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

Equipment Mountain in Beijing

Tokyo may have Mount Fuji but Beijing now has Mount Equipment. 
On Monday night after a long trek from Toronto which started sunday morning, I made a snapshot of the mountain of equipment needed to cover the Olympics.  The four of us creating visuals for the Star and thestar.com piled up our work equipment (not including computers, id cards and the myriad other items needed) in the middle of our accommodations in Beijing.  Many of us had overweight charges at the airport of course and I think we gave we gave a few porters nightmares for a month. 
As soon as we arrived at the airport, the heat, humidity and smog were in obvious evidence.  The sun was obscured and was a faint glow in the sky.  I am not looking forward to 8 hours trackside in the heat and smog.
The organizers couldn't be more helpful.  I think there are 6 volunteers per working media.  At one point, three different people were trying to carry my suitcase that I was holding, of course we missed the elevator as all the hands were vying with each other to get a grip so to speak.
My colleagues and I will be blogging on a daily basis so watch for the further adventures.
-Richard Lautens