Not much in the way of sporting action today - except chasing athletes around the park.
Monday and start of the last week of the Olympics, but for me it was a day of no sporting action to be captured. Still in the morning things were not quite clear as to what was happening. So to start the day I walked around various venues taking panoramic images of them, just something of myself to remember the London games by.
Suppose at the same time I did manage to see a bit of Field Hockey, Basketball and Handball - but with a 8-15 fish-eye lens it was quite impossible to catch the action from Row Z.
With the journalist making his way to press later in the morning, we decided to head out for the meeting of Finnish Javelin men.. and for me to take the pictures and him to interview. Although, it really ended up with me photographing and him standing around (as one of his colleagues did the story). Then we thought to take in some track cycling - so he could a story about that.. but no luck there either as a txt message sent us to interview a Norwegian javelin thrower Andreas Thorkildsen. Another one of those reports/photos we have done that the other Finnish press haven't noticed or worked on. Although the Thorkildsen interview did take few days to work out - possibly due to him only arriving to London so late (Monday early afternoon, if he is to be believed).
As I was departing the media work room, I needed to have a visit to the 'little boys room'. And as the toilets here are not separated that much between female/male.. so as I walked out of the toilet.. who did I bump into (almost literally).. it was Serena Williams.. who was heading for her press conference in the room next door. Just goes to show that we don't only see athletes on the track/court... sometimes we see them in less usual places. And no - I did not take pictures of my chance meeting in the toilet..
It has been fun to look at how different countries deal with media in these events - for some it is a big round table meet with journalists shouting questions, others have a short 'common interview' and then move on to individual interviews.. and same goes for photos. Sometimes image opportunities are directed, sometimes we just 'grab' the athletes and take them to be photographed elsewhere.. But somehow we always get what we want...
These little shoots gave me enough to edit for the afternoon, and with nothing 'exciting' happening in the evening - I took an early train out of Stratford at 7.30pm (yeap- that's an early evening for me!).
Off to Epping again - kebab-dinner and talked on the phone with my wife for about an hour while sitting in the car at the parking lot.
Little more happenings in the evening as I was just about ready to go to sleep, the journalist decides to start txt:ing me and wonders whether we could make to Weymouth for Tuesday mid-day, so there I am left searching online for various options for traveling couple of hundred miles to the South coast. But with the 9am photo-shoot for me - there is no chance for us to make it there, just goes to show that a little forward planning is sometimes needed. If I had only known this on Monday morning - the journey would have been possible for us. But maybe the late night dinner with fellow journalists made Weymouth an appealing prospect???