Photograph by Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

I’ve got to confess something:  I slept through my first Olympic assignment yesterday.  Yep, IT happened.  I got done completing my first blog at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning, after a day that had lasted 22 hours. I knew I was in bad shape as soon as my head hit the pillow, because my wake-up call was set for 7 a.m. I never heard the alarm go off. Luckily I didn’t miss anything terribly important.   I also knew that I had to photograph the women’s fencing match that evening that the U.S. eventually swept all of the medals in, and I would have been pretty worthless on one hour of sleep anyway. At least that’s my excuse.   Why am I telling you this?  Well, just to admit that IT does happen.  And because we’re supposed to give you a peak “behind the curtain” in this blog. So far I’ve slept a total of 7 hours in the past two days, and that will be pretty consistent for the next two weeks.  That being said, you just better be able to count the amount of times IT happens on one hand during your entire career. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been ridiculously difficult to access my e-mail let alone my blog (or any blog for that matter) in China – they’re all blocked.

Particularly in my hotel it seems.   Every VPN I set up works for a day and then gets blocked – same goes for utilities that I download to work with my web browser(s).   I’m convinced that there’s some Chinese ISP technician (or worse the Chines Gov’t) that  I’m playing an endless game of Whac-A-Mole with – and I’m on the receiving end and losing!

So I apologize for not getting back to many of your comments.  I’ll keep trying to figure out a way – or at least to stay ahead.   I am reading every single one of your comments as they come to me as e-mail  – and BIG thanks for the encouragement, and kind words.  Keeps me going… when I get a chance to both connect and have a little time – I’ll fire off some responses.  So keep them coming – they’re not going unnoticed!

I’ll never take my “internet freedom” for granted again.
Vince

Our photographer, Vincent Laforet, had never shot fencing before today. Even though he fenced as a youngster, he’d never, until today, pointed his camera at the sport. I’ve selected this picture as Picture of the Day as an example of a sports photographer seeing the “bigger picture” and taking a visual step back in order to make a superb photograph. The picture itself is of the type that any amateur could potentially shoot—it’s shot on a short lens of a similar focal length to the point and shoot cameras that all of us own. In that regard, it’s an achievable image for many of us—it is not utilizing costly super telephoto lenses that many sports pictures necessitate. The success of the image is in the details.  It’s perfectly composed where the eye is drawn to the action first, and is then naturally allowed to absorb the entire scene. There is a discreet, but important positioning of the Olympic rings in the bottom left, which gives the picture a sense of time and place. This too, is an action picture. Note the timing of the image, where the attitude of the fencers’ bodies is captured at a precise peak moment (imagine if you will, the fencers in a “non-moment”—the image would immediately die a boring death.) And lastly, the background is kind too. Nothing distracting, nothing superfluous, just a dark canvas with a strip of lights to bring it to life.—Simon Barnett, Director of Photography, NEWSWEEK