Opening Ceremony, Soggy and Spectacular

I was drenched. Delighted, but drenched.

This particular ceremony was, of course, different than any I‘ve been to. A stadium and a ”walking“ Parade of Nations was replaced by a river and a parade of boats.

Covering this one was not too unlike standing in Times square for six hours waiting for the ball to drop. The day began with an IOC meeting at 11 a.m. for all 450 photographers who would be spread along the four-mile route. We all had assigned areas and they went over the ground rules and logistics for each. At 1 p.m. we gathered, school trip style, to follow the photo manager assigned to our area, who would guide us to the Seine. It was billed as a prime service. In reality it was a trip on the Metro that turned into a maze of stops and unintended trains because many of the lines we needed to take were already shut down.

The area that I, and about 10 others, were assigned to was about 10 or more city blocks long right at the start of the parade. So, with about six hours to spare we milled around looking for places to get the shots we wanted. I drank some water, ate some snacks and gave a security guard a NY Times pin in exchange for a spot on the river’s edge. (The pins make for great currency for 16 days!). Past the guard, I found my way down some stairs to the riverbank where I could work in piece. And, as it turned out, in lots of rain. The rain held off until the parade began. It was saving itself for the big show.

My orders from Becky, one of our two photo editors here, was to get a few shots of the start of the parade and then file those quickly to her so she could get them on the Times’s home screen shortly after the parade began. The small problem with that was that the filing station (a table with a bunch of ethernet cables on it) was not all that close to where I decided to shoot from.

I got a shot of France’s colors bursting in smoke over the Austerlitz Bridge, signaling the start of the parade; a special ops boat patrolling the Seine; and the Greek contingent’s boat, always the first in the parade. Then return to shooting and filing. Rinse, repeat.

here are three of the photos the Times used in their live coverage of the ceremony.

All the while I had to play caddie with my cameras, trying to keep them dry while shooting in the ever-increasing intensity of the rain. At some point I gave up on trying to keep my self dry.

I had also taken to filing my pictures from under the table to keep the cameras, and the cables as dry as possible. There wasn’t much room under there and I laid down in a puddle, although by that time it didn’t seem to matter much.

The reward for all the anxiety of being the first to file the parade pictures was that I was also the first to be done. Once the last boat came through, I slogged through the rain to a Metro station and made my way back to my hotel for a very long and hot shower.

Tomorrow, Katie Ledecky swims. See you there.

A slideshow of some of the photos I took.