Sochi Olympics, Day 18: Wrapping Up for the iPad

Feb. 23rd, 2014

I started writing my blog from Sochi when opening ceremony was going on in Adler. There is some symmetry in the fact that I am writing this last chapter (from here) as the fireworks light the sky during the closing ceremonies.

This was my seventh Olympics and I simply love doing them. For numerous reasons. Although the excitement of the first games is gone and I am much more “profes­sio­nally” oriented than I was in my first games, this is always the assignment I look forward to doing a lot.

This time I covered a limited amount of venues (cross-country, biathlon, ski jumping and ice-hockey), but on the other hand it was nice to concentrate properly and not rush to a new thing every day. I am a profes­sional, so I have to first and foremost serve my client. Do what they ask me to do.

I met lots of old friends from the previous games. Made new friends. Encoun­tered a totally different Russia I had known before. Was positively surprised with lots of things.

Lot’s of highlights perso­nally. The moment (which I described in an earlier post) when I met Sami Jauho­järvi the day after the victory was one of those things which do stay with you.

Another funny — small, insig­ni­ficant but funny — moment was when I was covering hockey. Sitting by the rink shooting the warm-up when Teemu Selänne greets me from the ice. I guess I have earned my position as a senior sports photographer…

One of the absolute highlights perso­nally was meeting Dave Burnett and working one morning next to him. Reminded him about our first encounter in Athens and we had some laughs together. The nicest of guys. Probably one of the greatest photo­graphers alive. Fifteen years my senior and pushing really hard. No compro­mises what so ever.

More about this later, I hope. The “i‑love-me” ‑image on the right of us portrays me like a bloody hamster… I don’t usually do this kind of stuff, but you can see in my stupid grin that it was morning I will always remember.

IPad publication

As some of my Finnish readers do know, we published an iPad App about a month ago. Now we are working on a publication from these games and it is scheduled to come out in about two weeks. Based around my experiences as I have described them in my posts, but lots of additional chapters on equipment, what to carry, what to do, what NOT to do, working with remotes, working with panoramics, workflows I have used, the exotic equipment I came across while in here, etc.

Not to mention the pictures I have shot in these games — majority of which haven’t been published yet.

Including all the panoramic images I have shot during the past three weeks.

One thing I have done exten­sively during the past weeks is think about the workflows and techniques one has to master in the games to come. As the daily print is fading and we are rapidly changing to touch devices (commonly referred to as “Post PC-era”). I’ve tested workflows, shooting techniques… thought about the division of work and how to train journa­lists from the legacy background to colla­borate in this.

Because, face it: our primary platform in Rio will not be paper anymore. It is the web and more impor­tantly, the touch devices.

This is something I most probably will discuss in this coming publication as well.

So basically the publication will be about a lot of things which I at least find extremely interesting — and I should think that anybody interested in sports and sports photo­graphy on this level might as well.

You might want to check it out. You can load the app for free now and you’ll get a push notification when we publish it. My estimate is about two weeks.

Heading home

I head home where I have a full ONE free day before the Lahti Ski Games where I will be giving an intense sports photo­graphy workshop to the photo­graphy students of Lahti University of Applied Sciences. Looking forward to it — last year we had a really great course and I have remained in contact with many of the students.

I won’t try to summarize my feelings in couple of lines. Basically the feeling is just mixed: it was a great experience, I learned a lot… but I’m dying to go home.

I tell you more in the iPad pub in two weeks.