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Photos from London 2012 Olympics: Day 3 – Olympic Park
The big gig is here. Despite many weeks and months of hand-wringing about expected meltdowns in London’s transport system, fears of a security catastrophe, and the shambolic ticketing website – of which your author has been a vocal critic – in the end, the twin factors of Mitt Romney sticking his foot in it, together with Danny Boyle’s bonkers and brilliant Opening Ceremony meant that most of London collectively decided to park the cynicism for a while and get behind the Games.
Speaking personally, we did reasonably well on ticket allocation. We were allocated Men’s Boxing Final in the initial lottery last year, got given Men’s Basketball Final tickets by a very considerate but absent friend in the last week, and managed to score, by persistent refreshing and the occasional head smacked against the desk, both Men’s Preliminary Round Hockey tickets and ground pass tickets to the Olympic Park.
It was those last Park tickets that actually came first chronologically, which was handy as it allowed us to have a look around the site without any pressure to be in any of the venues at a particular time. Photographing the Park was a funny beast; it’s all so massive that you are tempted to just do panoramas the whole time – but the volume of people in-shot all the time makes this a complicated prospect. So I mostly settled for detail shots rather than sweeping landscapes. We are back in the Park this Friday for the hockey so I hope to revisit some of these.
Olympic Stadium and ArcelorMittal Orbit
ArcelorMittal Orbit, Olympic Park
Wildflowers along the canal, Olympic Park
Nicole Cooke MBE being interviewed by the BBC, Olympic Park
R U N, Copper Box, Olympic Park
Norway Fans, Olympic Park
Storm Gathering over the Basketball Arena, Olympic Park
Park Live East Screen, Olympic Park
Wind Turbines at Sunset, Olympic Park
Sunset reflected on the Water Polo Arena, Olympic Park
More to come…
Timelapse videos: Enough already.
This might be just sour grapes – after all I have never gotten it together to actually buy or make a timelapse motion control rig – but I reckon the internet has enough timelapse videos now.
There is nothing technically wrong with them. The creators deserve kudos for the time, energy and technique put into capturing all their timelapses – something which by its very definition is a time-consuming and laborious exercise. Some of them are great showreels for their creators.
But here’s the thing: they all seem to blend in together after a while. If you keep up with photography blogs or websites, you know what I am talking about, I feel sure. Every video seems to feature some combination of the following:
- Cityscapes (bonus points for river traffic in harbour cities)
- Landscapes (bonus points for moving stars and/or aurora borealis)
- Stirring piano music (must be earnest and if possible contain grandiose string sections) *
- Suspiciously uniform two-metre horizontal travel (blame the dollies)
- Tilt-shift (optional extra)
- Vimeo (well where else would you put it, duh)
I am ready to see someone do something new in the world of timelapse videos. How can this already-stagnating format be invigorated?
*I swear all of the timelapse videos in the last year have used the same music, but it is so generic that it is impossible for the human brain to recognise it when heard repeatedly.
Mortal Coil 