Interesting take on agencies at the olympics

Not anything about the pressure the photographers are under. Their timetables must be totally scary.
 
Interesting read. Shows how many resources Getty and AP can throw at things like this with an infrastructure we didn't know about prior.

Must be nice to go to work and be given that lot of kit aswell. sure they will have spares onsite aswell just incase
 
whitey said:
Interesting read. Shows how many resources Getty and AP can throw at things like this with an infrastructure we didn't know about prior.

Must be nice to go to work and be given that lot of kit aswell. sure they will have spares onsite aswell just incase
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Canon and Nikon Take entire workshops and even trucks of spare kit for accredited photographers to these events.
 
Nearly all of the Sochi technical setup was designed by me before I left Getty in September. Also ran the London 2012 operation and all other major events from 2006 onwards.

If you have any questions that aren't answered by the article then let me know.
 
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Wow, that's awesome inkiboo! Would love to know more about how it works. Have you ever written any of it up or blogged about it?

Must be as stressful for the photographers as it is for the athletes. 4 years in the making, one chance at getting it right, huge commercial pressure...Awesome. Would love to have a backstage view of the process...
 
inkiboo said:
Nearly all of the Sochi technical setup was designed by me before I left Getty in September. Also ran the London 2012 operation and all other major events from 2006 onwards.

If you have any questions that aren't answered by the article then let me know.
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Where've you shifted to Gerard? I hope it was for positive reasons! :)
 
I took redundancy back in September as Getty were downsizing. I loved the job so much but I now have a nine month old daughter and didn't want to be travelling (worked out I would have been away for nine months this year).

Now in the middle of retraining into law!
 
No RAW at the Olympics (or infact most events).

During London 2012 we were sending out a photo to customers every five seconds, 18 hours a day. Simply isn't the time or capacity to shoot or handle RAW.
 
Some London 2012 stuff for you:

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That was the setup at the back of the Olympic stadium. We had robotic cameras, fixed remotes and directly connected (with WFTs) all coming into there, onto two servers that the editors within the stadium then looked at. For every other event, the photos were sent back to our office in the MPC (Main Press Centre) to be edited, captioned and sent out.

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To give you an idea, when my team arrived in the Olympic Park the office was a bare shell with absolutely nothing. No network cabling, no screens, no desks; nothing. In less than a month, we built an office for 80 people (whilst at the same time support the operation at Euro 2012).

Oh, and for those interested in the computing side, the comms cupboard:

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enjoyed that read:)

Nice to see a photo of Shaun Whites snowboard flexing also, i noticed that on TV whilst watching it, and was amazed at the flex, never got mine to do that, on purpose or by mistake(y)
 
Great experiences inkiboo, I worked for Westfield in the lead up to the Olympics, was so many behind the scenes things going on, sadly I left two weeks before it started as I got a job closer to home.

What spec laptops where you using in that first photo and what programs would you normally edit with?
 
Those laptops are Dell Precision M4600s. They are quad core i7s and had RAID1 256 GB SSDs. We used those are either servers or as "super spoolers" that can ingest photos from up to 8 cameras at the same time. We also had some more powerful M6600s.

Software wise we had our own custom written application for ingestion, templating, captioning and dividing up work on the server. For image editing we used PhotoShop.

Our editors used Lenovo W530s and the photographers had Dell E4300s during London but have now upgraded to Lenovo X230s.
 
inkiboo said:
I took redundancy back in September as Getty were downsizing. I loved the job so much but I now have a nine month old daughter and didn't want to be travelling (worked out I would have been away for nine months this year).

Now in the middle of retraining into law!
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I'm not surprised with all the events on this year. Best of luck!
 
Nice and tidy comms by the way.
 
And as an antidote to modern technology, David Burnett is there with a Speed Graphic and a Holga!


Steve.
 
Great behind the scenes insight into London 2012. As a spectator, I was fascinated by the photographers and the big lenses they were lugging around.

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inkiboo said:
I took redundancy back in September as Getty were downsizing. I loved the job so much but I now have a nine month old daughter and didn't want to be travelling (worked out I would have been away for nine months this year).

Now in the middle of retraining into law!
Click to expand...

Gerard, did you feel that Getty over-stretched themselves on London 2012 and hence found themselves asking for voluntary redundancies? I only ask as know I wasn't replaced when I left my job and certainly even the big agencies are downsizing.

Feel free to PM if you're not up for replying in thread!
 
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