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

 

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

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. 

A tilt shift view of the first ever BMX Olympic Competition.  Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

Today, for the first time ever, a gold medal was handed out in BMX at the Olympics. It was also:

• The first time that I saw a perfectly clear sunset in Beijing.
• The first time that I was able to sit down for lunch at our hotel.
• The first time that I took a nice mid-day nap.
• The first time that I experienced a completely random act of kindness: a volunteer walked up to me out of the blue and gave me two Olympic bracelets.
• The first time that I've made it two weeks without the need of antibiotics to fight off a severe cold or flu at the Olympics.
• The first time that I did not have to run in a mad dash to catch the bus at the end of the day.
• The first time that a good friend of mine ate scorpion and centipede.
• And today was the first time that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  
  
  

Here is the stock shot that has the rings in the back - a photo that clearly places this sport at an Olympic venue. Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

48 hours to go!  

We're in the home stretch--the key word here being HOME! This Olympics has been wonderful--very likely the one that I've enjoyed the most of my career in no small part to this blog and the type of photographs that we've been asked to produce for NEWSWEEK. But two weeks away from home is tough on anyone. And I'm starting to count the hours until I get to see my wife and son again.

The day started of as most days have these past two weeks--with less than 2 hours of sleep and a 5:30 a.m. wake-up call. I headed over to the BMX venue for the first time and despite everything that my body was telling me, I was very excited to photograph the inaugural medal event for the sport in the Olympics. I owe a big thanks to Mike Powell for letting me have a go at this sport--although we were both scheduled to cover BMX together, the rainout yesterday changed our schedules quite a bit and he was very gracious in giving me the nod to go ahead and take a crack at it.

A tight shot on the 3rd jump--full frame with a 500mm f4 lens. Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

Therefore I felt a bit of pressure to produce today. I showed up two hours prior to the start of the race to place my remotes on the field and to secure a head-on shot with the Olympic rings in the background. The venue is very tough to shoot, as there are very few good shooting positions.  No low angles to shoot from and make the athletes "fly."  The pool photographers were able to place remotes wherever they wanted--for some reason I was only offered one spot, which did not yield much. I knew this instantly when I was shown the "one" spot I could place a remote by the photo venue manager... and frankly would have called it then. But I was there anyway and you never know--some crash could have gone right toward the camera, and I would have killed myself if I hadn't gone through the trouble, especially since I knew my two teammates wanted to be here as well. Unfortunately nothing much happened in the one spot we were offered, so the remote did not lead to anything worth showing.

A shot with a 50mm set to f2 at 1/4000th of a second to isolate the busy background.  Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

This is a very dynamic sport. The crashes are amazing and a key part. Unfortunately none of the official non-pool spots had a good clean angle of the crashes. In fact, they happened underneath us--we were completely blocked, so the action ended up being pretty straightforward.

A shot of the second jump with a 500mm f4.  Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

Given that I didn't really have a clear shot at the crashes, I decided to shoot with a tilt-shift lens and try for something completely different than what everyone else was shooting. Here is a second version--a little quieter than the first image in the blog. I can't decide which one I like the most just yet.  But I think the tilt-shift approach works particularly well with this sport: for one it gives a very miniature feel to the images--almost a doll-house effect. The venue looks pretty surreal to start with, and in many ways the bikes are so much smaller than most of the athletes, which adds to the effect that using this type of lens from a slightly elevated angle produces.

A slightly different moment shot with a tilt-shift lens. Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

Finally, I ended the day at Athletics (Track & Field), and I didn't really come up with anything that was all that special from within the venue itself.  The one image I did see took place while I walked into the venue, during the first clear-sky sunset I've seen over this two week period. I decided to focus on the fans, color and light and shadow, mixed in with a little geometry as I photographed them walking to their seats prior to the start of the evening session.

Fans at the Birds Nest.  Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

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:

Yulis Gabriel Mercedes of the Dominican Republic scores a point against Mu-Yen Chu of Taipei during the men's 58kg Taekwondo quarterfinal. Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

I had a tough time being creative today. The venues just seemed to have too many obstacles in the way of unique photographs. Things just didn't seem to open up--and some days that's just the way it is.  You accept it and move on, hoping you'll have better luck the next day.

I was really excited to go cover Taekwondo for the first time. I must admit that I felt a bit let down by the quality of the action. The kick above is one of the few I saw all afternoon--and the one doing the kicking, Yulis Gabriel, lost the match believe it or not. Although he sure looked good in terms of producing good photographs!  It seems that the technique of the day was to play it very conservatively and tactically. Acrobatics were far and few between.  These were not scenes from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon by any means, and in fact, as with most Olympic sports, when anything got interesting the bout was inevitably stopped.

One of the few unique moments of the day was seeing  U.S.A.'s Charlotte Craig sharply chewed out by her coach, Jimmy Kim.  Whatever he tried to get through to her apparently didn't help--she lost the women's 59kg  quarterfinal. 

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

 
I then shifted over to track and that's where I really struck out, but not for a lack of trying  There's one picture that I've really been looking forward to producing here at the Athletics venue--a side pan of the runners (moving left to right and following the runners with the camera set at a slow shutter speed. This freezes them somewhat, but adds a lot of motion blur to the background).

Unfortunately, TV has two cameras that parallel the racers for the entire distance of the race. Without exception, every time a nice photograph presented itself I was blocked by one or both of the cameras. I was blocked four times in a row (each time you wait 15-20 minutes for the next try so it's quite a bit of an investment in time...) and I eventually had to give up trying for the pan on the big race of the night.  Had I gotten one good frame out of the four attempts it would have been enough for me to give it a go for the final race. But when you're zero for four, I think it's time to go to plan B.

Here is one of those photographs. I even caught a strobe in the background but to no avail.

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

To be honest, it's not like I didn't see this coming--everyone knows that camera is there--but I was just stubborn anyway as I really wanted to give it a go.  Eventually I made a last-minute decision and went back to the head on spot as I did in the 100M race that Usain Bolt also won. This time he gave a much better reaction when he set yet another world record as he won the 200M event.

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

I was sad to see and photograph Andrew Wheating of the U.S.A. failing to qualify by two spots in the men's 800M.  Seems like I wasn't the only one with a rough day at it.  

Another day is done and we're all three looking to start very, very early morning tomorrow. It's supposed to rain for most of the day so that's playing a bit of havoc with our schedules. The forecast predicts 100% humidity at 9 a.m. and an 80% chance of rain--just when most of the events are scheduled to start--and thunderstorms.Wish us luck!

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.

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.

This of course naturally lead me to ponder things a bit—as I tend to do—and it made me realize that there's a reason that we have Simon and other photo editors out there:  a good photographer does not always equal a good photo editor, especially when the photographer is editing his or her own work.  When you add to that formula day after day of action-packed Olympic sports and a solid mix of sleep deprivation, it's quite possible that we become our own worst editors.  In retrospect, I'm quite happy with what the three of us produced during Michael Phelps's 8th Gold Medal win At the time, however, we collectively felt underwhelmed by the pictures from that day. 

So Simon—you're probably (and hopefully) absolutely right.  

That being said, I should point out that what has likely gotten Mike Powell, Donald Miralle, and myself to these Olympics is a constant desire to produce the best images out there—images that we've never before seen.  It's one thing to try to reproduce some of the best images that we've seen produced by others over time, but trying to create new and original images that we've never seen before can be daunting, as Mike mentioned in a previous post. Searching for that "perfect" image is one thing—and can all too often lead to a far too predictable result—but searching for that elusive image is an entirely different challenge, especially when you consider that we are chasing the unknown—an image that we have never seen before in an event that has yet to produce a definitive result, one that we cannot necessarily predict or anticipate.  And that to me is the magic of photography: trying to freeze a moment in time out of the chaos of the unknown in a sport that is lost or won within a matter of milliseconds.  After all, would we watch these sporting events if we knew in advance what the results would be?  Perhaps some of you would, and I'm sure many of you do, given the twelve-hour difference between Beijing and what is re-broadcast on your local TV in the U.S. for example. I for one will never watch a game if I already know of the outcome. To me the thrill is in the anticipation of the unknown—it always has been.
 

Now comes the hard part.  With the two marquee events past us, the men’s 100M and Phelps’s 8th gold, the newsman in me tells me that the Olympics are pretty much over.  But the lensman in me knows better than to give up now. It’s time to start chasing photographs—not necessarily the news. Time to have fun and start to take even bigger risks from now on, especially since everyone has been seeing hundreds of Olympic photographs for more than a week now.

Michael Phelps and his teammates huddle for the last time prior to Phelps's historic 8th Gold Medal in the 4 X100m relay race.  I'd really love to hear what they were saying to one another.  This was a very long throw - this shot was made with a Canon 1D MKIII and an 800mm 5.6 at 1/640th of a second. 

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

I’m now sitting here typing away while the men’s gymnastics floor final is going on. There are so many obstructions and the backgrounds are so impossible that it’s just best to sit this one out for a while and wait for the next event in the rotation. I’m mentally exhausted—I got to sleep at around 3:45 a.m. this morning after returning from the men’s 100M final and my wake-up call went off at 5:45 a.m.  I jumped out of bed before I had a chance to start that dangerous debate of whether or not I should try to squeeze five or ten more minutes of sleep in. And no breakfast of champions for me or Mike this morning—"breakie," as he says, doesn't open 'til 7.  As I was pulling up to the Main Press center at 6:15 a.m., I called Doug Mills of The New York Times, my former colleague there, and asked if he wanted me to save him a spot. Ever the pro, he let out a soft chuckle and let me know that he was already in position and had marked me a spot... there’s never such as things a being too early for an event such as Michael Phelps’s historic 8th gold medal win. (The race didn't start until just past 11 a.m. but there were only a dozen head on positions available for all of the photographers covering the race.) 

Unfortunately, that photograph never really materialized, despite everyone’s best efforts. We came close, but I'm not sure anyone's got a "classic" shot per se. I walked around the Main Press Center to SI and a few other papers and wires after the race today, and the consensus is that unfortunately there really wasn’t a truly fantastic defining moment. It’s a shame, and every photographer seemed to know this as we departed like mummies from the venue. Ultimately, no matter how hard you prepare, now matter how much energy and effort you put into preparing a photograph, there's never a guarantee it will materialize. Sometimes it’s your fault—you might have chosen the wrong spot, or made some terrific blunder that someday, perhaps, you will learn to laugh off. Other times, like today, the moment itself fizzled. Phelps seemed more relieved than excited—clearly the best pictures from Phelps and these Olympics were taken yesterday, when he won his 7th medal by 1/100th of a second.  Mike’s photograph of Phelps splashing the water is a defining moment in my opinion. But today, well there are plenty of “good” or “solid” photographs—but no true keepers. And so we move on from here and continue to wish for other images that we haven’t yet previsualised in the upcoming seven days.

Here is another remote camera photograph. I went very early to the swimming venue this morning to make sure I could get on the catwalk--and also to mount a side remote. The idea is that I would trigger it from above (while shooting with a 400mm lens) and have this camera mounted to the right with a 200mm lens on a high resolution body. Here you can see U.S.A.'s Ryan Lochte pushing off to win the gold medal in the men's 200-meter backstroke with teammate Aaron Peirsol just above him. The arch in these guys bodies never ceases to amaze me. This is a standard remote angle--but one that always yields good results. Speaking of which ...

Well. Yesterday's post turned out to be quite cathartic—it helped flush whatever was holding me back out. I felt calm and collected all day, and the photos just seems to keep coming my way. It's amazing how big of a role your state of mind plays in how you shoot.  In this case, I simply went to the venues with one goal: make one or two images from each—nothing more.  And magically, positions that I had not been looking for prior to this change in mindset opened up right in front of me. This is far from the first time this type of mental shift has happened, but I appreciate it every time it does. My stress level goes down 500% and the quality of the photography tends to go up as a result. I had a total blast today. The shot above is of U.S.A.'s Alexander Artemev. It was the first photograph I made of the day and got me off to a really good start. It was made full frame with a 300mm 2.8 and pre-focused.

Here is Yang Wei again on this final event.  Amazing form and grace. He made it look too easy, and you never saw him sweat.

France's Benoit Caranobe was a big surprise. Apparently, no one was more surprised than he was to receive the Bronze medal—he burst into tears when he found out, although I never got to see that—I was busy with Yang Wei.

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.

Pool photographers work all of the venues - not just the aquatic ones - and generally are members of the numerous wire services that cover the Olympic Games.   Since these wire photographers service numerous clients, they have successfully argued that they should get prime positions reserved for them at all venues - and they often (of course) pick the very best spots in each and every venue.  I have no problem with this (I've never liked it of course given that I've never been part of said pool) and it does make some sense to give these organizations preferential treatment given the number of clients they serve.

The problem is,  over the years the Pool has gotten more an more powerful - and in Beijing, some of the rights that they've been given are just ludicrous.  For example, if you want to shoot from underwater window from which the image above was made, you need to make a request 24 hours in advance in writing.  Once approved, you are escorted down to that position an hour before the event and get set up.  Yet if at any point a "pool" photographer decides to show up, they have the "right" to bump you out of the position without warning.  And given the small size of these windows - you're basically left with nothing to shoot.  So you can see why every time I'd hear the door open to this position - my heart would momentarily stop...