16th Asian Games Guangzhou China - footnotes

How it all works here:

We're just reaching the halfway mark here in Guangzhou and the team spirit in the AP office is just reaching to awesome level.

When we're all out here in a group where days are long and everyone's kinda famished and lethargic it pays to have good chemistry with everyone pushing everyone on. It's always very important to have a laugh about things. This is such a solid thing to go by when we're out on assignments like that.

So finally I have a little bit of time right now. The most free time i've had for the past 10 days.

So let me try to explain how things work here in Guangzhou.

We (media) live in flats which were built brand new in this area which is called the media village.

There are media working spaces and a big canteen and its next to a bus bay.

You do your work in the media center, which is a stone's throw from the flats and then you walk about a minute to the canteen to eat the food they cook for about 10 yuan a meal. They open 24-hours which caters to our crazy skeds.

Oh and LAUNDRY IS FREE.

So we the AP have rented a container space as an office because we are a big outfit here. There are about 7 scribblers (otherwise known as text reporters) and 8 photographers and 4 technicians as well as 4 tv guys.

We get our assignments each day, for the next. And normally we stick to each sport for 2-3 days. It's a good system this way that we don't keep changing everyday because we take about a day to get into the groove of things here.

So when we get our assignments, we check against our media transport guide which will tell us what bus to take and the departure times (most venues are about 30-100minutes away. Yes very long journeys. Some are as far out as a 2hour drive.

We usually get two sports to cover a day unless you're stuck at weighlifting for a whole day because its far and there is only one bus out and back.

So that's roughly how it works.

Photographers:

We usually use our long lenses when covering sports.

I have with me 3 bodies (i usually carry 2) all CANON gear - AP issue and a couple of lenses.

I use the CANON LENS EF 400mm f2.8 L IS USM lens. It weighs... too much.

Then there is the 70-200mm lens as well.

I use CANON EOS Mark IV bodies which are the best thing CANON has made to date where digital SLRs are concerned after the CANON EOS 5D Mark II

We take our laptops along with us and we have to wear Asian Games issued vests.

There are designated shooting spots for photographers in each venue and in most venues, there are POOL positions.

Meaning the better allocated positions, where photographers are given slightly more room to play around and in that area, we get better vantage points.

These POOL positions are usually reserved for WIRE agencies (ap, reuters, afp, epa and xinhua).

So for the past 3 days, i covered shooting and swimming which are about 15-minutes away from each other, and in swimming, the pool position is along the pool deck.

So that's kinda how it works, or rather how the system goes where media is concerned.