May 2008

Olympic ideal: swifter, higher, stronger

The athletes going to the Beijing Olympics this summer aren’t the only ones who’ve been preparing to be at the peak of their abilities during the events in China. Mike Stanton caught up with the global agencies Getty Images and Reuters as they put the final touches to their plans to cover “the biggest show on earth”.

Six different angles of Justin Gatlin winning the men's 100m gold medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

It takes about 10 seconds to win the final of the men’s 100m Olympic track final; and, theoretically, it takes about 10 more to put a picture of the winner on a website based on the other side of the globe. The world that digital technologies have created is one where the clients of the major photo agencies demand speed, but not at the expense of quality or value for money. Newspapers, magazines and websites don’t just want a picture of the winner bursting through the finishing line, or a boxer throwing the knockout punch. They also want ‘atmosphere’, dozens of different and inventive angles and, alas, plenty of shots of the losers to satisfy each nation’s thirst to apportion blame in defeat.

To achieve all of this takes time, money and an Olympic-sized effort, and the bare statistics only tell half the story. An estimated 1,300 photographers have been accredited for this year’s Games, with around 300 allowed into the main stadium for the opening ceremony on 8 August. Getty Images and Reuters, along with AP and AFP, started their planning for the Beijing Games not long after the flame died down in the Olympic Stadium in Athens in 2004.

A good portion of that effort has been put into working together, and with the Beijing organising authorities, to set up a seamless and reliable communications network that's capable of linking the photographers shooting at all 31 venues, through the editors and the press centre, to their distribution hubs and on to their clients.

Ken Mainardis, formerly of Reuters, now director of photography for major events at Getty Images, told CPN that the planning for Games is beginning earlier and earlier. “We’ve already started working with the London organisers (for 2012),” he says. “Broadcasters go in so early. In the old days, we might roll up and hope that there would be enough spots for us, only to find that the best places had been taken by TV. Now we work with broadcasters and organisers to reserve the right number of positions for our photographers. We can’t just go in there at the last minute and get remote positions, underwater positions in the pools, etc.”

The men’s marathon race at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

The planning process for agencies changed when the industry moved to digital technologies. They now spend much of their time on IT issues. The network that's been built in Beijing is comparable to that used by the TV stations. Photographers can take their shots in any venue and immediately plug into an Ethernet cable to send the images to editors in the press centre. It has to be cable as photographers at big sporting events can’t send images securely by wireless these days, partly because there is so much interference. “When I was working for Reuters at the 1998 World Cup wireless was possible,” says Mainardis. “But by the Athens Olympics there were 80,000 people in the stadium with mobile phones and the possibility of working wirelessly had gone, maybe forever.”

Workflow

When a photographer went to the Games in the analogue era they were mostly concerned about taking the pictures. Now they also have to think about workflow. Kevin Coombs, pictures production editor at Reuters, is responsible for setting up the agency’s workflow at the Olympics. He is a photographer and picture editor, and the interface between the photo teams and the technical department.

He takes a realistic approach to the challenges faced by the agencies and says that each Games throws up different obstacles. It could be simply coping with the transport system in the city, and getting the photographers to the venues on time, or it could be dealing with the local teams of workers across different cultural traditions. But Coombs’s priority for Beijing is to make sure the agency’s clients receive the best quality images, and that means putting workflow systems in place. Modern workflows allow agencies like Reuters to distribute 500 to 1,000 images a day to clients.

Reuters’s editors trackside at the Athens Olympics.

“One of the main challenges we have is managing the thousands of images taken by the photographers,” says Coombs. “The pictures feed straight into our specially-built Panicon remote editing system so that editors in the venues can create a manageable package for the client.”

The networks will be tested and all eventualities weighed up, but the unexpected always happens, he says, and that’s when the experience of the people on the ground really kicks in. “The Olympics is a difficult working environment and there are always going to be unknown problems,” he says. And Coombs will spend time troubleshooting from his base in the press centre – anything from broken equipment to finding ways to carrying out ideas that the photographers come up with on the spot.

The shooters

Mainardis is about to visit Beijing for the seventh time since 2005. He will go to all 31 venues and be able to stand in the positions that the photographers will stand in during the Games to check backgrounds. Around the end of June, the photographers will receive their assignments detailing where they should be and when for all 17 days. They will spend about a week before the opening ceremony going through a ‘dress rehearsal’ and shooting images to go with the build-up stories run by newspapers.

British athlete Paula Radcliffe drops out of the marathon race in Athens in 2004.

Many of the photographers are experts, not just in sports photography, but also in particular sports. But Mainardis says that keeping photographers fresh is key to getting the strongest possible images. “Apart from the ‘specialists’, we rotate the photographers around the venues, so they have the chance to do something different,” he says. “They also push each other. If one day someone comes up with an idea, the next day someone else wants to push it even further. There’s a lot of competition; after all, this is the pinnacle of a sports shooter’s career. So many come with ideas they keep to themselves.”

The way agencies cover huge events like the Olympics is highly organised and the photographers each have their role in the overall strategy.

“At events like the Olympics, stills photographers are more like TV camera operators,” says Mainardis. “They each have a specific assignment and what you don’t want is for them to shoot everything that happens in front of them, otherwise the editors would drown under a barrage of images.”

Equipment

Both Getty Images and Reuters photographers will be using Canon cameras at the Beijing Games. Coombs says: “The quality of the digital cameras these days allows the photographer a little more leeway as the picture can be cropped more, but it still takes a highly trained person to nail the moment. If you compare the images from the Olympics in LA, through to Barcelona, Sydney and Athens, the key moments will be more or less the same.”

Photographers at the Athens Olympics.

Mainardis says that Getty Images shooters will carry about four Canon EOS-1D Mark III camera bodies and some an EOS-1Ds Mark III for capturing portrait shots. Most of the lenses in the Canon L-series will be used, from the EF14mm f.2.8L II USM through to the EF600mm f/4L IS USM lens.

How the men’s 100m track final will be covered
Getty Images is taking a team of 48 photographers to the Beijing Games. About 14 of them will cover the men’s 100m track final: from low head-on and pictures from the in field to pan images and elevated shots. Someone is also assigned to the job of following the winner round the track. On top of that there are the 20 or so remote cameras. Ethernet cables will be attached to these cameras while most of the photographers will take the card out of the camera and download to a laptop next to their position. These images will then be spooled automatically down the cable. All the cables in a venue end up at an aggregate switch connected by a fibre-optic network to the press centre where the editors are located. Getty Images will assign about six or seven editors to the 100m final. They will receive about 2,000 to 2,500 images from this single race (they will have to deal with around 14,000 images from the opening ceremony). There will be one main editor for the final. The challenge for that editor is to make a story of about 50 frames from the images taken by all 14 photographers and the remotes. The first frame the editors will look for in the 100m is the low, head-on shot as the winner crosses the line. That image will be selected in a matter of seconds. Someone else will Photoshop the image, and caption info will be added along with metadata and address information. From being shot by the photographer to leaving Beijing would take about 90 seconds. The pictures will then be sent to the Getty Images Data Centre in Seattle, USA, where they will be distributed to its clients. This stage of the process might take another two and a half minutes depending on where the client is and what kind of IT infrastructure they have. It will take about four minutes from the men’s 100m winner crossing the line to a client in Western Europe or North America receiving the images.

How the men’s 100m track final will be covered

Getty Images is taking a team of 48 photographers to the Beijing Games. About 14 of them will cover the men’s 100m track final: from low head-on and pictures from the in field to pan images and elevated shots. Someone is also assigned to the job of following the winner round the track. On top of that there are the 20 or so remote cameras. Ethernet cables will be attached to these cameras while most of the photographers will take the card out of the camera and download to a laptop next to their position. These images will then be spooled automatically down the cable.

All the cables in a venue end up at an aggregate switch connected by a fibre-optic network to the press centre where the editors are located.

Getty Images will assign about six or seven editors to the 100m final. They will receive about 2,000 to 2,500 images from this single race (they will have to deal with around 14,000 images from the opening ceremony).

There will be one main editor for the final. The challenge for that editor is to make a story of about 50 frames from the images taken by all 14 photographers and the remotes.

The first frame the editors will look for in the 100m is the low, head-on shot as the winner crosses the line. That image will be selected in a matter of seconds. Someone else will Photoshop the image, and caption info will be added along with metadata and address information. From being shot by the photographer to leaving Beijing would take about 90 seconds.

The pictures will then be sent to the Getty Images Data Centre in Seattle, USA, where they will be distributed to its clients. This stage of the process might take another two and a half minutes depending on where the client is and what kind of IT infrastructure they have. It will take about four minutes from the men’s 100m winner crossing the line to a client in Western Europe or North America receiving the images.