Not too long ago, I found myself on top of a high rise in Yaletown for a work related project. The only camera I had on hand was my iPhone, but I knew I had to snap some photos of the city, no matter how much my vertigo played with my knees.
After reading many of Rebecca’s “Vancouver History” posts, it makes me look at these photos a little differently. Vancouver’s changed a lot in just the six years that I’ve lived here, yet alone the last one hundred.
At this point in the games, I think Vancouver is a little worn down from all of the excitement of what’s been going on up to this point. That’s not to say that the excitement is any less, but it just seems a little quieter.
After a pretty normal workday, it was really cool to head down into Yaletown to check out the official Flickr meetup, put on by the folks at Yahoo! themselves.
Aside from the familiar and not so familiar faces that I see at an event like this, members of the IOC were in attendance to talk about some of their efforts into the realm of social media.
More importantly, these guys were there to talk specifically about the sharing of images taken at Olympic events, which is a highly debated topic among many photographers involved with the True North Media House project.
Essentially, the IOC is endorsing the sharing of your photographs on their Vancouver 2010 Olympic Photo Group on Flickr. This maintains their stance on what you can and can’t do with the photographs taken within Olympic venues. They want you to share what you see and shoot with the world but not use them for personal profit.
Talking to the guys from the IOC, it was even more interesting to hear them talk about Sochi 2014. Essentially, what you will see in Whistler right now is being built from scratch for the Olympics in Russia. They’re tunneling from the city of Sochi to the other side of a nearby mountain where many of the outdoor events like alpine, sliding, and ski jump will magically appear by the time 2014 is on the horizon. You had to agree with them that a project like that is daunting, amazing, and scary all at the same time.
Our evening took a brief detour up to Georgia Street for a quick appearance of Rebecca on CBC Radio 3 with Lisa Christiansen. They had a great setup outside on their recently renovated concourse, and kudos to them for doing their research on their guests. As some one who works in the industry, we cannot have enough of this by on air personalities, if it not being an absolute must. All you aspiring broadcast stars should write that one down.
We wrapped up the night at the Flickr party, having a lot of fun with close friends and recounting everything that we’ve seen and has happened. I even got a free, one year pro membership extension!
It’s been a lot of fun to see how True North Media House has come together over the course of the months before the games and during. A lot of great stuff has been coming through all sorts of channels by self-accredited media contributors, documentarians, writers, bloggers, photographers, Twitter, and everything else yet to come.
