Vincent Laforet’s Blog

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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 hundreds of a second off their performances in times 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. (MORE)

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. (MORE)

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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.

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http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/08/23/t-minus-one/

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 angle. (MORE)