It’s up! Finally, the YOG display at Suntec Convention Center is in its final stages of being dressed a few hours ago. This is much bigger than the one at the Youth Olympic Village.
The exhibition is at Level 3 of the Convention Center and will finally be opened to the public tomorrow. Just in time for the start of the Games.
I dropped by earlier to get a few shots of the final work in progress. And again, the images displayed were breathtakingly huge! Kinda fun looking at how big the pictures can go. Especially the 2-story high banners.
The display will only be up throughout the duration of the Games so quick, you only have 2 weeks to have a look!
Credits time! These were the great people who made all this possible:
Curator – Singapore Philatelic Museum
Exhibition Design – Claire and Barbara, Intuitive Studios
Graphic Design – Kelley and her team, The Press Room
Imaging – Yau Digital Imaging
AV Presentaton – Dany and his team, Intuitive Films
Builder – Desmond and his team, City Neon
and of course,
Photography – Eulee, assisted by Joel and Liz, Photography By Eulee
Finally, we get to see the inside of the display at the Olympic Village. Here are the few images taken early today. The pictures I have taken are at the main entrance..the fencing and taekwondo action shots and those on top of the columns.
You’ll be able to see more when the exhibit at Suntec is opened to the public in a few weeks’ time.
Entrance to the YOG exhibit
Entrance to the YOG Exhibition
The YOG exhibit
The YOG exhibit
The images I took on top of each column
The images I took on top of each column
One of the many torches on display
The Olympic Spirit
And the people behind the scenes:
Claire
Barbara
And Joel who assisted me a few times, including this modeling shot
For more information on the images at the entrance of the exhibit, see this post.
It’s finally up! The first batch of images I shot for the YOG exhibition is up at the YOG Olympic Village at NTU. This is a smaller compared to the one in Suntec in August. Not sure when it’ll be opened to the public but that’ll definitely be before the start of the Games. Meanwhile, I had a good look at the use of my images at the Village’s display and well……I’m happy.
Visitors to the display will be greeted by fencers and taekwondo exponents at the entrance. The raw images from the fencing and taekwondo shoots are below.
Fencers in mid-action
Taekwondo exponents
For both sports, there was absolutely no way to pose them as we needed the action sequence. So we let them do the thing, and let the camera and lights rip! Now here’s the catch, we needed the highest resolution we can get from a DSLR as the images will be life-size, hence the 5D Mk2. But we also needed the speed of the 1D Mk2. Also, we couldn’t use too much strobe power as we needed the fast recycling time. So all the while I was timing my shots, using all the experience I can muster to anticipate action and pray! Why did we need strobes? Well for obvious reasons, light levels were way too low to freeze motion indoors. But the important things was, we wanted it to feel like a studio shot, with good lighting. It’s not enough to have grainy, blurry and flat pics. Of course continuous lights would be great and I used modeling lights on some of the sports but fences and taekwondo need a lot of space to move hence a lot of lighting power. And I don’t have 600W hotlights at my disposal at that time.
So in the end, what would visitors to the exhibition see?
Entrance to the YOG Exhibition
Entrance to the YOG Exhibition
And to show it’s a full size image…
Me and the display
Unfortunately the public will not be able to see the display at the Olympic Village but do watch out for the one in Suntec and let me know what you think of the images! For more images of the exhibit at the Village, click here.
Check out this footage of me in action…..all 3s of it courtesy of Liz who assisted me in this shoot. This happened yesterday as we were wrapping up the last bit of photography for the YOG. You should’ve seen me telling the gymnast to go as slow as possible so my 5D Mk2 and lights can catch up. If only she could defy gravity and the laws of momentum…my life would be so much easier.
The idea was to get a series of shots to superimpose them onto a life-sized panel. I don’t know how that will turn out. We’ll have to wait and see when the YOG exhibition opens.
A second with the gymnastics and disaster struck! Just as we were ready to start, one of the coaches dragged a mat across the cables, pulling the light down. Ouch! It was setup for the rings so they were pretty high up, 3m maybe. And the light came crashing down from that height. My heart dropped about the same height too. The damage? A cracked light, but thankfully still working and a semi-circular reflector. The reflector was really soft, which is probably a good thing: it cushioned the impact and made it easier to bend back to shape. Here’s what they look like:
The imperfect one on the left, after some work on it
The cracked light
I’ll probably have to send the light in to have it checked out, else, it’ll gaffer tape all the way.
En Garde, Prete, Allez….it’s a good thing I had Joel to assist me today. At least as a fencer he was able to communicate what Claire and I had in our minds to the fencers. Very useful to get good shots fast. Technically, it wasn’t too difficult as most of the action happened in the same plane, so fix the focus and watch the action happen. And if they were required to lunge towards the camera, it was “hang on, hang on, stay there…” until my 5D can catch up on focusing. Visions of a 1D Mk IV always cross my mind in situations like this. Man, am I seriously considering this camera…but for now, I’m just happy to tell them to act and hold for the camera.
The girls were great and played their part to try to hold their balance as much as possible for the camera. I just used as little power from the elinchroms as possible to reduce recycling time and just time my shots well when they were competing. After awhile, I got the hang of it and it was plain sailing after that.
Briefing the fencer. On the left is what you did...on the right is what we like to see.
I got burnt after this shoot last week. Spent a few hours in the sun on these sports. It was a welcome change from the morning rain. I put an old unused cardboard box to good use as a sun shade for my computer. This was a box that was on its way to the rubbish dump but I thought it might be useful for the shoot and it was great! perfect size for my notebook to fit in. If I do more of this, I could invest in a proper shade…..or I could just paint the box black. I might just settle for the latter.
Barbara and Claire, with one of the swimmers going through the images
Diving was fun. And also quite difficult to shoot. Good thing was the diver repeated many times and anticipating her moves became easier. Nevertheless, I just wished my 5D can shoot 10fps at 21Mpix. That’ll be my dream camera!
Diver waiting for instructions from Claire and coach
I suddenly learned a lot about equestrian. I must admit, when watching the Olympics, I usually give at most 5 minutes of my attention. That’s what happens in our ignorance….we fail to appreciate the complexity and beauty of the sport. Kind of like the uninitiated wondering why 22 grownups would chase a ball on a field. But sitting beside Claire who’s into horse-riding (like many caucasians I know), I got a detailed rundown on human-horse interaction. I’ll never look at equestrian the way I did before. It’s actually beautiful the way the rider controls the horse.
The most bizarre thing during the shoot was the filming of an accident scene just outside the fence. It involved a car ramming into barricades, minus the Hollywood-type pyrotechnics. But it was enough to shock and traumatize the horses. So we had to stop when the camera outside was rolling. What made matters worse was they had to do a few takes and we could only shoot in between takes. So it went shoot, shoot, stop, bang….shoot, shoot, stop, bang, shoot.
Setting up the obstacles before shoot
Like shooting on a beach
The shoot was fairly straightforward but nevertheless challenging. For one, we can’t do many reshoots. The horse needs to rest for another competition, so we have to get the shot we want fast. For another, using the 5DMk2 on a horse charging at you and flying across sideways, can be very tricky in terms of focusing. This is where back-button focusing is a clear winner. Focus on one point, fire away, and pray you got the shot. The 5D just does not come close to the speed of the 1D. But I needed the Mpix. Throw in the ‘accidents’ happening outside and losing light fast, there were enough complexities to the shoot. But we got the shot, and I got to know so much more about the sport.
With the erection of new facilities for the Singapore Equestrian Federation, hopefully we can see more locals learning this sport. It’s going to be more accessible to the public, especially school kids. That’s going to be a big boost for the sport in Singapore.
The 2nd day of the YOG shoot brought us to this row of warehouses housing the Singapore Weightlifting Federation, opposite the National Stadium (the same one that was supposed to be demolished but never got to meet its fate after all this while). It’s a beautiful quiet area facing the Tanjung Rhu condos. So this is where the weightlifters train. Liz and I got there early to setup the black backdrop and lights. I was shooting tethered since I didn’t have to move around a lot. This series of images were different from the gymnastic images since they are more static and no one’s flying around from one end to another.
The space was a huge relief. No problems with power points, positioning lights, camera and notebook. Wouldn’t it be nice if the remaining shoots were like that….
Setting up the camera and notebook. Image from my iPhone.
Yesterday was a start to the series of shoots involving athletes from various sports. The images will be used to publicize and introduce the Games to the public in a few months time. We started with gymnastics, in my opinion, one of the most challenging sports to shoot. I remember having such a hard time when shooting in the SEA Games. The speed of the athlete coupled with the low lighting sent shivers down my spine.
The good thing was yesterday’s shoot was not in a competition environment and we could direct the gymnasts to repeat certain routines. But the speed was also a challenge. I wish I could ask them to stop in mid air but defying gravity is not one of their strengths. So we encountered all sorts of tech issues but the most tricky ones were the most basic. Logistics. The gym was fully occupied, both with gymnasts and equipment and power sockets were at the walls far away from the action. Mental note: bring plenty of extension cords. Halfway through the shoot, we had to move because our power cord was lying on the runway for the vault. And we had to figure out how to wire up the lights again. This and other problems took a lot of time to resolve.
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