Mortal Coil

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…