did today...

Here is the initial reaction of the U.S.A. duo:

The Olympic race consists of a 1500 m swim, a 40 km bike, followed by a 10 km run, and some of the top ladies today finished it under 2 hours. The course was a set in scenic hills at the Ming Tomb Reservoir near the spot where 13 emperors of the Ming dynasty were laid to rest in elaborate mausoleums. The athletes and spectators couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day to hold the race. The men may not be so lucky tomorrow . Unfortunately I was on the 2nd day of about 3.5 hours of sleep and it’s starting to catch up with me. After taking a 6:40 bus from my hotel and the first bus from the MPC to the course (it’s about an hour away) I was ready to get the race on. The course wasn’t the most photogenic or easy to get around, and I didn’t have the luxury of water access or motorcycles like I’ve had in past races. So I just focused on a couple different shots, specifically a water exit and a couple different graphic bike shots. My initial plan was to rig the smaller of my two SPL housings for a 5D on a pole cam with a ball head and trigger release, but I went with a shot with a remote camera clamped to a rail which was approved 30 minutes prior to the race (thanks to Ray the photo marshal and Bob Martin of SI lending me a magic arm).

Photograph by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

Going to bed last night at 2.30 a.m. and getting up this morning at 6 on top of the cumulative sleep deficit left me a little worse for wear today. It also left me with a severe dose of writers block. I’ve started this blog several times today and didn’t get far each time. Usually something sparks an idea during the day and leads to me being able to knock out a few para’s on something that at least interests me.
 

Phelps got his eighth gold medal but we’re all a bit jaded now and quite frankly except for yesterdays near miss on #7 it all felt a bit pedestrian. How jaded can you get! I’m sure I’ll look back and be glad I was there for at least some of it. Anyhoo, that didn’t spark anything in the old noggin.

So I waited ‘til the end of the day to see if anything at the track got me going and was standing in another photographers moat trying to figure out what to do next when I over heard another snapper talking about how he was going to try and do “something different” tonight.

“Something different.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that one. From editors and photographers. I guess it’s the holy grail of snappers. I got thinking about it and tried to put my finger on what “something different” actually is. Well of course it’s lots of things.

Photograph by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

Simon Barnett, the DOP at NEWSWEEK has given us a very free rein to go shoot “something different”, but sometimes it hamstrings you. You see a very nice picture that on most days you would eagerly shoot. But being at the Olympics there are 300 shooters already trying to shoot it and the pool guys have better access and 200 remotes under it, over it and probably on it! So your shrug you shoulders and wonder off in search of the illusive “something different”. Or you shoot it anyway and hope for a unique moment. It’s amazing how different images can be even when your all shooting the same thing.

 

Photograph by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

At the Winter Olympics in Turino I shot a whole series on a 50mm lens shot almost wide open at f2. I really liked the feel of the images and wanted to try more of it here. It’s not so easy at the summer Games, I’ve found that I’m further away from the action. But every now and then I’ll get a shot and by the end of the Games I’ll have a handful that will show a style that I have been trying to build on for some time. I’ll put a gallery up near the end if it all comes together. Shooting this way means letting go of shots I know will work in favor of trying for an image that might not work and even if it does nobody else might like. Sometimes I can do it and other time I lose the courage and fall back on my sport shooting background. I’ll try and keep plugging away though. In an attempt to shoot “something different”, even if it’s the kind of work nobody else would want to shoot!!

It’s amazing how many people get so excited over a race that takes less than 10 seconds to run. The lead-up of the showdown of Asafa Powell, Usain Bolt, and Tyson Gay was second only to the sea of photographers and their remote cameras that descended on the National Stadium tonight for the men’s 100m final. There were a wide spectrum of experience present; from snappers who cover Athletics religiously, to those who cover it only at the Olympics, to those who witnessed their first 100m tonight. I fall somewhere in the middle of that pack, but can never get too excited for this race. Case in point, Peter Reid Miller of Sports Illustrated posed the question to me tonight before the start of the finals, “Do you even remember who won the 100 in Athens?” I was there, I shot it, I remember taking an OK frame of it, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember who won [It was Justin Gatlin of the U.S.--ED]. And you know why, after tonight NOBODY CARES. The athlete, whether it’s one of the Jamaicans or the American, will be on the front cover of every newspaper and Website for the next 24 hours. You won’t see them again in the headlines for another four years. Unless, that is, one of them tests positive for doping...

Testing my finish line remote on the Men's 20km Walk Final. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

This was my riser position where I sat for the race. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

A view of the main finish line moat with about 100 remote cameras and SI's Bill Frakes in charge (half of the cameras are his!!)

Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Infield remotes facing back to finish line. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Photographers sit and wait for the 100m. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Nevertheless, photographers and media come in droves to set-up shop, some of them scoping out positions and setting up remote days before the event actually starts. Most are on edge, scrambling to get their cameras in position, knocking over cameras, yelling at their assistants or even at other photographers. Is it really worth getting all hot and heavy over a little foot race? The spectacle that surrounds the race that decides the fastest man on the planet every four years is one to behold and one that I would sometimes like to miss. But you have to go and cover it, and we did. Between the three of us, with Mike having the most experience under his belt, and specializing in Track and Field for years, he took the head-on moat position. Vince was going to do the pan position on the front stretch, good for a low-percentage, but a very nice photo of the athletes in full sprint at a slow shutter, but he opted out after the BOB camera appeared to block his view. I did this shot in Athens '04 and it was good for one really nice frame and nothing else. So Vince went to the moat position around the bend, which is usually solid for the follow-through react. That left me in the elevated head-on safe position, which was fine by me, especially since I could surf the internet and start writing this blog in the five hours we had to wait for the 10:30 p.m. start. My stress levels were also alleviated by the fact that I dropped off my gear and set up a couple remotes before I went to Aquatics this morning to cover Phelps. I placed one remote wide almost parallel with the finish line framed with eight lanes and the Olympic Flame in the background. The second remote was head on with 4 lanes, repositioned to lanes 4-7 after the semifinal split Bolt and Powell in lanes 4 and 7 respectively. Amazingly (but not really) Tyson Gay did not make the final.

And after a bunch of unfortunately insignificant races that no one cared about, it was go time....

A NEW WORLD RECORD OF 9.69!!!!!  

This of course has put me in a very introspective mood. Truth be told I’m not thrilled with any of the images I’ve taken so far, and as a result my head has been in the clouds for most of the day.  I’m trying to figure out how I can change my approach from this point on, in an effort to produce images that I will be proud of, and that hopefully this blog's readers will appreciate throughout the rest of the games.  

Trying to figure out what to do next has led me to asking one of the most basic questions that most sports photographers ask themselves on a regular basis:  How exactly do you define a great sports photograph?

I can tell you that in the 17 years that I’ve shot news and sports in this business, the answer to that question has changed radically many times, often in relation to the type of organization I was working for and what they expected of me. I’d like to go into that for a little bit.  Some of you may not have time, so please just go ahead and enjoy the photographs from today. For the others, please read on.

I had a total blast at the Fencing Hall today. What a beautiful stage for fantastic images.   Although I was a Junior Olympic fencer myself more than a decade ago (my discipline was foil—not sabre as you see here),  this was my first try at photographing fencing... I'm amazed that it took me this long!   The lighting couldn't have been better,  and made for a beautiful wide shot of Sada Jacobson (right) fencing against Sofiya Velikaya in their quarter-final match.

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

 

When Becca Ward (right) took her turn against Velikaya for a chance at the bronze medal (she managed to win it!) I decided to take a different type of risk and drag the shutter a bit.   You shoot dozens and dozens of frames in the hopes of getting just one that somehow both freezes and demonstrates "motion" albeit in a "still" photograph.

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

 

Chinese Guard. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

The wait is over. With thousands of Chinese performers pounding illuminated drums counting down the final 60 seconds to the cheers of 95,000 eager fans, the Games of the XXIX Olympiad have begun. The highly anticipated Beijing Olympic Games, at times overshadowed by political, financial and environmental issues, was jump-started by an impressive yet long Opening Ceremonies. Highlighted by a celebration of Chinese culture with giant glowing 3-D scrolls, floating globes and performers, and Yao Ming as China's flagbearer, the ceremony was a cacophony of sights and sounds as well as a display of Chinese manpower.

After 3 airplanes traveling more than 6,000 miles in nearly 24 hours with layovers, and four in flight movies including a great documentary on the birth of the Magnum photo agency, my colleagues and I arrived safely at the Beijing Airport. Mike Powell, Vincent Laforet, and myself dubbed “The Dream Team” by Newsweek Director of Photography Simon P. Barnett, looked anything but as we shuffled through the airport baggage claim and customs all in dire need of a shower and shave. After the long journey it was a pleasant surprise to first see not only all of our cases and bags arrive without delay, but also have a smooth transition through customs because of our pre-stamped gear list from the Chinese Embassy. Soon thereafter, we were quickly shuffled us onto a bus routed to our hotel, the Foreign Experts Building (yes, this is a hotel, and no you don’t have to be an expert to stay here) by an over-zealous volunteer who kept apologizing for her poor English. Again to our amazement, this went without any hitches and we found ourselves checking into our spacious rooms, grabbing a bite to eat in the convenient 24-hour hotel restaurant, and crashing out with the help of some Ambien.

At 5’7” and 160 lbs, I am a man of smaller than average stature (as the gangly Mike Powell continually likes to remind me) and even I found it hard to get comfortable in either of the mini-twin beds in my room sized for Jackie Chan. After waking up earlier than I wanted to, I decided that the best thing for me to do after sitting in a plane seat for the previous 24 hours was to go for a run. I am on a pretty religious workout regimen, and either run, swim, paddleboard or surf everyday, but usually can only run when I’m on the road if I’m not near a body of water. However, in the first mile of my jog, my heart rate monitor shot up to 170, and I found myself struggling for oxygen. The air was thick with humidity and the smell of exhaust, and I could only imagine how the endurance athletes competing in the marathon run, marathon swim, or triathlon were going to manage in these conditions. I thought all the articles I read about the Beijing air were negative hype, but even growing up in the Los Angeles smog didn’t prepare me for the atmosphere here. I felt like Ben Stiller in Zoolander after being in a coal mine for a day:

Derek Zoolander: [high-pitched cough] ... I think I'm getting the Black Lung, Pop. It's not very well ventilated down there.
Larry Zoolander: For Christ's sake, Derek, you've been down there one day. Talk to me in thirty years!!!

In the four other Olympics I have covered, I arrived on site 5-7 days before the Opening Ceremonies to shoot previews, acclimate, and prepare. With only 48 hours before the commencement, unlike other photographers we had little time to spare to go sightseeing and had to condense all of our prep into a couple of days. After my black-lung incident, I recovered with a decent breakfast in the hotel and went through the super convenient Mag and Bag in our hotel lobby which gets you onto a bus and negates the need to go through security check again and deal with the lines at the Main Press Center. Once again I was impressed with the Chinese making a possibly bad experience into an easy one. After our entry in the MPC, we quickly hit up the Kodak, Canon, and Nikon booths for our fair share of free swag from the Games. Next we went to the Newsweek office to check in with the team, get our Chinese cell phones and pins arranged by the great Al Pryzbylkowski, and get Wi-Fi cards from the communications office. Doing this alone took nearly four hours as it seemed that we would take four steps and run into another photographer, editor, or writer that you just saw last week or haven’t seen since the last Olympics. But that is the great thing about the Olympics, because you make friends with people who live on the other side of the world whom you only get to see every couple of years. After a bunch of hugs, kisses, and bro handshakes, we were feeling a bit peckish and decided to hit up the dining area in the MPC.

Mike Powell frowns upon the bad nutrition

August 7th, 2008, Beijing, China. Morning...

I met up with my two teammates, Donald Miralle and Vincent Laforet, in Los Angeles and Seoul and continued on to Beijing. It was the perfect place to transfer through as it gave me a chance to think back on my first ever Summer Games in Seoul 1988. You never quite experience the Olympics the way you do the first time, which could be said about many things but we’re sticking to the Olympics here. I’d grown up on on tails of photographic heroism whilst covering the Games and wanted to do my bit. Working all hours, being cast into the Olympic cauldron and coming back with “the goods” are all things I wanted to test myself at. Eleven Olympics later I still have a taste for that environment and I’m back for more.

We didn’t get the big “wow” effect of landing at the giant Beijing terminal; we must have come through a smaller satellite building. However, we were efficiently whisked off on our bus to the accommodations called “The foreign experts building”. Which kind of added a little more pressure to the expectations our DOP at Newsweek has been hoisting upon us already. “Experts”? That’s kind of assuming a lot without ever having met.

I opened the curtains this morning and stared at a grey/green wall of something. I’m not sure if this is the fabled smog of Beijing or just some morning mist, it looks like this most mornings from my house in Topanga, CA. But I tell you one thing this isn’t the Beijing I last visited 12 years ago covering the “Tour of China” bicycle race. That Beijing I could ride a bicycle around without fear of cars. This one's more “Blade Runner’ish”

Olympic snivel warning-

What is it with beds at the Olympics? Whoever makes the specs for the “Olympic media bed” must be 4’ tall and be numb from the neck down! I’ve slept on floors, camp cots and now a concrete block, here in China. No wonder everyone has such great posture, they sleep on the firmest mattresses in the world. The best one was at Sydney where we stayed at an old hospital, for midgets I assume, as the beds had metal head and foot boards and I’d wake up with my feet jammed between the railings of the foot board feeling like I’d had my feet handcuffed! Which isn’t always a bad thing I just wasn’t expecting it….. Anyhoo snivel over, in a couple of days I’ll be so tired I’ll hardly notice the bed, and think of all the money I’ll save on chiropractors.

I’ll let you know how our prep day goes later.

Cheers, 

Mike