Newsweek - National News, World News, Health, Technology, Entertainment and more... | Newsweek.com

Pix Blog: The Beijing Olympics

RSS
SPONSORED BY

Authors

Vincent Laforet

Donald Miralle

Mike Powell

Categories




Links

Featured Postings

Farewell Beijing - it’s been a “Dream Job” to cover these Olympics

12:03 PM, August 24, 2008 | Comments (30)
Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK By the time many of your are reading this post, I will be on my way to the airport to catch my flight back to New York City. The Beijing Olympics will have concluded and thousands of others will be making their...

U.S.A. Wins First Gold Medal in Men's Basketball in Eight Years

6:52 AM, August 24, 2008 | Comments (3)

Off to the airport

8:36 PM, August 23, 2008 | Comments (5)

Archives

See All from August
Previous
August 2008
Next
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
     12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31      

A project of the Asia Society, "Clearing the Air" looks at the overall causes of China's pollution problem, featuring a broad overview, a daily photo diary documenting “blue sky days”, and resources for more information. See more here.

  • Picture of the Day: August 24, 2008

    Donald Miralle | Aug 24, 2008 12:24 PM

    Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

    The Olympics are over, and the sports event has generally been considered an entertainment triumph. What will quickly come back into sharp focus, however, is that China is a world power whose politics will continue to loom large. This communist nation is getting ever more powerful. Its political, economic and humanitarian actions—and inactions—will be a major factor in shaping our world.  This picture, by Donald Miralle, while acknowledging the sporting spectacle, also conjures up the uncertainty about what lies ahead.  For me, as Picture of the Day, it is an appropriately ominous image on which to close.  —Simon Barnett, Director Photography, NEWSWEEK

    See a gallery of NEWSWEEK's photography from Day 16 of the competition

     More
    Tag(s):
    Comments (10) | Blog Tools

  • Farewell Beijing - it’s been a “Dream Job” to cover these Olympics

    Vincent Laforet | Aug 24, 2008 12:03 PM
    Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK
    By the time many of your are reading this post, I will be on my way to the airport to catch my flight back to New York City. The Beijing Olympics will have concluded and thousands of others will be making their way home—some with gold medals, some with memorable images and stories, others with bruised egos and many with goals of practicing for the next four years in order to shave an extra few hundredths of a second off their performances in time for the London games in 2012. I for one couldn’t be happier.  This has been the best Olympics I’ve experienced, and while the host country has played a good part in this, other factors have been much more instrumental in making this a “great success” as Borat would say.

    First and foremost, Simon Barnett, Newsweek’s director of photography, and the magazine’s decision to have the three of us blog daily has been the deciding factor in making these game more fulfilling for me than ones prior. Becoming part of the blogosphere has proven to be one of the most interesting and rewarding things I’ve done as a journalist. I studied print journalism in college and have worked as a photographer for over 18 years (since the age of 15), but I never really enjoyed writing on deadline, and always found something a bit lacking with simply sending photographs into a publication and hoping the “best one” or frankly at times any of the ones would make it in. There’s nothing more frustrating than missing a picture, or not being able to make one - and having nothing to show for all of your hard work and effort for the day. The blog has given us a new avenue to express ourselves and share things about our days out here—regardless of whether of not we have visual proof of it. It’s been quite cathartic at times (see the “Time for a Little Introspection” blog post) and the feedback from you guys has really had an effect at keeping the wind in all of our sails I’m sure. I know it has for me.

    Although I’ve already praised him in a prior post, I would like to thank Barnett at Newsweek again for rolling the dice with this blog and giving it the green light. After all, you’ve got to admit that no one knew exactly what would come of this prior to the games or if it would be a success or a total disaster... by all accounts I think it’s been a success and that everyone has benefited from this in some way. I hope I’m not coming off as a sycophant, but the truth is that having us blog was a pretty visionary thing to ask us to do, at least in my book. Sure, we’re definitely not the first to blog, but blogging was our major focus at these Olympics and it heavily influenced both what and how we shot—in many ways the magazine almost came second. And while some may not yet see the significance of that—or agree with it—to me it’s crystal clear that this kind of two-way exchange with our audience that we need more of in our industry, we need more personal and behind the scenes accounts—and a goal of making unique images that adhere to our own personal visions as opposed to the size of the page or hole we need to fill in a layout is the future of journalism. As you may know, the major magazines have been having a tough time out there; circulation and ad revenue have been dropping consistently in the past two years, and at times people question whether or not magazines and newspapers will be around a decade from now. If these publications continue to experiment and think out of the box as Newsweek did with this blog, I have no doubt that they’ll be around for a very long time. In fact while the dream title for any photographer a few years ago may have been to be a “staff photographer” at some large publication, I can see being a “Photoblogger” as being the next big thing.  Maybe we'll need a different title to separate us from "bloggers"—to clarify that we work by professional journalism standards, as opposed to writing at will and without regards to hard facts. Who knows, only time will tell.

    With all of the content available out there my guess is that people are not looking for content that tries to serve the “average” reader—that "reader "being determined by polls and surveys. I think that with the easy access to information and online publications that the Internet is providing us with, people will now go to specific blogs and publications that interest THEM. There is a tremendous amount of room for growth in this area in my opinion and my eyes sure have been opened over these past few weeks. I launched my own blog a week prior to the Olympics and while I am a total newcomer to this blogging world, I’ve already sensed a greater amount of energy and potential in these endeavors than I have with almost any publication in my career. I’ve found it fascinating that professional photographers and hobbyists, as well as people who don’t necessarily have a keen interest in photography, have come to visit and comment on these blogs—and expressed how much they've enjoyed them. Although we the photographers have no real idea of how successful this blog has been in terms of hits, etc.,  if you type "Olympic Photo Blog" this Visions of China is one of the top results to come back from Google—so that must be a good sign. 
    More
    Tag(s): ,
    Comments (30) | Blog Tools
  • Advertisement

  • End of the Line

    Donald Miralle | Aug 24, 2008 11:11 AM
    Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

    Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

    For me it’s always bittersweet when the last day of an Olympic Games comes to pass. Today was no different; after 16 days of covering 20 different sports it all begins to blur into one big dream (or nightmare depending on who you are), where you can’t really appreciate what you accomplished until it’s done. I’m finding it hard to gauge where these games will rate in comparison to my past experiences; there were highs and lows, there were great things and bad things. But through it all I think collectively the team at NEWSWEEK did a bang-up job. Personally I am quite happy with my photo take from here, although I am very disappointed with the performance, or lack thereof, of some of my Canon gear. The fact that many integral moments and photos were missed entirely because of camera malfunctions, has made me really reconsider, as many of the sportsshooters in the industry, if I should make the switch to black lenses.

    Day 16 would be run on little sleep, which has been par for course over the last 15 days. After seeing Mike off with our 2nd nice dinner in almost 3 weeks, we hung out until about 4:00 drinking beers and reminiscing about this experience and past ones as well. After packing some bags slightly buzzed, I finally hit the sack.  My alarm rudely woke me up about 2 hours later at 6 a.m. to go catch the start of the Men’s Marathon at Tiananmen Square. I was hoping for a better photo opp than the cycling road race showing the Chinese landmark and giving one of the few photos from the games that actually said “China”. Even though I was a little hung over and feeling a bit nauseous, I made it to the photo position 15 minutes before the start. I was in good shape and it was a beautiful blue bird sky morning.
    Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK
     
    Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK
     
    Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK
     More
    Tag(s):
    Comments (5) | Blog Tools

  • U.S.A. Wins First Gold Medal in Men's Basketball in Eight Years

    Vincent Laforet | Aug 24, 2008 06:52 AM

    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
     
    Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK
     
    Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK
     
    Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK
     
     More
    Tag(s): ,
    Comments (3) | Blog Tools

  • Three More from Diving...

    Vincent Laforet | Aug 24, 2008 01:04 AM

    Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK 
     

    I had to rush back and pack last night after the men's finals.  There was nothing ground-breaking and given that I'm covering the U.S.A.'s basketball game immediately followed by the closing ceremonies tonight, I thought it best to pack every piece of gear and clothing that I could, so that I wouldn't need to rush that before running off to the airport in 14 hours. (Quick tip—the single best thing I did in packing for these Olympics was to use a point and shoot camera to take a picture of the inside of every bag and case that I packed on the way in, and print out an 8X10 color copy of each picture and tape it to the inside of the case before I left... this saved me so much time in packing everything up... no more guessing which lens goes in what case, etc...) 

    I'm now on the floor of the bronze medal basketball match between Lithuania and Argentina—there's less than 34 seconds left as I type and you could hear a pin drop in this stadium.... ZERO energy here right now. hope that changes for the U.S.A. game... 

    Here are a few more images from last night. The first two are of China's Liang Huo who was the Olympic favorite in the men's 10M diving final. He came in fourth, behind Australia's Matthew Mitcham in a stunning upset that prevented the Chinese from a gold sweep in diving. Given that I've shot diving from the overhead position, beneath the surface through a window, and from almost every possible side angle, I decided to take my last tilt-shift of the games, as well as to play with pans shot between 1/8th and 1/15th of a second.

    Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK 

    Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

     More
    Tag(s):
    Comments (3) | Blog Tools