Monday Nov. 22, 2010 Guangzhou, China

Boxing.

I really needed the soundtrack of Rocky in this one.

I'm glad to have a position ring side, though it gets really challenging.

Today, we went to chase a boxer from India, apparently there is this amazing story about her.

Child to farmers, poor family who idolised jacky chan and loved boxing secretly, she took up the sport and did well. Now a mother of twin boys, she's trying to make a come back in the boxing scene.

Copy this link to see the story here by my colleague Eric Talmadge http://yhoo.it/9Xe2Fc

Sometimes, we work as a team where photographer and reporter head out in hunt for the same thing.

In this case, my job was not so much to cover the boxing matches itself but to take photos of a particular boxer for a feature story that Eric was doing.

Sometimes, they say that photography is a very lonely profession.

You meet people and they tell you their life stories in 8 minutes, and you become best friends.

Then you leave and you never meet again.

Sometimes however, you get to work with wonderful people in different countries, focussing on different events from what you are used too. It's great to have a great team to work with. Even if it was just for 4 hours in a day.

Pictures shot on : Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 24-70mm F 2.8

Sunday Nov. 21, 2010 Guangzhou, China

Japanese wrestler not happy about the silver medal

Wrestling.

Ahhh.... You watch it and you cringe.

I on the other hand, think it's really exciting for photos, and if I understand the rules a little better, i'm sure I will appreciate it a lot more than I already do.

There were a few dilemmas to shooting this sport.

Well firstly, you either shoot it from up high in the stands, where you get clean background, of just the mat, or you shoot it with a slightly wider lens like the 70-200mm where you can get flips and feet in the air, or you can do what I like to do, and use a really tight lens like the 400mm and get great facial expressions and squashed noses and ears.

But you can't just have one or the other.

It's always good to have a mixture.

We had a lot of fun shooting wrestling because it gave great shapes and sizes and well, i'm sure it entertained the people on the editing desk a lot because it did sometimes look a bit awkward (think gay men at it) in pictures.

No offense really to gays out there but it was just entertaining seeing the men climbing all over each other with all kinds of expressions. It was GOLD. Certainly broke the monotony of the daily action pictures which we were shooting.

Pictures shot on : Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 400mm F 2.8 and 70-200mm USM IS lens

Downtime

Sorry for the lag in posts as we got extremely busy over the last week at the Asian Games.

It's now over and I am home but will soon follow up on what i've missed out on.

In the mean time, hang tight while I recover from those intense 3 weeks of work.

Will I do this again?

Most definitely.

Singapore Sailing

Congratulations sailors!!!!

Very proud of you... sailing has really moved up since back in the day.

Enjoy your moment and sing your national anthem out loud.

http://asiangames.sailing.org.sg/

Saturday Nov. 20, 2010 Guangzhou China

Taekwondo, Tae Kwon Do, Tae-Kwan-Do

First thing for me to do was to find out which was the "right" way to say it.

Well, at least for the AP style captions, we write it as Taekwondo.

It's quite a dramatic sport and filled with action except that you have to have a bit of luck involved sometimes.

The biggest challenge we face here is having to deal with messy backgrounds, and sometimes we get away with shooting from up high, downwards.

Otherwise, nice tight action will kinda do the trick.. I hope..

Thailand won the gold medal for the men's under 58-kilogram event which was awesome to watch.

Thailand Su Su (fight, fight)

Pictures shot on : Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 300mm F 2.8 and 70-200mm USM IS lens

Overseas Conversations

Last night was nate's birthday and i'm in China covering the Asian Games.

Usually when I call home, nate's first question to me would be about when I was due home.

Last night however, it was different. He was so happy that he had forgotten that I was gone.

Until I asked if he had kept me some cake...

Nate: BUT you're in Chinaaaaahhh

Oh well.

..hmph..

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATE

Today Nate turns 4.

I am a mother of a 4 year old boy with the features of his handsome father, silent thinker also like his dad, and he (nate) has a soul of a 40 year old.

And i'm not complaining.

He's funny for his age and loves to sit and think. He absorbs life and I absorb him.

We celebrated his birthday before I left the country and he is surrounded by heaps of people who love him so much.

I thank God for such a blessing in my life.

I've never ever regretted being a mother and he has instead educated me in life.

It's funny how life comes full circle.

On his birthday celebration a couple of weekends ago, we had one of the best cakes ever made for him.

Mainly because it was made by a very talented woman.

It's a dear friend of mine, Roxanne's mother.

I admire her for her silent strength as a wife, mother and daughter-in-law.

She is so dedicated and does everything with love that spills over and on to you that you will want to be so much like her.

I ....ahem.. on the other hand am not as organised.

In this job that I have, I have no real social life but many understanding friends. (: or so I like to put it.

So anyway, I thought 3-weeks would have been enough to get a caked custom made. That's record early time for me.

Apparently not.

So Aunty Janet chipped in.

She made his favourite disney cars character TOW MATER. A goofy rusty tow truck and it was awesome!!!!!!!

A 3-D cake which weighed about 10-kg and it tasted even better than it looked.

I will always remember that cake... and the love put into making that cake.

Nate was really happy with the company and the celebrations, the next morning, he asked me if he could use my phone to call everyone to come back to his home.

It's really awesome watching nate grow and start to realise things around him, react to people around him as well.

as nate grows another year; I age another

as nate learns to be patient; I learn that patience is hard to learn

as nate learns about love; I learn that love is unconditional

It's amazing how we live parallel experiences even though we are 26 years apart.

Here's to another year.

Happy Birthday NATEY from china.

Friday 19th November, 2010 Guangzhou China

Today I shoot TTN.

TTN is also known as Table Tennis in the AP captions Supplementary language.

There is a strange world of codes. And unless you are apart of the Associated Press team, you will never get to use this. Oh how priviledged we are..

People have code languages like the F-language, (and i'm not talking about the bad one) and well, some have this thing called singlish (apparently it has it's own dictionary now and some of the words have made it into the oxford dictionaries) but we, at the sophisticated AP have abbreviations for every sport.

And the editor has to remember them all.

Good luck crusty, well actually he cheats. he has them all on a list.

ATH - athletics

WTL - weightlifting

SHO - Shooting

SWM - Swimming

BOX - Boxing

TTN - Table Tennis

TEN - Tennis

These are just some from the list but they can never beat the best one here which is BAD for badminton.

Today I cover Table Tennis.

It's the doubles finals.

Just now, we had the mixed doubles. No one really cares about the doubles matches and for some reason, it doesn't seem as prestigious as the singles events. So I decided to make some features from the x-doubles and test out the higher vantage points.

I just had a conversation with Dita, a really good buddy of mine who was covering Shooting and we were speaking online.

Maye: Hey Dit, that was an awesome shot you had, what you covering later?

Dita: I'm still at SHO

maye: (: oh no.

Dita: yes.. you?

Maye: I'm at TTN

Maye: I Think we need a game. For one day all the AP shooters have to speak in supplementary codes. If anyone says the sport out load without replacing it with the code replacements buys beers.

Dita: Yeah.. heheh

Anyway, following that, and now that i'm thinking about it, I had better stay away from too many artsy feature pictures and do some CYA shots.

By the way if you haven't figured it out, CYA = Cover Your Arse also known as the money shot which is universally accepted and normally the slightly safer pictures.

Pix shot on : Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 200mm F 2.8

16th Asian Games Guangzhou China - footnotes

How it all works here:

We're just reaching the halfway mark here in Guangzhou and the team spirit in the AP office is just reaching to awesome level.

When we're all out here in a group where days are long and everyone's kinda famished and lethargic it pays to have good chemistry with everyone pushing everyone on. It's always very important to have a laugh about things. This is such a solid thing to go by when we're out on assignments like that.

So finally I have a little bit of time right now. The most free time i've had for the past 10 days.

So let me try to explain how things work here in Guangzhou.

We (media) live in flats which were built brand new in this area which is called the media village.

There are media working spaces and a big canteen and its next to a bus bay.

You do your work in the media center, which is a stone's throw from the flats and then you walk about a minute to the canteen to eat the food they cook for about 10 yuan a meal. They open 24-hours which caters to our crazy skeds.

Oh and LAUNDRY IS FREE.

So we the AP have rented a container space as an office because we are a big outfit here. There are about 7 scribblers (otherwise known as text reporters) and 8 photographers and 4 technicians as well as 4 tv guys.

We get our assignments each day, for the next. And normally we stick to each sport for 2-3 days. It's a good system this way that we don't keep changing everyday because we take about a day to get into the groove of things here.

So when we get our assignments, we check against our media transport guide which will tell us what bus to take and the departure times (most venues are about 30-100minutes away. Yes very long journeys. Some are as far out as a 2hour drive.

We usually get two sports to cover a day unless you're stuck at weighlifting for a whole day because its far and there is only one bus out and back.

So that's roughly how it works.

Photographers:

We usually use our long lenses when covering sports.

I have with me 3 bodies (i usually carry 2) all CANON gear - AP issue and a couple of lenses.

I use the CANON LENS EF 400mm f2.8 L IS USM lens. It weighs... too much.

Then there is the 70-200mm lens as well.

I use CANON EOS Mark IV bodies which are the best thing CANON has made to date where digital SLRs are concerned after the CANON EOS 5D Mark II

We take our laptops along with us and we have to wear Asian Games issued vests.

There are designated shooting spots for photographers in each venue and in most venues, there are POOL positions.

Meaning the better allocated positions, where photographers are given slightly more room to play around and in that area, we get better vantage points.

These POOL positions are usually reserved for WIRE agencies (ap, reuters, afp, epa and xinhua).

So for the past 3 days, i covered shooting and swimming which are about 15-minutes away from each other, and in swimming, the pool position is along the pool deck.

So that's kinda how it works, or rather how the system goes where media is concerned.

Thursday Nov. 18, 2010 Guangzhou China

The long hours and mealess days have kind of paid off.

We made it to the Ap Images home page.. yes.. the Asian Games.

Today, Tao Li won a gold medal in swimming. She was amazing.

I was shooting from the pool deck and non of us wires got any action photos because for a 50-meter sprint, she hardly came up to breathe.

So proud of her and so proud to be Singaporean for a while.. even if she's chinese import?!

She came up to breathe just for a tiny moment. A tiny tiny moment.... and then she went straight for the kill.

Fantastic.

I tried swimming the butterfly during triathlon training with our swimming coach (back when I was still active in tri races for fun) and we ended up looking more like house-flies.

So Kudos to you Tao Li.

She was so in the zone.

Finally got to meet up with Zac dearie and his big hair, whom i've been waving too from the deck up to the stands where he is usually at.

Always good to see familiar faces when you're overseas.

All my pictures shot on : Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 400mm F 2.8 and 70-200mm USM IS lens

Wednesday Nov. 17, 2010 Guangzhou China

Shooting from 9am to 5pm then its straight to Swimming.

I've been on that beat for the past 2 days, and actually quite liking it. Its about getting into the groove of things.

I will send you a link to my swim pictures because everything has been edited by my boss.

The thing is i'm along the swim deck and after every race, i have a little race of my own to the computer and ingest my pictures which will pop up into my editor's screen and he will do the editing and sending of the pictures to the wire.

That's how the wire services work here. (AP, AFP, REUTERS) So we're running around like mad and someone up in the press tribune is working on our photos to make sure that everything goes out quick.

Awesome isn't it?

I think the whole set up is amazing.

http://bit.ly/cAgepa copy this link

All my pictures shot on : Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 400mm F 2.8 and 70-200mm USM IS lens

Tuesday Nov. 16, 2010 Guangzhou China

Ladies and gentlemen hold on to your seats because we have something super exciting coming up.

SHOOTING.

NOT.

Shooting is a really nice sport i'm sure and I respect all athletes, from any sport.

However photographically speaking, shooting 'shooting' is not all too exciting.

Or so I was told.

And they were right.

There's hardly any action, the athletes are very calm (they have to be because its the nature of their sport... deep concentration, slow and quick decisive moments.)

But still I managed to wing this one.

The good thing about it is that everyone stays in one place and all the movements are the same... which means that you as a photographer will be able to move around the subject and make use of your environment to make pictures.

There was a lot of back lighted subjects and the way to get around it is to sometimes make silhouettes. Not every picture can be a silhouette though.

So anyway, this is my first time shooting the sport and i really want to try shooting some day. (like an air rifle)

It was a good chance to do some features along the way around that sport as well.

Another day.

So far we have been pulling long hours. waking up at 6am each day and sleeping at close to 1am daily.

Not to mention lugging around that 400mm f2.8 lens.. my back is all buggered up now and I. AM . IN . NEED . OF . A . MASSAGE right now.

BLEAH.

All my pictures shot on : Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 400mm F 2.8 and 70-200mm USM IS lens

Monday Nov. 15, 2010 Guangzhou China

Got to cover weightlifting this time round.

I've always loved to watch them doing their thing (not as much as gymnasts though)

There is a moment where their faces cramp up and they grit their teeth.

The wonderful thing is everyone has a different expression. Some funnier than the other.

Most times, they get dramatic and the veins pop out of their necks and from their temples.

The one thing about these photos are to try and capture these dramatic scenes and look out for failure to lift their weights.

The expressions after are also quite priceless.

This year, I got to go up onto the catwalk.

It was a little bit scary if you looked down because everyone is sitting under you and you gotta make sure you don't drop anything.

It does however give you an alternative view and can be quite arty and also great for action shots.

So here's the stuff I managed to get out of the weightlifting series on Monday.

All my pictures shot on : Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 400mm F 2.8 and 70-200mm USM IS lens

The hours

We've been pushing super hour days here.

Start at 7am and end at about 11pm.

Hardly have time for TV or Internet.

Wait.. . we don't have either..

Sunday Nov. 14, 2010 Guangzhou, China

Gymnasts are fantastic people.

Strong, agile and fit.

Shooting gymnastic has always been exciting.

Involves body parts and a lot of timing.

Sorry if there has been a lack of posts or delayed post updates.

China bans blogspot but I'm able to get on because of my office server which goes through all their firewalls.

Will try to push out as many updates as I can but in the mean time, here are some snaps from the women's team gymnastics competition here at the 16th Guangzhou Asian Games.

Shot on: Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 300mm F 2.8 USM IS lens

Best line i've heard here in Guangzhou

China has been winning all the gold medals..

Crusty says: "It's not the Asian Games in China but it's the China Games in Asia!"

Saturday Nov. 13, 2010 Guangzhou, China

Last night I caught a little bit of Gymnastics and man was it a little bit frantic. Only because it was so hard to move around the arena. We can't really move around much and normally we would be able to shoot from within the arena grounds, between each apparatus but apparently the photo organisers here won't allow it. So we just have to make do for now. Will have more gymnastics later and hope to be able to make some nice images now that i'm a little more familiar with the flow of execution over at that stadium. I will also talk a little bit more on technical advantages of shooting with the Canon EOS 1-D Mark IV here at sports events. It's quite awesome really. But that will have to wait till I get back. It's getting quite busy here again. In other news, I smashed the LCD Protective glass cover of one of my Mark IVs here because there is so much movement from venue to venue. Canon has a set up here and they have fixed it FOC and in double time.

Talk about great service... (: Shot on : Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 300mm F 2.8 USM IS lens

The longer the better

I'm talking about lenses for shooting Cricket. So I learnt the harder way.

What were you thinking about?!

In other news, i'm no longer a cricket virgin. Finally had a go at cricket. Will upload a pix or two later if i can otherwise.. click HERE.

Shot on : Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 400mm F 2.8 USM IS lens

Sleepy

Everything is so far from everything else here at the Asian Games in Guangzhou.. Am sleepy but happy.

In the mean time, i'm missing this face. Photo by Joyce Fang.

Friday Nov. 12, 2010 Guangzhou China

It was the opening ceremony of the 16th Guangzhou Asian Games last night. Security is super tight in China, they made everyone gather from 2pm for a 6pm start. I guess it's worse for residents living around the stadium. All of they including hotel guests at the Ritz Carlton had to leave the hotel and homes until the whole event ended at 11pm. It was a whole housing estate (think the whole of Telok Kurau). Yes.. paying all that money for a high end flat in a high end part of town doesn't pay for front row seats at an event next door to you. Anyways, the show was ok and the fireworks were disappointing. I leave you with a photograph which sums up the mood i'm getting from the system here which is robotic. Don't get me wrong, the city is pretty and the people nice but the whole vibe here is a little machine-like.

Shot on : Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, Canon EF 300mm F 2.8 USM IS lens

Accidental tourist

guangzhou TV tower in the background

vincent yu happy

Yesterday, me and Vincent were tasked to go out and look for features around the venue of the 16th Guangzhou Asian Games opening ceremony. Everything here from the main media center which is where we are, is millions of miles away. We took a train over thinking we could drop off as close as possible and walk the rest of the way but found out that all the stations around the venue were shut for security reasons. (read: we have to walk for hours to get where we want to go). So we got out of a station TiYu XiLu and found that there was a bicycle renting station! We decided to go for it! Man it was so good cycling around Guangzhou city, there are bicycle lanes on the street and everyone rides a bicycle so there's no drama involved. I go around town back in Singapore on a foldable bicycle sometimes and it's so convenient. You move around fast and you still get to see what is going on around you. You sweat less, and you feel less tired. We felt like tourists except that we were on assignment. I also had a perfect opportunity to test out my BlackRapid RS DR-1 strap which allowed me to ride the bike and not have stuff falling off me. My Canon Mark IV on one shoulder and the Canon 5D Mark II on the other. Needless to say the bike was nothing like what I have in Singapore with all the fancy parts and in fact this one had a luminous green BASKET on the front! (don't cringe) but it worked well carrying my net-book on it. Because of this simple little thing like renting a bike, my whole work flow was smooth and almost painless. I love it when we get to start out on our assignments on a good note. Tonight's the opening ceremony let's see what happens.

Thursday Nov. 12, 2010 Guangzhou, China

This picture was taken at TiYu XiLu metro station in Guangzhou China.

It's funny because at first glance, it looks like people were practicing their archery out of nowhere.

We were on our way to take some feature photos of preparations for the Opening Ceremony of the 16th Guangzhou Asian Games, which will take place tomorrow Friday.

Shot on : Canon 1D Mark IV, Canon EF 70-200mm F 2.8 USM IS lens

A photo a day - 16th Guangzhou Asian Games

Opening Ceremony at the Youth Olympic Games taken on my Canon Mark III

I'm in Guangzhou for the Asian Games and i've realised that there are so many pictures that will never see the light of day.

Often times we go out on an assignment and we shoot what we need to and along the way, we see pictures that we take for ourselves. Following which, they remain in some dark segment in our hard disk forever. And the more depressing bit is when we stop shooting for fun or for the simple love for photography. Work should never become a daily chore. And we should never ignore our instincts to react and shoot when we see a moment or two. So i'm going to try to make a conscious effort to make more pictures instead of taking pictures.

I'm going to try to blog a photo a day, it may be something i've shot outside of my assignment or an out-take which I haven't moved on the AP wire.

So stay tuned for more and I will try to file as much as I can as often as I can with as much detail as to how/ where and when i've shot these photos. I hope to share as much as I have learnt and am still learning about.

Some of you are wondering what cameras I am using.

I've always been a very happy CANON user and am now using a :

Canon 5D Mark II

Canon 1D Mark III

Canon 1D Mark IV

Most of these photos at the Guangzhou games will be shot with my Mark IV.

Shooting triathlon at the YOG 2010 in August

It's amazing. I've used it at the Youth Olympic Games and my shooting life has never been the same... Yes it is that dramatic.

Go HERE to be inspired by camera technology at its best!