A late editing day lead me to the Olympic Village at the Coastal Cluster in Gangneung.  This site hosts the Oval, where the speed skaters race, the Gangneung Hockey Center, Curling Center, and the figure skating venue.  I wanted to walk around to see if I could get any features in the area, and see if there was anything interesting to photograph.  I ended up wandering around and found a few spots that could have worked out and sat and waited for a moment like the one below.  Sometimes it takes patience, which it did for this shot.

But sometimes you just see something, and try to photograph it.  I saw this old lady all bundled up walking in a shaft of light and just felt like this could be decent.  I liked the way she sticks out because of the rim light on her face and clothing.

I ended up walking around the whole village.  Stopping by the Olympic rings again!

After I was getting close to the curling center, which is actually outside of this closed Olympic village, I saw a little parade coming down the boulevard and decided to follow it down.

I ended up headed back after, got the features in and started to edit that night until around 11 P.M. that night.  I had an early morning at the JeongSeon Alpine Centre the next morning, which required catching a bus at 8 A.M. or you would have to wait another 2 hours to get to the venue.  I ended up waking up around 6:30 that morning, grabbing a big and quick breakfast before heading to the line for JAL (the media term for this venue).  I talked to a colleague before, and he told me that it was best to get in line at 7:30 A.M. or earlier, since a large line would be forming due to that 2 hour turnaround.  Well I got there a little before 7:30 and there was already a line of 15 or so people, a few minutes later the line would stretch down the block and I was glad to get this advice.

The Alpine Centre was around an hour to an hour and a half away, but I was still there early, roughly 9 A.M. for an 11:30 A.M. start.  I ended up getting situated, and met up with our tech in the area.  He took me to our location and showed me the ethernet lines and where to setup for the finish line.  We had two other photographers that were already up on the side of the mountain, since it was required for them to be set a lot earlier before the event started.

My position, next to AP, Getty, EPA, and on the other side the New York Times.

All of our positions are setup like this, tethered through ethernet sent to an editor (my other job on these Olympics)

And another view of the rings!

After  sitting for a while, I ended up going to setup at the finish line around 45 minutes before the event would start.  This was to make sure I wouldn’t have to walk through too many people to get to my spot.  I ended up getting a few shots of people setting up the course.  The even today was the Men’s Alpine Combined.  This meant that the participants would be racing a downhill section, and then a more technical slalom section.

And off to the races, here are a few photos either shooting up on the downhill course like this.

Or just waiting for the slide at the finish and potentially a reaction.  Below are some photos of the downhill section.

A little bit of shutter drag to switch it up, since there were 60 or so racers to go through.

The reaction.

And next the Slalom section, where the racers are required to navigate these poles that are roughly 10-15 feet apart.

Photo finish, which a lot of racers ended up trying to squeeze a fraction of a second down!

Jubilation from the eventual winner, which is really hard to realize until the end of the event.  But the field is cut down to the top 30 for the slalom section, he was closer to the middle of the pack than the front runner.

And lastly, there are usually venue podiums setup, for a photo opportunity before they go to the medals ceremony that night to receive their metals.