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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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)

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

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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 sever 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.

And today was the first time that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

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“In my selection for Picture of the Day, by Vincent Laforet, you see a wonderful version of the podium picture, showing the American beach volleyball duo of Misty May-Treanor (right) and Kerri Walsh as they enjoy their moment of gold-medal glory. Adding to the dramatic quality of the picture is the wonderfully dense color palate, which is the result of the heavily overcast cloud conditions of the day. It’s perhaps not the most technically challenging picture Vince has made, but it is a moving and memorable photograph of athletic accomplishment nonetheless.”—Simon Barnett, Director of Photography, NEWSWEEK

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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.

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

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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. (MORE)