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Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures - part 8 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

by Ian Cook Published 01/10/2012

Peter Charles of Great Britain in action during his last event of the Team Jumping.

Which is your own best image and why?

I don't really have a best image, I have lots of images I'm pleased with and some have already sold which is great. Overall the Olympics was a little bit frustrating for many of the photographers. We were spilt into two categories: pool photographers and the rest (us basically).

Pool photographers (Getty, PA, Reuters, etc) had blue bibs and that gave them access to areas that we weren't allowed into, so all the best positions were already marked for pool photographers. For example at Wimbledon the pool photographers got to shoot the medal ceremony head-on and then they brought Murray around to the sides for us to get a shot of him with his medal - this got on my nerves a bit, but there was nothing I could do. At the athletics only blue bibs were allowed on the in-field so they got shots of the field events such as the shot put, hammer, discus and javelin.

You carried both a 300mm f2.8 and a 400mm f2.8 most of the time. On reflection was this a good choice and how would you change it? Did either lens spend a lot of time unused? How much use did your teleconverters get?

Actually it was the only choice I had, for example on the day Andy Murray was in the final, for Wimbledon a 400mm was just too tight, so the preference for tennis is 300mm, 70-200mm and a 24-70mm plus a 14-24mm for overviews of the stadium. But then I had to race back to cover the men's 100m final; there the 300mm was just too short so I changed to the 400mm, which worked a treat. In a case like this there is no time to pop back to the centre to collect different sets of gear.

• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 1
  
• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 2
  
• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 3
  
• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 4
  
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• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 8
  
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• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 10
  
• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 11
  
• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 12
  
• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 13
  
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• Made In Wales Ian Cook's Olympic Adventures page 15
  
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