Today’s choice for Picture of the Day was a tough decision. By a hair’s breadth, I’ve chosen Vincent Laforet’s overhead picture from the weightlifting competition, over Donald Miralle’s action picture from badminton (2nd image down, player in yellow). Full disclosure: The deciding factor was that yesterday’s Picture of the Day was a similar type action photo to Miralle’s, so providing visual variety from yesterday to today was the tie-breaker. In this picture, Laforet has captured a celebration by Andrei Rybakou of Belarus as he broke the world record in the men’s 85kg competition. Shooting straight down on a zoom lens at the 73mm focal length he has created a wonderfully graphic celebration image.  Interestingly, I decided to make the crop square, while Vincent saw the picture cropped in two different ways,which you can see on his post. This is an example of how subjective photography can be, with different opinions between photographer, editor, and perhaps, you the reader.

—Simon Barnett, Director of Photography, NEWSWEEK

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

I shot most everything from overhead today, either with the use of remote cameras or by physically shooting from the catwalks. Here is Andrei Rybakou of Belarus winning the silver medal and breaking the world record with an 185 Kg snatch in the men’s 85kg weightlifting competition. This was shot with an overhead remote camera–more on that later… Read the rest of this entry »

Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

Well. Yesterday’s post turned out to be quite cathartic—it helped flush whatever was holding me back out. I felt calm and collected all day, and the photos just seems to keep coming my way. It’s amazing how big of a role your state of mind plays in how you shoot.  In this case, I simply went to the venues with one goal: make one or two images from each—nothing more.  And magically, positions that I had not been looking for prior to this change in mindset opened up right in front of me. This is far from the first time this type of mental shift has happened, but I appreciate it every time it does. My stress level goes down 500% and the quality of the photography tends to go up as a result. I had a total blast today. The shot above is of U.S.A.’s Alexander Artemev. It was the first photograph I made of the day and got me off to a really good start. It was made full frame with a 300mm 2.8 and pre-focused. Read the rest of this entry »