London 2012 opening ceremony

[John]

I have been recovering today from 2 intense days.

We were at the opening ceremony and one of the qualifying sections of the men's gymnastics. Back on Monday for the men's final.

After all the warnings about transport and how late the ceremony might run we decided at the last minute to stay overnight in Stratford. So we cancelled our hotel in Marylebone and found a b&b just off Romford Road about half a mile from the stadium. We drove back to the Midlands after the first lot of gymnastics

Our seats in the Stadium were in the upper tier, behind the flagpoles of the Union and Olympic flags. As a consequence most images I'll be uploading when I have been through them will have the flagpoles across the image. I've no idea what will have come out as I was using a p&s on auto and noticed that the shutter speed was down around 1/15 most of the time.

Having been a sceptic from the beginning, I have to say the experience was brilliant. We were sat between Finnish and British families, and surrounded by Africans from many countries so there was a lot of friendly banter and everyone seemed to enjoy the British sense of humour.

We got there early and found there were already queues for food so we joined one for a barbecue which was very good. By then the stadium was open to the public so we went in and found our seats. High up was definitely good as we got an overview of everything that was happening and the 8x25 binoculars were good enough for the whole stadium. We took some food with us and bought some bottled drinks as it was quite a climb up and we were not going to be running up and down the stairs.

For the audience in the stadium there were things going on all the time for a couple of hours before the official beginning. They also tried to involve us in a couple of things but I did not think they worked very well in the end as many people did not participate and the "sea" of the island nation developed problems so was incomplete.

The staging was brilliant and always there were surprises. It is hard to pick out highlights when so much was so well done but I loved the surprise when tree took off to allow the people to come out for the industrial era and also the James Bond section with the Queen parachuting to the stadium.

I think McCartney with Hey Jude was a reasonable choice as they wanted something 80,000 very disparate people would likely know and sing along with.

John

[Steve]

John,

That all sounds brilliant.

If you'd had problems with the late end I could probably have arranged something. I do know someone who lives near Stratford, and they are walking to the Olympic events they are going to see. Lauren is staying there too. Also have family in Greenwich, which is also very close. We could have had you come back here at some point, as it is a single train from Stratford on the Central Line to here, and that was running late to bring folks home from the opening ceremony.

That makes me think to mention the hotel near me that you and others here have sometimes used for times like these... it has changed its name. It is now the Ramada Ruislip. It used to be the Days Inn South Ruislip of course. Ramada and Days Inn seem to be part of the same company anyway.

I'm really looking forward to seeing your photos. Sometimes folks send me or give me or drop off a CD when they have heaps and they figure I might be best playing with them and uploading them in bulk etc.. always an option if you ever want to do that. Bob did it the other week with the great 175 3D photos he had from a Queen event his friend Brian May gave him special access to.

I don't suppose you will make the meet near Heathrow this week... all rather a lot to fit in etc.. if you do Mike will be there before he goes off to the Olympics too. Andy is also gonna be there and is doing some Olympic events this week too. Surprising how many folks are going to be going in the end... but great as it seems to be well worth it.

All the best,

Steve

[John]

Steve,

I'm really looking forward to seeing your photos. Sometimes folks send me or give me or drop off a CD when they have heaps and they figure I might be best playing with them and uploading them in bulk etc.. always an option if you ever want to do that. Bob did it the other week with the great 175 3D photos he had from a Queen event his friend Brian May gave him special access to.

My photos are not in Bob's league. They cannot be very sharp handheld using telephoto at 1/15 second. But they capture a lot of the atmosphere, which is what I wanted. Possibly it makes sense to put them in an album, but I can upload to the Opening Ceremony area if you are happy with some less than perfect images.

John

[Steve]

John,

If I wasn't happy with less than perfect images I wouldn't have many of my photos on here for a start...

I'd upload to the standard area for them as you suggest. I do move photos around anyway, so if I have any doubts about anything I can start up albums or create new areas or whatever as needed...and that's always the case...and I'm very happy to do that sort of thing as the need arises.

With CDs etc it is mainly about volume, it can take a while to upload hundreds of photos a few at a time where I can upload thousands with one click as we have bulk upload systems available etc, so at times when very large numbers are involved it can make it an instant fix to just post a CD or whatever.

Lauren will be there taking photos this evening. She is only taking a small camera though as she said that a large one seemed overkill for whatever it is she is seeing today. Later in the week for the main stadium she is taking something larger I think.

Steve

[Bob]

My photos are not in Bob's league. They cannot be very sharp handheld using telephoto at 1/15 second. But they capture a lot of the atmosphere, which is what I wanted.

Well, that's very flattering, John, thanks.

But those Queen concert pics were also handheld with compact cameras - I used a pair of twinned Canon S90s. I'd worked out that - whilst theatrical lighting is pretty bright - I wasn't going to get suitable shutter speeds if I left everything up to the cameras. So, I used aperture priority with a wide-ish aperture and the sensitivity for the close shots set to 400 and for the more distant ones at 800...

I've actually been quite surprised by the limited camera shake in my shots from the circle - which were often at full zoom with the cameras held high above my head to get clear shots.

Anyway, John, your photos are usually way above my league!

Bob

[John]

Steve,

I've sent a PM with the location of a zip file containing 44 jpegs.

Bob,

I just stuck it on intelligent auto and hoped for the best. No idea how intelligent it is but the exposure looks OK when there isn't a lot of sky involved.

John

[Steve]

John,

Just got your message and downloaded the file.

Wow what amazing photos! They will be on view here shortly.

You and Bob have both uploaded great bulk numbers of very interesting photos in recent times... you both have our current shirt prizes so we won't award second ones.. but both of you are noted as 'owed one' for sure.

I'd put you on the honours list if we controlled that... Shame a ukexpert knighthood doesn't really carry the clout it should...

Steve

[Paula]

Let me add that I saw both the opening and closing ceremonies and thoroughly enjoyed both of them. However, I don't know if I missed him or what but I didn't see or hear Elton John in either ceremony. Was he included? If not, that would be a major shame, IMHO!

[Steve]

Paula,

I don't think he was. He has done a lot of Royal/big events in the UK and probably felt others should have a chance to shine.

There are lots of folks I would not have minded seeing included but what they did seemed fine.

I really enjoyed the whole thing a lot.

There are only a couple of things I would suggest Rio tries hard not to do... and I think those were not our idea anyway... those were Olympic car lanes on the roads, a totally silly idea for VIPs who generally did not use them and which caused big problems for the public whilst sitting empty.. and leaving seats empty for VIPs when they could and should have been sold to the public. It was at the early events they did not use them, as the heats were not the hot ticket events etc of course.

It has been interesting looking at Web sites and media around the World to see what they said about the games etc. A lot of praise is about... but it is funny reading some reports from Turkey and China, about how bad things were etc...

I looked at US sites during the games and their UK versions had the Olympics front and centre.. but if you went to the US versions they were mainly devoting their main space to incredibly boring US Presidential election detail.

I don't know how you found US coverage of it all?

Your Olympians did great anyway... and they acted really well whilst here too... it all made the USA look very good etc.

Steve

[Paula]

Steve,

You are probably right about Elton John. Or, perhaps they wanted him but he had other commitments that he couldn't get out of. I just thought that since he's such a major influence on music for so many decades that he should have been in one of the ceremonies.

I really liked how they showed John Lennon doing Imagine instead of having someone else sing that song. That was a special moment, imho.

Only one network had the rights to broadcast the Olympics in the US, that being NBC and the networks they own. They had time delayed coverage every night and all throughout the weekends during the games. Lots of folks over here complained because NBC didn't broadcast any events live and they read results on Twitter and Facebook. Also, it seems that NBC didn't broadcast entire events and mainly showed only events when the US was competing. Because it wasn't live they seemed to bounce around from one event to another. The thing I REALLY DIDN'T like was when they broke for commercial and then came back during the Opening and Closing ceremonies, they didn't continue from where they left off. They just didn't show the part that was on during the commercial. Olympic coverage is not the best over here. I heard one of their newscasters say that it will be easier when they broadcast from Rio in 2016 because they are in the same time zone as our Central time zone. But, they did the same thing during the Vancouver Olympics (same time as our Western time zone) in 2010 and broadcast tape delayed events instead of live. Our networks like to broadcast during prime time - that's where the money is.

Yes, I am very proud of our Olympians and am glad to hear how they behaved. I had really wanted to come over to see Michael Phelps swim and our girls gymnastics team. But, as I said months ago, it was just too expensive.

Paula

P.S. Yes, I ignored your comment about our presidential election coverage. I'm already sick of hearing about it and it's still 3 months away. It seems our elections start up the day after the person takes office. We really need election reform laws passed over here.

[Steve]

Paula,

I'd forgotten about the US TV coverage having a time delay. I had heard about that. It does sound pretty awful.

Here we had the Olympics on dozens of channels all at the same time, and all in HD, and all live. You could watch every single sport and every single event live. You could even watch things like the opening ceremony with a presenter talking about what was happening or without one. It was also available in 3D. There were no adverts at all.

You could also watch it live on the Internet, and I would keep it running on my ipad whilst doing other things during the day etc.

I think it very sad that the USA, which won the most medals, did not cover the Olympics properly and fully. Your TV has always seemed behind the times, from the look of the sets to what is shown on them it has always seemed hard going on my trips over.

We get a lot of US TV shows here of course, and I watch a number myself. We often get things with either no adverts in them or with reasonable amounts of advertising... and it is weird that generally watching US shows is better done here than in the US. I tend to record anything with adverts and then just fast forward past them.

It was a shame that attending the Olympics from the US was expensive, and it certainly was. If all the VIPs had paid thousands per ticket instead of seeking out freebies perhaps the normal folks could have paid more normal prices. Even now for the paralympics opening and closing ceremony tickets are available... but why would normal folks buy 2 x £500 tickets for both and spend a couple of thousand pounds even without their kids with them... a family holiday for the whole family or whatever has to be a much better option than a few hours watching something they can probably see better on TV etc.

Anyway, the Olympics was great.. and the UK is having an amazing year. What with the Cycling in France, the winning at Golf in the US, the Olympics etc etc it is all really neat....and we are only a tiny country the size of one US state etc.

Steve