I spent three straight days photographing World Cup Speed Skating at the Kearns Olympic Oval. 6,969 frames later, I still don’t know how to process it all. Will I really go back and edit all of those frames? Of course I will, but right now the thought just gives me a headache. During the events I shot every athlete and then edited the winners and key players for each day’s coverage.

Now that it’s all over I’m stuck with twenty-two gigabytes of photos that need attention. I guess I’ll dig in there and try to tell you something about it…

The first day I entered the venue without a credential, walked past security at two access points and made it all the way to the press room without being stopped. I looked around the press room and instead of setting down my laptop I decided to carry it with me while shooting. I had kind of a weird feeling about that place. The intuition turned out to be real, as the guy two seats over had a camera and lens stolen from the press room.

The news about the theft made its way through the photographers while we were shooting an awards ceremony. One guy started blaming it on the Europeans. He said something like, “This always happens with the European photographers. When I worked in (redacted), they would come over for a big tennis tournament and every time equipment would disappear. It’s always the Europeans!”

Saturday morning we had a send-off brunch for our photo tech Emily. It was good to see my colleagues and catch up on the team building meeting I missed earlier in the week. Emily will definitely be missed.

Saturday at Speed Skating there was another equipment theft reported. I don’t know all the details but you can make up your own scenario picturing these three elements in a bathroom: a camera bag, a photographer, and a thief.

Three days of shooting the same sport forces you to be creative. Every day I tried to shoot with different lenses from different spots. When I get time I’ll put up some galleries of my favorites.