Pyeongchang, 1 year later: Olympic moments frozen in time
Memorable pictures as seen through the lens of photographer Kevin Light
As an athlete and photographer, having confidence in your abilities and being comfortable with the scenario of having one chance every four years to display your skills is essential for a top performance at the Olympic Games.
The emotional connection athletes have to their sport, teammates and family is what I try and tell in my photographs and having been an Olympic athlete myself, I care deeply about the emotion of the preparation, peak action, jubilation and heartbreak and I'm willing to arrive early and stay late to the event to do it.
Looking back through my photos from Pyeongchang gives me confidence that I achieved what I wanted to, but also serves as motivation to continue to ask questions and learn better ways of doing things heading towards the 2020 summer games in Japan.
These are my precious 10:
Feb. 6, 2018
The symmetry of the cables against the clear blue sky combined with shapes and different colours of snowboards was interesting as I looked up from below prior to the start of the Pyeongchang Olympic Games.Taking the bus into town later that day with CBC commentator Craig McMorris, it was cool to see how he could identify everyone in the picture by the designs on their boards as if he were looking at their faces. The bottom photo features, from left to right, Craig McMorris, Mark McMorris, Tyler Nicholson, Jamie Anderson and Spencer O'Brien.
Feb. 7, 2018
Working with the CBC crew is great because of the number of accessible resources behind the organization. I didn't have much time to get ready as we piled into a van and headed for the ice rink and was the only photographer in the rink this particular afternoon. I was fortunate to catch some intense training moments as Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir took part in a training session prior to the start of the Olympics.
Feb. 8, 2018
I lined up the straight railing with the beginning of the curved track in an attempt to add some symmetry to this image of Canadian luger Sam Edney as he made his way down the track during a training run.
Feb. 9, 2018
In a non-team sport like moguls there is a lot of time spent alone. Seeing Canadian Mikaël Kingsbury ride in the middle of the chairlift during a training run three days prior to the start of his moguls event reminded me of this fact. Personally, I was always better as part of a team drawing motivation from not letting my teammates down when the pain of the race really started to set in. His mom, Julie, recently wrote to me about the significance of her son's achievement.
"A year later, I can not look at these photos without shedding tears," she said. "As parents, we knew all the pressure that Mikaël was living. We wanted him from the bottom of our hearts [to win] this Olympic gold medal, he who had dreamed since he was 9 years old. We could not be happier to see him succeed! He radiated happiness and so did we!
Feb. 9, 2018
Another individual athlete, Mark McMorris, rides the lift to the top of the hill during the snowboard slopestyle event. Similarly to Mikaël Kingsbury in the previous photo, it stood out to me how this was another sport that when the official calls your name, you have to be someone who thrives in the scenario of being alone and having nobody else to rely on except yourself.
Feb. 11, 2018
The quality of sports photographers at an Olympic games is at the same quality as the athletes at the Games, so it is a great chance to learn what others do and how they do it. Looking for unique ways of framing athletes into their background is common practice and some do it better than others. This in an example of where I used the course to surround Max Parrot as he flew through the air during the snowboard slopestyle final.
Feb. 11, 2018
The size and almost vertical landing angle of the final jumps on the slopestyle course are so massive that when I first saw them I couldn't believe my eyes. Canadian Tyler Nicholson does his best to stay upright during the men's snowboard slopestyle final.
Feb. 11, 2018
After Justine Dufour-Lapointe put together a fantastic performance in her final run in the women's moguls final, I had a feeling she was going to celebrate in classic Dufour-Lapointe fashion with the fist pump (as she did after her gold medal win in Sochi four years earlier). It was simply a matter of being ready and figuring out how you wanted to capture it.
Feb. 11, 2018
Being an Olympian means respecting the fact that you have positioned yourself in a scenario where you will either experience success or failure. In this scenario Andi Naude's mother wipes the tears from her daughter's eyes following an unfortunate final run that saw Naude miss a jump and ski off course after leading in points following the preliminary round of the women's moguls final.
Feb. 12, 2018
The blue jacket of the CBC interviewer covering half the frame along with the neck warmer and hat of women's snowboard slopestyle silver medallist Laurie Blouin act as a vignette, accentuating the black eye Blouin received after a nasty crash a few days earlier during a training run.
