philly

I've got me some serious Olympic fever. Lady (back to blogging!) and I had dinner at Singapore Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant on Friday night and then headed to the streets to check out the festivities in Chinatown on the opening night of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

There were huge crowds of people there watching exhibitions in fencing, rowing, baseball, table tennis, soccer among other events as well as some martial arts and lion dance performances. The opening ceremonies were shown on a jumbotron set up underneath the still being re-painted Chinatown Gate. I can't believe the re-paining of the gate overlapped with the start of the Olympics – really ruined a perfect photo op which will not happen again for a good while.

I've watched a bunch of swimming and a whole lot of Mike Phelps. Unbelievable that he's on track to break Mark Spitz's record 7 golds and 7 world records. I wish they put the soccer on TV during prime time, but oh well. Maybe they'll replay the medal games at a watchable hour down the line.

The NY Times has some incredible coverage. Boston.com's Big Picture photoblog had a great post on the opening ceremonies. I love the 990px wide photos they put up. I hope they'll have more than just the opening and closing ceremonies. And speaking of photography, I've been seeing a ton of Nikons among the formerly Canon-dominated field of sports photography. The D3 seems to have put Nikon back on the map with enough time for pros to get some stick time in preparation of this gigantic event.

And the people who know me a bit know that I have a bunch of photo gear. I'd love to have more (who wouldn't). But just seeing what the best takes along on a non-stop fortnight plus of shooting makes my back ache and my mouth drool at the same time. Laforet is on assignment for Newsweek along with 2 other big timers, Donald Miralle and Mike Powell. All 3 are shooting Canon big bodies. And the pace is so quick to shoot, edit and upload content that all of the lovely EXIF info is left intact on the photos I've peeped so far. Bodies like the 1D MIII, 1Ds MIII, 1D MIIN and exotic lenses like an 800mm f/5.6 are being pushed to the max. Laforet brought all of his tilt-shift lenses too ;)

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