Eye on London /  by Bill Frakes

Currently, the world's attention is on the athletes and what's happening inside the stadiums. But sometimes it is fun to look outside and explore. With the wonderful words of SI writer Alexander Wolff, Laura and I created a short video on the spirit of the city and the paradoxes that make it unique. Hope you all enjoy this view of London, now SI. com.

London Bound /  by Bill Frakes

Surreal weekend. From the tranquility and chill of western Ireland to the hustle and bustle of NYC. Then the calm shores of Florida for two days, and now we are getting ready to fly to England.
Laura and I spent 10 days in Ireland doing portraits of 200 of the world's best teachers, learning from them, and showing a few short films we've made this year.  We flew home on Friday night.
Today, Monday, we are leaving for London for my 10th Olympics, and her second.
The first time I covered the games for Sports Illustrated I spent 15 hours a day, for seven days, frantically trying to get packed.
I started packing for these games this morning. I finished packing in four hours. Experience. It pays off.

Eugene /  by Bill Frakes

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Eugene is one of my favorite towns. It is easily the best place to watch Track and Field in the United States. Large, enthusiastic and knowledgeable crowds for every event. Wonderful.

On years when the Olympics are held, there's a special excitement and tension at the track.

For our SI coverage this year, we wanted to give audiences a behind the scenes experience as well. Everyone wants to see the finish line photos of course, and we have those, but the stories behind the races and at the stadium are part of what make this event so special. Our coverage of this year’s events is featured in stories online, in the magazine and on the iPad edition, with galleries and in the leading offs.

When Allyson Felix and Jeneba Tarmoh tied in the 100 meter race, we created a video of Roger Jennings, head photo finish evaluator, describing what he looks for in the photos and how he makes the call.

Outside the track, the legacy and career of Steve Prefontaine continues to impact new generations of runners and track enthusiasts. With the beautiful words of our friend and SI writer Tim Layden, Laura and I created a short video "An Hour at Pre's Rock." The video was shot as stills using the iPhone and put together with the new Aperture 3.3 to show the emotional pilgrimage people make to his memorial.

Best thing about the Olympic Trials, is undoubtedly the people. We always celebrate Laura’s birthday in Eugene, and I relish the time catching up with friends like Mark Kettenhoffen, Brien Aho, Chris Pietch, Brian Davies, Thomas Boyd, and so many others.
Before leaving Portland for seven hours of flying diagonally across the USA, the last person I spoke to before taking off was SI senior writer Tim Layden.  When Laura and I landed we headed up the jet bridge, I heard Tim's voice and there on the television monitor right above the gate was Tim talking on CNN's air about the story we worked with him on the past few days. Then not 30 seconds later, we ran into a couple in the airport concourse we photographed for another story that we worked on with Tim last week. Surreal.

Ideas that Matter /  by Bill Frakes

Last week, we spent 48 intense hours in Boston making a short film about the thinkers of the New Media Consortium.  Every interview turned into a wonderful conversation, with such a great group of minds to listen to and learn from. Authors. Auteurs. Filmmakers.  Musicians. Educators. Photographers. Historians. Librarians. Scientists. We asked each person who sat for us to expound on one central topic - Ideas that Matter. We worked in a hotel suite in Cambridge. The room was approximately 20 x 18, with 8 foot ceilings. The entire length of the room featured large, uncovered windows, which we promptly covered with blackout curtains.

Our main light was an Arri 2K that we put through a triple baffled and grided Chimera Quartz box.  Gorgeous light. We used Chimera triolets with various boxes for the accent lights. We turned the air conditioning off to keep the sound clean, and the lights, are, well… they are called hot lights for a reason. Not to put too fine of a point on it the room was very quickly scorching. So hot in fact, that when my friend Don Henderson came into the room he announced in his unmistakably Texas style that it was so warm that he saw the Devil running out the door looking for air conditioning.

We shot the entire piece on Nikon DSLR's.  D4's and D800's.  Taking advantage of the clean HDMI out we saved hours by letting the machines do the transcoding for us. We recorded the entire audio session on four recorders.  Backup, and more backup.  Four cameras running constantly.  All in all, a lot of data.

As always, our friend Bob Trikasis came through with a networking solution that allowed us to make maximum use of our computer power and ultimately got us through just in time.

Ideas that Matter is now available on iTunes U.

ProFusion 2012 /  by SARA TANNER

We are excited to announce that Bill will be presenting at ProFusion 2012 in Toronto on June 19. As Canada's pro imaging technology expo, ProFusion brings together professionals in the industry and hundreds of vendors to provide the latest training and technology. Bill's seminars, A Life-long Love Affair with Photography and Moving Seamlessly Between Stills & Video, will be taught at 9:15 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. on June 19. Space is limited. For full descriptions of each seminar or to sign up, please visit profusionexpo.com.

If you're in Toronto, we hope you stop by!

Icelandic Adventures /  by Laura Heald

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Driving through the countryside of Iceland is a time warp to a land before time. The landscape is rough and barren. Its moss covered lava fields and tall sloping mountains have an almost lunar appearance.

This is 66 degrees north.  The home of seals and poets.

A few years ago, we produced a multimedia piece on Australia for the launch of the Nikon D3s and rolling through the southwest Iceland felt so much like our time in Tasmania.

Bill and I were lucky to be escorted through the Snæfellsnes peninsula of Iceland on Sunday by our new friend Raymond Hoffmann.

He works with Dionys Moser, a Swiss photographer who is famous for his landscape work.

We will be joining them on some tours in the near future -- a diverse selection of locations from the north of Norway for the Northern Lights to the White Desert of Egypt to the Blues country of the Mississippi Delta.  We will have dates and descriptions posted on our blog and their Web sites soon. Raymond was born in Germany, but moved to Iceland after meeting his wife - a native Icelander - on a trip to the island 10 years ago. He took us to spots the guide books never mention. A black rock beach, a cozy ocean front hotel for a gourmet lunch -- lost on Bill, but much appreciated by me -- and small waterfalls overlooking a breathtaking backdrop of Church Mountain.

We started the day with coffee and croissants with his wife and 2-year-old daughter.  Along with spending hours talking with photographers at a lunch graciously arranged by Baldvin Einarsson, this was easily the highlight of our trip.  As much as we love taking pictures, spending time with people and making new friends is the best part of our existence.

Baldvin runs a professional camera store in Reykajavik.  A really professional camera store.  It was a another step back in time for us. Along with our friends at the Camera Store in Calgary, and Light and Byte in Zurich, Becco is a wonderful throwback to when service mattered most.  It’s just a different way to shop, and learn.

We’re lucky because we have Jeff Snyder and Annie Cahill at Adorama in NYC who are long time friends and colleagues. We can’t drop in often and hang out with them -- it’s a bit of a commute --but they give great small town service with huge national resources.

The weather Sunday was perhaps less than desirable for most tourists but, as Raymond pointed out, typically Icelandic. The temperature wavered between 0 and -2 degrees Celsius, and the wind was a blustery 30 meters per second, which translates to just over 60 miles per hour. We spent the day driving along the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, unable to see the famous Snæfellsjökull volcanic glacier due to clouds, but enjoying the scenery nonetheless.  We stopped to watch a family of Icelandic ponies graze in a rocky field. We made pictures of a small church in the center of a lava field. Raymond took us to the famous beach at Búðir where we watched snow fall on its one-of-a-kind round, black rocks, a jarring yet phenomenal scene.

We ended the tour in a small fishing town where we warmed up with a bowl of homemade vegetable cream soup before driving back to Reykjavik. As the sun set behind a wall of clouds, rays of light escaped, allowing us to make the last of our Icelandic photos.

Maybe we’ll make it back there someday.  There is still so much more to see and do.

This is one place I’d like to get back to on a sunny day.  It’s called Gullfols, or Golden Falls, and pictures from there are spectacular when the weather is nice.  I shot this using the 8mm app on my iPhone just for fun, trying to make light of a dark day.

But there is a lot of work to be done this weekend at the Preakness Stakes so after a quick stop in Norway, home we go.

Iceland /  by Bill Frakes

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Any place where more than half of the population believes in fairies, and where they advertise themselves as the land of seals and poets--yet the landscape and people are incredibly reminiscent of the best of the American west--is a place I can't help but love. Great music on the radio didn't hurt my mood either, nor did the excellent coffee.  Outside of Portland, and maybe Seattle, why doesn't the USA have the same wonderfully prepared coffee I always find in Europe?   Sure, most US cities have a great coffee shop, but you have to search for it.  Here, it's everywhere.

The land is gorgeous.  Geysers, snow covered mountains and beaches within sight of each other.......not to mention the delicious thermal spring baths.  Peter Brodin from Nikon Nordic took us straight to Blue Lagoon Wednesday after we got off the plane - the perfect way to relax after a long journey across the Atlantic. The warm water coupled with the chilly air and shocking landscape was refreshing in an uncommon way.

Then yesterday Laura and I took a road trip east to Geysir - a small town about an hour and a half outside Reykjavik that consists of a gas station, a motel and the world's largest geyser. Geysir, the geyser (they are clever with names here)  has not erupted since 2000, but when it does it is twice the size of Old Faithful in Yellowstone. However, a smaller geyser 50 yards away called Strokkur erupts every 8 to 10 minutes and, unlike Yellowstone, Laura and I were the only people there to enjoy it. Watching something like that is like watching the world begin. It's beautiful in a primordial way.

After the sweltering heat, and the intensity of the Kentucky Derby, the chill air and thermal hot springs of Reykjavik have been an extremely pleasant salve.

Just the right tonic to revive me before I head to Baltimore to continue to document the quest for a horse racing triple crown at the Preakness Stakes.