Day 2 - Woman's Freestyle Moguls in the Rain

Today was supposed to be the Mens Downhill, so i left to drive to Whistler at 7 am. I got about half way to Squamish when i heard they had postponed the race, so i made a quick U-turn and returned to the city. As luck would have it, i was right at the U-turn lanes they recently put into the highway. I always thought they were a waste of taxpayer money but they came in handy today. I got back to our Studio in West Vancouver just as Brad and Ian were leaving, so i caught a ride into downtown to make my way to the Main Media Center.

One of the nice things about not being assigned to a specific event at the olympics (other than covering the Whistler athletes when they compete), is that i get to choose what i want to shoot. I checked out the schedule and decided that the women's moguls event was my best option. Jennifer Heil was favored to win the first Gold medal on Canadian soil, so i was looking forward to covering this event. I had lots of time before the event so i figured this would be a good time to explore the Media Center. It is located at Canada Place, and takes up all of the available trade show space. They have a McDonald's and a food court, a bank and store, as well a the transportation hub to get to all of the venues. I checked in at the photo desk and was assigned a locker to store my gear. Each venue has photo lockers, big enough to store a few camera bags and clothes etc. they are about 2 ft by 2 ft by 3.5 ft. At this point i have 3 different lockers around town, One up at cypress, one at Whistler Creekside, big enough for my ski gear, and the one at the main media center.

Eventually i caught an early bus up to Cypress Mountain, to get ready for that evenings event. After experiencing the challenges at the downhill training, i figured i was ready for this. but let me tell you, shooting the Olympics is not all it's cracked up to be. First i had to find the correct bus, i was directed to the cruise ship terminal at Canada place, which is outside the security zone, but this was incorrect, so i wanted to get back into the meadia center to find the correct location. But every time you enter, you have to go through security. They randomly pick you for searches, so of course i got picked. rather than unload all of my bags and pockets, i wanted to just go find my bus on my own, but i figured the security people would not like me refusing to get searched so i had to unload everything. I was dressed for the pouring rain up on cypress so it took while for them to search me, as i had on about 5 layers. and had some keys in my bottom layer. eventually i got through and found my correct bus. After about 45 minutes, we reached the top of Cypress mountain, or at least as far as they would drive us. We got off the bus and had to walk about 1/2km up the hill to another security check. After passing through this one, we walked another 1/2km to get to the media tent. I checked in, dumped my gear in my locker and checked out the site.

After a while i noticed all of the photographers prepping their gear for the heavy rain that was falling. I am used to shooting in the snow where your gear gets wet, but these conditions were something else. I frantically started looking for anything i could find to protect my gear. I eventually found a plastic bag and some tape to try to cover it. but that was not working well, so i got in line to buy a rain poncho from the souvenir stand. All they had left was a small, but i figured it was better than nothing. We were supposed to be in place 1 hour before the event started, so i got all poncho'ed up, grabbed my gear and headed out into the downpour. I wanted to shoot the qualifying run from the side of the course and the finals from the bottom. To get on the course, we needed to have crampons and climb straight up the hill beside the fence. My crampons barely passed inspection because they only cover half of my foot. I was told next time to have full mountaineering ones. As i started to climb, i noticed that due to the lack of snow, it was going to be very difficult to get high enough to shoot over the fence. They only had enough snow for the course and not the side of it, so it sloped off right at the fence. this meant there was no way to get high enough to shoot over the fence. After climbing over half way up the slope, i decided to head back down and beat the others to the finish corral. Another lesson i learned, if you want a good spot, get there early. By the time i got to the bottom there was not front row access. i ended up finding 3 japanese photographers standing together. All were about a foot shorter than i so, i figured i would just shoot over their heads.

All of the Olympic venues are light for TV, at a light level of about 1400 lux which gives you around 1/500 sec at f2.8 at iso800. So with a camera that shoots high ISO you are good to go. Unfortunately the reason they do this is for the TV cameras, which have a tendency to get in your shot at the finish line. so you must choose your location wisely. For the flower ceremony, the photo staff made a strange request. They told all photographers who wanted access to the finish corral to shoot the ceremony, to meet in a certain spot 5 minutes before the end of the competition. What is strange is that this is when the top skiers come down. so with 3 skiers left, i found myself with a front row access to shoot, while most of the others waited to get into the corral for the ceremony. During the Flower ceremony, they all had to kneel down anyways, so i just stayed behind the them on the other side of the barrier and got just as good of shot.

After the event, we had to walk back down to the transportation hub, and wait for 30 minutes in the pouring rain, for the bus back to the media center. You would think they would have more than 1 bus every 30 minutes for the end of the event. In the end Jennifer Heil took home the Silver Medal. Here are some of the shots from that night. To check out more go to