Beyond all the successes and events I shot during 2008, nothing can compare to my 3 weeks in Beijing, China covering the 2008 Summer Olympics. It was my first Olympics and allowed me the chance to try and compete with the worlds best sports photographers. It was a very long, exciting, eye opening trip. Continue reading to see some of my favorite images from my trip.
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Nikon D3, 600mm, 3200iso, f4, 1/1250th
Todays best of 2008 gallery brings us to my favorite dejection/reaction photos of the year. While not as happy and fun as celebration photos it is still very important to capture athletes at their worst.
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Nikon D3, 165mm, 400iso, f5.6, 1/1250th
After a very late evening the prior night it was a tough 7am wakeup call to head over to the BMX finals. Bike racing was certainly a sport right up my alley so I was more than happy to head out there.
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Nikon D3, 135mm, 1600iso, f2.8, 1/1250th
Had the morning off from shooting so I caught up on some sleep and spent time chatting with friends back in the states on instant messenger before heading off to shoot the womens water polo gold medal game between the USA and Netherlands.
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Nikon D3, 400mm, 2000iso, f2.8, 1/1600th
After yesterday where I only had one shoot, and spent the rest of the time at the Great Wall of China, today was payback for my easy day. I shot five different events at five different venues.
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Nikon D3, 80-200mm, 200iso, f8, 1/10th
It was a relatively light day of two events to be covered. Began the day shooting some volleyball. When I arrived at the venue I noticed one of our other photographers there so I left the standard action images to him and attempted to do some blur shots. A lot of people hate blur shots where you don’t have something tack sharp but I was really enjoying the flurry of blurry players jumping and the ball streaking off their hands.
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Nikon D3, 14-24mm, 2500iso, f2.8, 1/1000th
As with most days since the Olympics began I started my day off shooting gymnastics. This time it was the men’s individual all around competition. And once again it was an ass whipping by the China team.
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Nikon D3, 80-200mm, 2500iso, f2.8, 1/1000th
Started by day off with a very healthy breakfast at McDonalds. One good thing about the Olympics is it doesn’t matter if you eat every meal at unhealthy fast food, you won’t gain weight with the amount of running around and work you’re doing.
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The day began with me waking up at 7:55 needing to be at beach volleyball for a 9am USA Match. I threw my clothes on and was out the door at 8:05. I had just missed the shuttle to the media center, where my gear was, so I hopped a cab there since the next shuttle wasn’t until 8:30. When I got there I quickly grabbed my gear and hopped another cab for the 20 minute ride to the venue. While we were driving it began to rain, horray!
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