Thought I would do a little post with some of the news work I’ve been doing over the past week or so.
The big news was the return of solo round-the-world sailor Jessica Watson, after her record breaking 210 days at sea, unassisted, she became the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe. Also in the headlines was the latest scandal to rock the NSW state Labor party. After a Channel 7 reporter broke a story about transport minister David Campbell’s private visits to a men’s bathhouse, the minister resigned, forcing Premier Kristina Keneally to again weather a storm of criticism from the press and the public about the seemingly never-ending troubles in the NSW state Labor party. Superstar female sportsperson Ellyse Perry who excels at both soccer and cricket, came home with the World Twenty20 trophy, and Cate Blanchett got behind the NSW Premier Kristina Keneally for the announcement of a new arts precinct for Sydney. More photos after the cut.

A couple of posts ago I mentioned this Billabong ad featuring new dad Robbie J Walker. At the time I didn’t have the artwork to share, but thanks to Woody at Billabong I now have the file. This ad went to print in the current issue of Transfer magazine and New Zealand Snowboarder. This is one of those shots that at the time we shot it, we thought it was pretty cool and a lot of fun to set up and shoot, but I didn’t see it as an ad. Now after seeing it in print as a double page spread I like it a lot. It’s interesting that I’ve had a lot of comments from people telling me how much they like this shot as well. It’s weird how sometimes photos that you take don’t instantly grab you, but then somehow, almost a year after it was shot and it appears in print, it seems so different. Guess that says a lot for how much time is spent looking at images on a computer screen. I’d probably like a lot more of my shots if I printed them big right away. Also a big congratulations to Robbie and his lovely girlfriend Alice on the news of the birth of their first child.

Just found out yesterday that one of my shots from the Winter Olympics made the cover of Italy’s Snowboardmag. The shot is of gold medalist Shaun White reacting after taking the gold medal in the men’s halfpipe finals.
There’s also a bunch of shots I took during the men’s and women’s halfpipe events inside the magazine. One of my favourite shots from the pipe is of Torah bright doing a huge first hit method during the practise session, and it got a nice double page run, as well as a few other fav’s.
I was most interested to see that they had used a jube (jubilation) shot on the cover. I would say that’s pretty unusual for an action sports magazine, but hey, I’m not complaining!
Few more page layouts from the mag after the cut.

Torah Bright, huge first hit method during practise.

Scotty Lago, bronze medalist.

Peetu Piiroinen, silver medalst.

Shaun White - loves the jubo.

The new issue of Transfer Snowboard magazine is out and although I don’t have much editorial content in this issue, I do have three ads.
There is a Billabong double page of Robbie Walker, A Red studio portrait I shot of Nate Johnstone two days before deadline, and an Anon double page of Andy Lloyd.
I haven’t shot anywhere near as much snowboarding as I would have liked in the past 12 months, but stoked to see a couple of ads in the mag. I don’t have a low res of the Robbie ad yet, but will post it when I get it.

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The men’s and women’s halfpipe competiton of this Winter Olympics would have to have been the most talked about and anticipated events of the entire games. The press conference for the U.S snowboard halfpipe team was held in a 300 seat conference room, and was packed full of journalists, photographers and television crews from all around the world. There’s no question that having somebody like Shaun White competing has helped bridge the gap and make the Olympics watchable for the “X-Games/energy drink generation” and given it some credibility back. First up was men’s halfpipe, and given that the previous week it had rained on Cypress Mountain enough to wash pretty much all of the snow away, it was amazing there was even a pipe there to be ridden. Unbelievably againsts all the odds, the pipe building team at Cypress, headed up by Steve Petrie, pulled together a world class pipe when the world’s media had a magnifying glass on the event, and more importantly the condition of the playing field.
Men’s qualifying and finals was a somewhat surreal experience. I positioned myself at the top of the pipe right below Shaun’s first hit. I had watched him in practice and knew that it would be a good spot to get a few images and then move down to the bottom of the pipe for the finals. I also wantyed to be in a good position to capture the Aussies. Ben Mates, who is competing in his second games, and the newcomer Scotty James. Matesy made us all proud and advanced through to the semi finals – a first for an Australian male halfpipe rider!
All the venues at this Olympics that have snow “on the ground” require photographers to wear crampons (ice climbing spikes) to access any of these on snow shooting areas. In all my time shooting snowboarding, I have never had to wear Everest issue ice climbing spikes to hike a halfpipe. Uncomfortable, but you do what you have to do to get the shots.
In all the venues I’ve visited during this games, I have never seen so many photographers at one single event. I soon realised that this event, men’s halfpipe, was the event of the games – no question. There would have been at least 200+ photographers at the bottom of the pipe alone for the finals. It was mayhem.
Second day of the pipe was the ladies and for Australia it meant that we had two riders who were almost guaranteed to go top ten – that in itself is a big deal for our little non-winter sport country, Holly Crawford and Torah Bright. Holly was riding really stylishly and going large in practice, and Torah’s technical tricks such as her switch backside 720, were also looking great in practice. These girls were in form.
I have to hold back the good shots from the pipe as there will be a few going to print in the mags.
I also need to thank the legendary Sports Illustrated photographer Robert Beck for giving me a Clif Bar while we were lodged in our pipe positions for 8 hours. I didn’t realise that once in position on the pipe we weren’t allowed to move-for the whole competition, which meant eight hours in the one spot, and I had made the rookie mistake of not taking up water, food or sunglasses. Beck is a legend and was kind enough to force me to take one of his bars. I paid him back a couple of days later, and it was great to chat with someone of his experience who is just so down to earth and friendly. Top bloke!

Ok so I’m starting to catch up here. Got about six hours sleep last night and I feel like a new person. There are some great events coming up in the next few days and there have been some brilliant moments in the past few. I’m still behind a bit with my posts, but I will get there!
I have also been photo blogging daily for Mountainwatch.com along with fellow Aussie photographer Jake McBride and you can check it out here. In this post are images of Dale Begg-Smith’s silver medal at the moguls and the men’s and women’s snowboardcross along with some shots from the halfpipe training.

I’ve been trying to do this post for at least four days now. Time is not something that is readily available when you’re shooting an Olympic Games. I’ve spent the last week constantly on buses between venues and walking from drop off point to security, then more walking, then a shuttle bus, then more walking – fast walking, trying to get to a good spot as fast as possible. The buses in theory are probably a good place to get some of these blog posts done, but then again they are one of the few chances to get some sleep. Today I fell asleep with a half full cup of coffee in my hand – Tim Horton’s, your coffee clearly isn’t strong enough.
The games are dominated by the big photo agencies, Getty, Reuters, Assocociated Press, and Agence France Presse. These agencies get all the best positions at every event reserved for them, they have card runners constantly collecting their memory cards and running them back to pictures editors to get the shots on the wire before the event has even finished. For all the other photographers it’s a free-for-all. There are limited positions and for the most part, the angle or the shot from those positions isn’t clean and you are squeezing in with 20-30 other people trying not to hit the guy in front on the head with your 400mm lens (sorry to the dude from The Oregonian, or whatever newspaper you were from, it wont happen again!) It forces you to look for a different shot, and that is a damn good thing. It’s exciting hearing 30 cameras’ motor drives chattering away like some crazy summer insect on steroids, it’s cool to talk shop with photographers from all around the globe, it’s great to try to teach newspaper guys how snowboarding works, and even better when they start showing you the shots on their camera, clearly stoked they’ve made a nice frame.
Here’s a bunch from the opening ceremony and the first couple of days of competition after that. Let’s call this part 1!

Ok so day two of competition is officially over, it’s almost 1am and I’m just getting a chance to think about a blog update with photos that I took four days ago. So far, the Olympics have been pretty amazing, but to be honest I reckon I’ve been so tired that sometimes I just have to stop and look around, and it’s only then that I realise I’m in the middle of something so great that I don’t have any scale by which to measure it.
In the past few days I’ve witnessed so many incredible things that I can’t possibly put into words in one short blog entry.
I was invited to a fancy Australian team welcoming party held by the Australian Olympic Commitee where I got to see some of my snowboarder mates in a different light – as representatives of our country, as Olympians. It’s hard not to get a little tear in the eye with pride!
I got to go to another fancy party, on the same night, hosted by Nikon and Canon for the 700 or so accredited photographers.
I’ve shot about 300 press conferences. Well I’ve shot about 15, but you know what I mean.
I’ve geeked out on the sheer amount of camera equipment hanging off each and every photographer here, and I smile everytime I see Nikon outgunning Canon by at least two to one, maybe even more. This is Nikon’s games – no question!
All this prior to the opening ceremony. The games haven’t even begun. (well they have, but not on this blog yet!)
Oh, and I got my first page one sport photo in The Australian newspaper!
Here’s some photos prior to the opening ceremony (after the cut).