Tuesday, 11 September 2012

London 2012- Experience of a lifetime!

London 2012 has been the talk of Great Britain particularly, for the last few years. And these last few months particularly have seen the spirits and general happiness of our country soar to new levels! It's been truly inspirational watching the way people have changed, and I hope it lasts. I've had conversations with new people and everyone just seems to be on a general high, united in the pride we have for our country's. I didn't think I'd get tickets for any events because they sold out so quickly, but I was lucky enough to get Paralympic athletic tickets, meaning I'd be in the main stadium and I'd see all of the fantastic athletes, including Hannah Cockroft and David Weir.
I'd already had my first taste of the Olympics when the torch passed through a near by town. I tried to capture the general joy and anticipation in the atmosphere as the crowds waited for the torch arrival, in my photos and I was on the whole pretty pleased with how my photos came out. I didn't like the idea of my Olympic journey (so to speak) finishing there. I wanted my journey to continue, so I could experience as much of the Olympics as I could. So, as you can imagine, I was over the moon when I was informed we had tickets.
On the day I got very over excited and ended up filling both memory cards before I even got in the stadium. I failed to mention that I can use these photos as part of my photography project, so it was of importance to me to take so many photos, though I would have done anyway! My photography projects is portraiture, so I took photos of the armed police, the games makers and general crowd shots as well as the general surroundings. Once in the stadium I put in a new memory card and began photographing again. If you got a chance to go in the stadium you will know that it has the most amazing atmosphere in there! People cheering, Mexican waves, flags waving, music pumping and lights flashing! Everyone was screaming for the athletes there was such a buzz. Me and my family kept looking at each other and just saying "wow". It's hard to describe the atmosphere if you haven't been in there but it just took my breath away...Incredible.
Again, I was really pleased with my photos but I now just felt that my journey was unfinished and I was willing to accept that because I couldn't go again to the park and there was no way I could get tickets to the closing ceremony. I was grateful enough for the tickets I got so I was certainly not expecting to wrap my photographic journey up completely...if that makes sense? But then a teacher at school told me about the London 2012 Parade. I had no idea this was even going on, but as soon as I heard I knew it would be the perfect way to end my series of photographs. The end of the Olympics and the end of my personal journey with London 2012. My parents agreed to take me and my teachers at school really encouraged me to go, knowing it would be really beneficial for my project.

(Where we stood-found on Google, bad quality)
 
The parade was amazing! Absolutely amazing! We secured front row 'seats' and had the perfect view, just in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, by ludgate hill.  The parade consisted of 21 floats with all of the team GB athletes on board. Because the crowds gathered so dramatically on St.Paul's steps in comparison to the other side of the road, all of the athletes stood on our side of the float so we got an amazing view of everyone, and we were so close.

To cut a very long story short, I think my Journey feels complete. The torch-The Events-The Parade.

I've got hundreds of photos, but here are my personal favourites. If you want to see anymore, just comment of tweet me or leave me an email and I'll upload some more.
I hope you enjoyed this post, please follow, comment, email...whatever you want to do.

Bye for now

My personal favourites from the parade.
(I do have photos of Jessica Ennis, Victoria Pendleton, Chris Hoy, Mobot  and many others if you want to see any of those)





The Olympic Park-Athletics Paralympics
The only photo that seems to want to upload currently, but contact me if you want some more photos as like I said, I took hundreds!

I will upload the torch ones separately as they are on my laptop which is being repaired at the moment.

Hope you enjoyed London 2012, and I hope you enjoyed my blog post. Please let me know whether my posts are interesting or not because I feel as though I am rambling, and I'd love to hear your feedback.
Thank you