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, 600mm with 1.4 convertor (850mm), 5000iso, f5.6, 1/250th
So 2008 is in its final month so I figured what better way to remember the great year than by throwing together several best of 2008 galleries. I plan to do several in these last few weeks of the year. I will start it off with my favorite celebration photos of the year.
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Nikon D3, 400mm, 1600iso, f2.8, 1/1250th
After 3 weeks of working myself to the bone we come to the final two days of the Olympics. Myself along with numerous other photographers I have been speaking to are just plain burned out. It has been a totally amazing experience that I am incredibly thankful to have been a part of but I am more than ready to come home.
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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, 14-24mm, 400iso, f5.6, 1/1250th
I started my day off by spending over an hour backing up images to my LaCie 500gig external hard drive since my macbook pro was down to less than a gig of memory. Due to the time it took to transfer everything I ended up missing my morning shoot of women’s triathlon. Oh darn!
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, 80-200mm, 400iso, f8, 1/1600th
My first shoot of the day was women’s field hockey. I wasn’t excited to shoot it and it ended up being one of the worst events I’ve shot since coming to Beijing. It would have been better had I brought my 600mm but with only a 400mm (on a full frame camera) it just wasn’t a good situation. Harsh light and cluttered backgrounds did nothing to help my cause. Below are the only two shots that weren’t horrific….even they aren’t anything to brag about.
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