Photo Tour update - limited spots available for 2024

Hello everyone. I just filled all the spots for my Costa Rica photo tours this year, and many of the other photo tours are almost full as well.  I wanted to let you all know what was available for the remainder of this year and 2025, so you don't miss out!

Costa Rica Rain Forest - June 2024 - SOLD OUT!

Peru - July 2024 - SOLD OUT!

San Francisco - September 2024 - 5 Spots remaining

Indochina (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam) - October 2024 - 6 spots available

Costa Rica Rain Forest - November 2024 - SOLD OUT!

African Safari in Tanzania - January 2025 - 6 Spots Available

Greece - June / July 2025 - 8 spots available

African Safari in Botswana - July / August 2025 - 5 Spots Available

Costa Rica Rain Forest - May 2025 - 8 Spots Available

Alaska - Private luxury boat - September 2025 - NEW! and only 6 Spots Available

Costa Rica Rain Forest - October / November 2024 - Just added!

Costa Rica Rain Forest - November 2024 - 8 Spots Available

I want to highlight a couple of these trips, as they are coming up soon and some of my favorites. First of all, the San Francisco photo tour debuted last year and was a huge success. Leading a tour of my home town is a ton of fun and yielded some amazing photos. You can see many of those images HERE. This tour is a shorter and less expensive trip compared to all the others and I have room for 5 more guests.

After the San Francisco tour I will be heading back to Indochina for the second time with Mike from M&M Photo Tours. We did this tour in October of 2022 and this trip blew away all expectations for our guests and myself. If you look at the photos HERE and HERE you will see why I am so excited to teach another photo tour back to these amazing countries. We have room for 6 more. Come join us for this amazing trip.

Lastly I would like to call attention to a brand new tour that I will be leading in 2025. This one is to the inner passage of Alaska. We will be on a private luxury boat and photographing humpback whales, killer whales, bears, birds, icebergs, glaciers and more. You can see more details on this trip HERE. This is a very exclusive trip, and I can only take 6 guests. First come, first serve on this new photo tour.

As always...you can keep abreast of all the photo tours on the web site at: 

https://www.jeffcable.com/phototours

And remember that Canon will loan you whatever cameras and lenses you would like (as long as they have them in the CPS pool, which they usually do) for each trip at no cost. 

Let me know which trip you are interested in joining and I will get you all set up! See you soon.

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

 _________________________________________________________________   

Really unique senior portraits in Disneyland and more!

A couple of weeks ago I took some really special senior portraits. They were special for a number of reasons. First of all, I was going to be taking the photos down in Southern California, including spending a whole day in Disneyland looking for good portrait locations. And secondly, the images were of my girlfriend's daughter, Hannah, who works at Disneyland and is about to graduate from college. 

We were down visiting my cousin and her husband who have an amazing place right on Laguna Beach, so we thought we would take advantage of that time and location to get some nice photos for Hannah, who lives in the area. Since we were at Laguna Beach, we decided to start there just before sunset.  

We walked down to the beach about 45 minutes before sunset, for me to pick locations and wait for the best light. At that point, the sunlight was still a little harsh, so I took some photos of Hannah in the shaded areas. I was using my Canon R6 Mark II with the Canon RF 70-200 2.8 lens and a Canon 600 EX-RT flash (to add just a little light to the shadow areas of her face).

About 15 minutes later, the sun was much lower and we were ready for the golden hour photos.  

I was shooting at ISO 100 (and no flash needed for these) since I had plenty of light to work with. I like shooting at f/2.8 to isolate the focus on Hannah and not the background.

For this photo I definitely needed the flash! Actually, for this photo I needed two flashes to light her against the very bright background. I had one Canon 600 EX-RT flash on camera and another one that Laura (her mom) was pointing at her. Laura was so close to her that I had to Photoshop her hand and the flash out of the right side of the image. I set the Canon R6 Mark II to f/20 to bring the shutter speed down to 1/200 sec and powered up both flashes to make sure that my subject was not a silhouette. (Expert note: since the Canon flashes produce a much cooler (bluer) light, I selected Hannah in Adobe Photoshop and warmed her to match the color of the sunset.)

As Hannah walked on the beach, I saw how the late day sunlight was hitting hair. I had her turn her back to the sun and shot this portrait.

I saw her swing her hair around to get it straightened and asked her to do that again for a photo. I put the Canon R6 Mark II in high speed mode and took a burst of images to get this one with her hair flying out and lit perfectly by the late sunlight.

As the sun was just about to go down past the horizon, I had Hannah sit on one of the rocks and once again I lit her with two flashes. So pretty, both Hannah and the location! Once the sun set, the light was gone and we were done.

Hannah had classes the next day, so we spent time walking around Laguna Beach until she was done. Then we drove over to Chapman and walked around campus to look at locations and also made some prop purchases at a nearby store.

This is the classic shot that all the graduates take at Chapman University in front of the arch. That was great, but I wanted to do something different. (I was using the Canon RF 24-70mm lens for this photo and most of the remaining photos you will see. )

When we were out shopping, Laura decided to buy a bottle of Champagne for Hannah to pop in front of the school. We got the cheapest bottle we could find and had some fun.

We went over to this wall and had her open the bottle. It was so cheap that it had a screw top. Ooooops! So when she opened it, nothing really happened. So I had her shake it up and keep her thumb over the top. When she let go, even she was surprised. This photo made us all laugh.

Laura and I also purchased some graduation confetti at the dollar store.  It took many tries to get this right, but we had fun with Hannah blowing this right at the lens. We like the little hats that flew up, but ultimately decided that it would have been easier to blow if it was all small confetti. 

As we were heading back to the parking lot, I saw the sunlight hitting this one wall and knew that it would backlight Hannah perfectly.

Before leaving, we stopped by this one wall (on the side of a liquor store next to campus) to have a little more fun.

The next day we planned on waking up at 6:30am to "rope drop" (be there at opening) at Disneyland, and we did just that. 

We got into the park right at 8am and luckily we had cloudy weather which allowed me to get a slow shutter speed for this motion shot. I knew that everyone would be rushing in to get to their favorite rides, so I asked Hannah to go dead center in front of Main Street and stand very still while everyone else hurried by. I set the camera to ISO 50 and f/18, which gave me a slow shutter speed of 1/5 sec.

There was a large group of people trying to get a dead-center shot in front of the castle, but we saw this wall with a clear background. Hannah hopped up on the wall for some photos in this location.

I was really happy to have clouds in the sky to give us great lighting on Hannah and a nice neutral background without harsh sunlight and deep shadows.

Even though this photo does not scream "Disneyland", I loved how beautiful the cherry blossoms were, and had to take a photo with them in the background.

After taking the photos in the Main Street area, we headed over to Fantasyland, to the rides where Hannah used to work. She hopped on the Dumbo ride (for her first ride ever, which is funny because she worked the ride for a while). I took some standard photos with a fast shutter speed and then slowed the shutter speed to 1/50th sec and panned along with her as she went by. This is one of my favorite photos from the day. Hard to get it sharp, but totally worth the challenge!

We then went over to the Tea Cups for a couple of photos. Since Hannah knows the workers, they allowed us to take a couple of photos before letting the next wave of guests into the ride. 

Then I thought it would be fun to get into the tea cup with her for some more slow shutter shots. For this photo, I lowered the shutter speed to 1/13th sec, and fired off a bunch of photos as we spun around.

Before heading to the park, I had asked Hannah for a list of photos that she wanted. On the top of the list was a photo with her and Winnie the Pooh, so we prioritized that next.

And we took photos with some of the other characters as well.

We could not shoot graduation photos at Disneyland and not have photos with Mickey.

We took the afternoon off and planned a return trip in the evening. I looked on the Disney web site and verified that tripods were allowed, so I brought my Gitzo travel tripod in. With lower light, and not being handheld this time, I tried another motion shot on main street. (Note: Tripods are allowed and will make it through security, but one of the photo cast members told me it was not allowed.)

The reason I brought the tripod in was for this shot in the California Adventure Park (next door to Disneyland). I knew that this location would be much better at night vs the day, so it was the last shot on our list. I set the Canon R6 Mark II on the tripod, changed the settings to ISO 100, f/16 with a shutter speed of 6 seconds. I fired the Canon 600 EX-RT flash to add some light on her, but used the long exposure to get a better background. 

The funny part was that we spent most of the day in the Disney Parks and the only ride I was on was the tea cups to get the motion shot. But we got lots of photos for Hannah to commemorate her big accomplishment. 

I hope this inspires many of you to try different camera settings and locations for your senior portraits.

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

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My first LIVE television interview: Yikes!

Last week I traveled up to Sacramento to the studios of FOX 40 for my first live TV interview. I have done plenty of pre-recorded video pieces, but never done one live. As it turns out, it was a lot of fun.

After NBC ran the piece on me last month, I received an email from a producer at FOX 40, who had seen the video, asking me if I would come up for an interview on their Studio40 show. Due to my travel schedule, we had to wait 3 weeks to make it happen, but last Wednesday we got it done.

This is what it looked like behind the scene.

I was supposed to be on air for 4 minutes, but they ended up letting it go for a full 9 minutes. 

You can watch the interview here (or by clicking on the image below):

I hope you enjoy the interview.

BTW - I messed up on one detail in the interview. For those who have followed the blog for numerous Olympics, see if you can find that one mistake. :)

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

 _________________________________________________________________   

The modified Kate Middleton photo - what's the big deal?

I woke up the other day and turned on the news. One of the big stories of the day was the controversy about a modified image of Kate Middleton and her family. Being a photographer, I was highly intrigued by this story. 

By now, most of you have seen the image.

At first, people were talking about one or two areas of the image that were manipulated. Now that a couple of days have passed, experts have located many areas of the photo that have been retouched.

But my question is: Why is this such a big deal?

I can tell you that every family portrait I have ever taken has been retouched to one extent or the other. 

Here is what I am typically modifying:

* Adjustments to exposure, shadows, highlights and white balance (if needed)

* Removal of fly away hairs that are distracting (either going through the face, flying into the air, or going into another person) 

* Removal of dust or pet hair on people's clothing

* Removing skin imperfections (bad acne or shaving cuts)

* Removal of strings hanging off clothing

* Removal of distractions in the background (bright spots, exit signs, polls)

And sometimes I will even do the following:

* Whitening of eyes if needed

* Lightening of wrinkles (typically around the eyes)

* Head swaps (if a person had their eyes closed in a group shot)

During the CBS newscast, one of the anchormen said "I don't understand why any photo needs to be retouched" to which I laughed. I am sure that this same person has plenty of portraits that have been taken and modified, whether he knows it or not.

I have said this many times in the past. I think that every photo needs some retouching, in one form or another. So I don't understand why people are making such a big deal about this photo. Kate Middleton is known for being a photo enthusiast and she has taken many of her own photos in the past. But she is not a professional, and would not have the same Photoshop skills as we would. It looks to me like she was making the same modifications I would do, but just not as proficient at the process.

Yes, she is a royal which means that the spotlight is on her and her family. But is this photo controversy really worth the scrutiny that they are putting her through? I think that there are much bigger and more relevant issues in the world. 

I just thought I would put my thoughts out there. What do you think?

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

 _________________________________________________________________   

I will be presenting at the WPPI show in Las Vegas next week

Going to photography trade shows is always a lot of fun for me. I love being surrounded by other creative people, trading stories, sharing ideas and just hanging out. 

Of course, the pandemic stopped all of these for years, and even when they did return, the shows were not what they used to be. I am hoping that the Wedding and Portraits Photography Expo (WPPI) in Las Vegas next week brings a resurgence of attendance and energy. 

One of the things I love most about these shows is meeting with many of my sponsors and seeing the new gear. And yes, I will be talking to them about future gear that I will be bringing to Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics. But more on that to come in a later blog post. Yeah, I know...I am such a tease. :)

Next week I will be speaking in a couple booths at the show.

I will be presenting in the Hahnemühle booth on Tue, March 5th at 1pm. This company has been around for 440 years! Crazy, but true. I will be showing some of my images as well as signing photos printed on the beautiful Hahnemühle paper. 

I will also be presenting in the 17 Hats booth on Wed, March 6th at 2pm. I will be talking about how I use 17 Hats to run my business, and how it is absolutely critical to keeping me organized.

I hope to see many of my fellow photographers and friends there!

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

 _________________________________________________________________   

We are not just photographers, we are historians

I am writing this blog at 4am, since I am not able to sleep. Yesterday I spent the first half of the day at a funeral. Not for someone who was elderly and had lived a good long life, but for an 18 year old who's life ended way too soon. I have photographed for this family for more than 10 years and it has really hit me hard. This is now the third kid that I have photographed who has past away, and all three of those happened in the most tragic ways. 

I am not writing this to depress all of you, I am writing this because, as I processed images for the funeral it reaffirmed how important these photos are. For the last 15 years I have told people that I don't just think of myself as a photographer, I see myself as a historian. This was just reinforced this week. 

When I heard about the passing of this brilliant young man, I waited a couple of days and then reached out to the family to see if I could help in any way. I know that these photos are important to the family and that it is my way to help. Being a photographer who has every image I have ever captured (on multiple QNAP NAS drives), I offered to go back and find the best photos from past events. Over the last 11 years I have photographed four bar/bat mitzvah, family portraits, a baby naming and more for them. 

Since I have the Canon Pro-4100 large format printer, I offered to print poster sized images for the service. I heard back from the family that they would love to have these. Then came the hard part. I poured through thousands of photos taken as far back as 2013, and it was really sad. I saw this smiling boy, full of energy, who is now no longer with us. 

I tell people that I have the best job in the world because 99% of the time I am capturing happy occasions, athletes competing at the Olympics, and taking people to exotic places around the world. But over the last couple of days I saw my job as a photographer in a less glamorous light.

This time I saw the fragility of life, but also saw the immense power of the photos. As sad as it is, it is also a way for us to remember this young man. Yes, I was hired by the family, but is still my gift to them. When I photograph events (no matter what they are), I pour my heart and soul into that. It is not just a job, it is a chance to create memories, to be creative, and to record history.

People often ask me why I always shoot my images to two memory cards at a time. The first time I was asked this, I responded by saying that in the most important moments, I want to make sure I have those photos. I was thinking of the Olympics when I said that. But then I thought "but just about everything I photograph is important to someone." When I capture a personal event, those images are very important to that family. Arguably more important to them than any Olympics I have ever taken. Even when I am messing around and taking photos of my granddaughter playing in the back yard, those are incredibly important to me.

I am not going to post images of the any of these kids, since I want to honor the privacy of those families, but I do want to share this photo with you.

This is a photo of my mother. It was taken 14 years ago, and it was the one of the last photos I captured of her before she unexpectedly passed away. It was way back then that I realized the importance of a photo, and the responsibility of a photographer. And it is for that reason that I take every photo job so seriously (but in a fun way). What we do is important! As photographers, we need to remember this every time we pick up our cameras.

At the service yesterday they said that the young man loved math and physics and he loved to talk about rainbows and why they occur. They ended the service by saying, whenever you see a rainbow, think of him.

Not more than an hour after the service, I was out for a walk and saw this. It is a simple iPhone shot, but the meaning is far greater than the overall quality of the photo. I definitely thought of him.

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

 _________________________________________________________________   

Retouching photos - Taking them from good to great!

I recently had a client ask my why I needed to retouch their images. She said "why didn't you shoot them correctly in the first place?" I have to admit, I was a bit taken aback by this question. But as much as I felt defensive, I also was very prepared to answer this question. My answer to her was quite simple, and went something like this:

* The goal of the photographer is to get a really nice photo that is 90% complete. But almost every photo needs some sort of retouching. Whether it is removing fly-away hairs, exit signs, those rogue microphones in the corner of the frame, or some other distraction. 

* As good as the cameras are, the exposure is still not perfect. I typically find that slight adjustments to the shadows and highlights make the images much stronger.

* I usually shoot in Auto White Balance, which is usually quite good. But...it is not perfect and I like to make adjustments to the white balance for accuracy and consistency across all the images.

* When people look at photos, most of the time their eye is drawn to the area with the sharpest focus and also to the brightest areas. With this in mind I will try to remove bright spots in the background of an image to make sure that the viewer is not distracted by that area. 

* There are countless other ways to retouch images, and depending on the particular photo, I will do whatever it takes to make it as strong as possible,

The end result is this...retouching helps to take a good photo to a great photo.

I have retouched just about every photo I have ever taken. It may be something really minor, like a crop or a minor tweak to the exposure or it could be a major project. I don't usually do major work to a photo where I spend more than 15 minutes on any image. That is not my style. And it does not matter if it is a portrait, a wildlife photo, or a landscape. 

Even my Olympic images need some tweaking. For the Olympics, we are only allowed to change small things like exposure, white balance, and cropping. Not much else since the IOC does not want us changing history.

Let me show you some before and after photos to help you understand my retouching.

Cropping

Cropping in on a photo is a great way to highlight the subject. In the first image you see the Toucan flying off of a tree, but the bird is small in the frame and the tree branches are more distracting than helpful to the image. For this reason, I cropped in to show a little of the tree but draw your attention to the Toucan. (I also brightened the image a bit to show more detail in the feathers of the bird.) I was shooting with the Canon R5 camera, so I had plenty of resolution for the crop. The final image still has 7MB of data and can be printed large and look great.

Exposure

Here is another photo from the last photo tour to Costa Rica. I saw this Summer Tanager perched on a nearby tree branch and I loved the contrast of the red bird against the green leaves. The original image was taken at -0.7 exposure comp (just because my camera was preset that way from the day before and this was a quick grab early the next morning), so it needed to be brightened. I increased the exposure to to correct the lighting.

Shadows / Highlights

It may be hard to believe, but the image on the right is the same image (just retouched) as the one on the left. As many of you know, the camera is not able to capture images with a vast amount of light differences. Your exposure will either be overexposed in one area and/or underexposed in other areas. To correct this, I increased the exposure on the foreground (trees and Half dome) and then darkened the sky in the background. And what a difference this makes!

Saturation

I can not tell you how many times I have captured a sunset and thought "the color in the image is not as vibrant as what I saw in reality." I really hate seeing images that over heavily oversaturated, but with that said, there are many times when a slight amount of saturation is needed to For this image, I reduced the brightness of the sun and then added saturation to show you what it really looked light the night in Tanzania.

Fly-away hairs and skin imperfections

When you look at these two images, you may not see a huge amount of difference. Well..at least not from this small preview. But trust me, there are some things that I wanted to clean up. Let's take a closer look.

Whenever I take portraits, I assume that there will be some imperfections to clean up in post production. In this case, there was a slight shine on the older sister's skin, and some major fly-away hairs on the younger sister. 

I cleaned those up in Adobe Photoshop. I really love using my Wacom Intuos tablet to paint out these distractions with natural brush strokes using the stylus, versus trying to do this with a mouse. When retouching people, I generally remove acne and fly-away hairs, but I do not remove moles and other natural parts of who the people are (unless otherwise requested). I also lightened their eyes, just a tiny bit to bring them out. You probably did not notice that, and that is a good thing. Good retouching should not be very noticeable. I always say that retouching is a lot like seasoning in food, a little bit can really enhance a meal, but too much can ruin it!

I took this photo in City Hall in San Francisco. If you read the blog regularly, you saw this blog post a couple of months ago. Getting a clean shot of the rotunda is almost impossible since there are so many people in the building. I waited to try and get as few people as possible, but I knew that a perfectly clean shot was not likely. I took this photo knowing that I would have to remove the people on the right and the man in the blue shirt in the doorway. 

Sometimes I am overly picky about retouching my photos. In this photo of a Howler Monkey in Costa Rica, I loved the pose and the catch light in the eyes, but found that some of the branches were distracting. I cropped in to hide the one branch at the top of the frame that was more in focus than the others, and also removed the one lower branch at the bottom. These are minor tweaks, but I think that it helps the overall photo.

Some people say that a good photo should not need any retouching, but I truly believe that retouching helps to take a good photo to a great photo (or at very least a better one). I would love to hear your thoughts on all this.

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

 _________________________________________________________________   

An honor to be featured on NBC news!

To celebrate the 6 month countdown to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, NBC has started their marketing machine to get everyone excited about the upcoming Games. As part of that campaign, NBC sent a reporter down my way about 3 weeks ago and interviewed me for a couple of hours to create a profile on me for the 6pm news. 

That piece ran on Friday evening as me and my friends watched at home. I was not nervous during the interview process, but I was a little nervous about how they would edit the video and what they would say. As it turns out, I think they did a nice job with the segment. Phew!

I thought I would share this with all of you. You can click the image below or just click here to see the segment.

Luckily they showed more of my images, than my ugly face! 😀

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

 _________________________________________________________________   

2024 Summer Olympics in Paris: The planning, the challenges, and the future.

Today is the 6 month countdown to the Opening Ceremony of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics. For those of you who have followed my journey through the last seven Olympic Games here in the blog, I am excited to share yet another experience with you all. And this one should be amazing!

As always, my goal is to share the behind-the-scenes of the Games as well as my daily photos and the stories behind the images.

We are now six months from the start of the Olympics, but the planning process has been going on for almost two years now. Let me tell you a little bit about that process and some of the challenges I have faced already.

Credentials

The credentialing process is where it all starts, and the applications started in the middle of 2022. Each National Organizing Committee (NOC) gets a small number of credentials for the Olympics. As you can see from the chart above, there are numerous media credentials which can be applied for. As a photographer, I always apply for the EP level credential, which gives me access to all the venues. As it turns out, credentials for the Paris Olympics are in even higher demand than a normal Olympics. I am guessing that this is due to the fact that this is the first Olympics since 2018 where we will not be locked down with Covid restraints, but mostly because the Games are located in the amazing city of Paris. 

In February of 2023, I got the email approving my EP credential. That always puts a smile on my face.

Housing 

Once I received word from the USOPC that I was getting my EP credential, the next step was to wait for the Paris Organizing Committee (POCOG) to contact me about housing. The weird thing was...I never got any email messages from them. Around the middle of last year, I reached out to them to see when the housing process would start. I was SHOCKED to hear that the process had started and ended already! Knowing that press housing (which is subsidized) was going to be in high demand, I started to panic. I reached out to the housing group and let them know that I was never informed of the housing options. After a month of stressing, they got back to me and said that they would let me know if anything opened up. I waited...and I waited...and then decided to work on a plan B. I researched the venue maps (above) and started reaching out to AirBnB places and other online options. I found some good places but they were all at least an hour away from the key venues. An hour commute here at home might be doable, but not at the Olympics when every minute counts.

About the same time that I was researching for other places to stay, the housing committee got back to me with some options. I had heard from my contacts at the USOPC that the housing options were not good. When I looked at the hotel options they gave me (in a reasonable price range), the hotels were really bad. Some of them had reviews that said "don't go out after 10pm as it is too dangerous", "most of the rooms have air conditioning that is broken" and one review showed the hotel with garbage piled up in the hallway. Yikes!

I knew that beggars can't be choosers, but I wrote back to them and asked if they had any other options. I ended up selecting a place that is within the price range, looks OK, and I am just going to hope that it is livable for 3 weeks. Heck, it has to be bigger than my hotel room in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics!

Flights

Once the housing crisis was solved, I knew that is was imperative to get flights booked as early as possible. I usually fly United Airlines, so I called them and got flights for the exact dates and times that I wanted. That was easier than I expected it to be.

Credential Processing

It had been nearly a year since my EP credential was approved and last month I received the final application forms and I had to submit my photo. Here is the headshot that I submitted. I know that I don't look happy, but just like with passport photos, we are not allowed to smile.

The Schedule

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has already posted the daily competition schedule, for all the sports that will be happening over the 3 week time span. I will use this, as well as a more detailed schedule (when that becomes available) to plan my days. I will be contractually shooting for USA Water Polo (men and women), so those games will take a priority over the rest.

Opening Ceremony

For the first time ever in Olympic History, the Opening Ceremony will not be held in an arena. Instead, each team will be floating down the Seine River on a barge. I have heard that there will be more than 160 boats floating along the route. I am VERY excited about this since it gives me a chance to capture the ceremony with a totally different look.

This is an artist's rendering of what it might look like. 

From what I have heard, they are going to give away free access to the public along this floating parade route. This is very exciting, but also means that the crowds in and out of the area are going to be massive.  The big question for me is...will I be able to get a photo position with the Eiffel Tower in the background (which is what I really want)? 

Contract

You would think that I would have a signed contract with the team well before going through this whole process, but that is not the case. Since I have worked with the team for so many years, and I have their word that we are working together once again, the contract process usually comes towards the end for me. We just signed the contract about a week ago. I should mention that I make this really easy for the team since I do not do this for the money. I do this for the love of doing it!

Equipment

For those of you photography enthusiasts, I know what you want to ask me right now. You want to know what camera equipment I will be using in Paris. I can tell you this: I will be using Canon cameras and lenses. Which ones? I am not sure yet. But stay tuned and I will tell you more when I can. How is that for a tease?

Moving forward

We are officially 181 days until the Games begin, and I promise to keep you all up to date as the final plans come together. And of course, I will be blogging daily from Paris, showing what I photographed and sharing the crazy stories as they unfold. To get my blog posts sent directly to your email, click HERE to subscribe now. 

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