Big Brother is Reading You

It is amazing how we take our Internet for granted back in Canada. Wireless systems are everywhere and it has become an indispensible tool for nearly everyone, journalists included. To access the web here for the Olympics, journalists must pay either $500 for a wired connection which is reliable but there are very very few wires around; or $500 gets you a wireless system which is slow and prone to crashing. Either system only worked in approved Olympic work venues and that does not include our accomodations. With an already busy day, it can be a real nuisance finally getting back to our room after midnight and having to go to the next building over to their workroom to check a quick email.
The Internet does work and although I can read thestar.com online, I am not allowed access to this very blog. I don't know what is wrong with Star blogs, but they are censored anyway. As a constant reminder of the Internet issues here, in the Olympic village, directly between the Main Press Centre and the famed Water Cube are 3 large, black ominous buildings which are said to house hundred if not thousands who are monitoring every email and transmission made by the press.
It is an odd feeling that your every electronic move is monitored, I just wish someone in the imposing black buildings would respond to some of the many unimportant emails I get each day so I can get a little more sleep.

-Richard Lautens

Bare hands banned

Unruly fans at the Olympic baseball venue in Beijing disobeyed repeated warnings from the batboy to refrain from catching balls with bare hands during a game between Canada and China today.

The sign makes it pretty clear, don't you think?

But do you think fans would listen?

Noooooo.

H2O Logistics

Workers sit outside what will be a store after the Olympics, but now houses the water supply for the 6,000 journalists and officials living at the North Star Media Village.

The logistics surrounding water must be incredible. Free water is supplied to media everywhere.
They have to because you cannot take it through security.

With the humidity through the first week here we are drinking it like...well, water!

At the Canada vs Argentina soccer game, I drank eight bottles and was still thirsty!
-Steve Russell

Olympics on the move

Don't get me wrong, covering the Olympics is perhaps the greatest assignment you could ever hope for. The emotion, the uniforms, the different sports, the world-wide interest are all great, but the one thing that makes it very difficult to cover is the travel.

It is a huge enterprise staging an Olympics and, by default, the venues and accommodations and offices must be spread out. Each of us are trying to cover 3 or so events a day. Typically this will entail 4 hours of travel time a day. Our media village where we stay is a half-hour bus ride away from the Main Press Centre. The main press centre is the hub for travel to all other venues, which are each a half-hour to 3 1/2 hours away. The buses of course are never ready to go when you are so there is the wait time.
There are always taxis, which are cheap, but this morning I missed an event because I couldn't get a cab for an hour, then he got lost and I ended up walking several kilometres to the venue - not a great option.

Several days ago I went to shoot women's soccer. I left the media village at 9:30 a.m., got to the press centre and on a bus at 10:30 to go to the soccer venue. 3 1/2 hours later we arrive at the soccer venue (only one bus a day), two games take place including the Canadian women vs. China and bus departs at 11:30 p.m., arrives at main press centre at 3 a.m. - wait for bus to media village, arrive media village 4 a.m., 5-minute shuttle or 15-minute walk to my building and finally home.

Shooting the events is the perk of the job, it is getting there that seems like work.
-Richard Lautens

GALLERY: View Richard's photos from the Canada-China women's soccer match

1444 good... 0444 bad

 
As always, every accredited photographer at the Olympics is issued a vest with his or her own number.  This year one of the thousands of vests, issued by Kodak, was held behind the counter.  The 0444 vest was not issued based on the Chinese superstition of the unlucky number 4.  Apparently the Chinese pronunciation of the number is a homonym also meaning death.

I was issued vest number 1444 and I’m still feeling lucky and relatively healthy.

-Lucas

Opening Ceremonies: one hot ticket

The Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics is of course the big draw of the games and a photographer's dream.  I was thrilled to be able to go.  By the numbers, there are approximately 1,200 accredited photographers from around the world here and only 500 spots for photographers.  10 photo tickets to the event were given to Canada (so only 10 photographers from all of Canada could go) and I was one of the lucky ones. 

Being a photographer from a Canadian newspaper generally means that for events with restrictions like the Opening, we tend to get bad locations to shoot from.  I thought mine was not too bad until I sat down and realized that directly in front of me was a spotlight and big transformer.  My view was not blocked but the temperature there went from 32 degrees with 99 per cent humidity to about 42 degrees.  Uncomfortable of course but the real problem came when looking through the long lens, it was hard to get things in focus because of the heat waves.

It was a long, hot uncomfortable night with me finally getting to bed at 4:30 am but completely magical none the less.

For a selection of images from the opening check out Saturday's Toronto Star and the 32 picture slide show right here.

-Richard Lautens

A special Opening Ceremony

While the Opening Ceremonies of an Olympics is one of the major events to cover, sometimes you find something else to make the event special without being there.

The opening is a tightly ticketed event, with only nine tickets issued to Canadian photographers, one to the Star's Richard Lautens.

That left Lucas Oleniuk doing feature photography from outside the stadium.

As for me, our Asian bureau chief Bill Schiller, with the help of his assistant Lilly, found us three generations of a family that were going to celebrate the event in their 16th-floor two-bedroom apartment - actually they converted it into a two-dining room apartment for the occasion.

Olympics are a special event and as much as the spectacle is amazing, so are the people.

The 20 or so people invited us in with open arms and fed us and I don't think that my glass of beer was ever allowed to be more than half-empty.

The generosity showed to us by our host Jing Cheng made this event one of my most special moments at an Olympiad.

Read Bill Schiller's story on this wonderful family here.
-Steve Russell

Up close and personal with the Chinese

On Thursday afternoon, I headed out to the Fengtai softball stadium to see the Canadian women's softball team go through a practice. Their sport is in danger of being dropped from future Olympics and they invited me along to see the normally closed practice.
I think I was the first media type to come to the venue as the volunteers (there are approximately 70,000 of them working at the games from all over China) were exceedingly diligent in checking me at security, having to even open my wallet and notepad. The volunteers in the media office were very happy to show me around and I had two people assigned to show me all the photo locations and get me water if need be.
I shot photos for an hour or so and went into the media office to dry off from the heat before the 45 minute long trip back to the Olympic Village and was surrounded by 10 volunteers all eager to look at a real western journalist up close. It turns out that many of them were in journalism or photography courses and loved looking through the big cameras and talking about the business for a while. It was a lovely little personal moment with no official anything getting in the way.
One funny note today-I was shooting some diving practice from a small window in the bottom of the pool and who knew that the divers swimsuit rode up and flew down so much when they hit the water. That's the real reason why they take so long to surface, they have to rearrange the wardrobe before getting out of the water.
-Richard Lautens

Getting around

Hopping a train on the Beijing east-west Line 1 can be a bit of a challenge during the morning rush hour… and in the afternoon… and the evening.
-Lucas Oleniuk

Not all photo positions are above the water!

The Olympic games will see a huge amount of photographers.
My photo vest is numbered 1659, they start at 0001.
So what we have is hundreds of photographers trying to get access to too few photo positions.
The few first few days of training at the venue give everyone a chance to access a few unique positions that will be impossible to access once competition begins.
The underwater viewing ports at the National Aquatics Center or the "Water Cube" Olympics are one of these positions.
In the pool four of these ports exist that hold two photographers each, the ports are at the ends of the pool so only four positions will be available for starts.
On competition days, the four photographers will most likely be the third or fourth photographers from the major wires. While the rest of us will have to beg, bribe, steal or all three a ticket to the event from our local Olympic Committee. There are a limited amount of photo positions for this high demand sport so each countries Olympic Organizing committee is issued tickets that they then dole out to their media.

A photographer waits patiently for the next group of synchronized swimmers to take to the pool from one of the four ports in the swimming tank. The diving tank has four ports as well but each only hold a single photographer per port.

-Steve Russell