I've been waiting for this opportunity for a long time, and I wasn't going to let a very wet and windy night put me off. Not living in Vancouver when the 2010 Winter Olympics were on, I have only once before got to see the Olympic Cauldron in Jack Poole Plaza lit, and that was during the day.
While usually lit only for certain occasions, such as Remembrance Day, anyone with a spare $5,000 can pay to have it lit for 4 hours. My commitment didn't stretch to me spending that kind of money, but the rapidly-growing Cactus Club Cafe chain tonight opened their flagship restaurant in the plaza (I'm standing on the roof of it for this photo), and paid for the cauldron to be lit.
Managing my camera, tripod and umbrella in the rain and high winds was not much fun -- by the end of it both me and my camera bag were soaked through, and the camera was fairly wet as well! Fortunately it's largely weatherproof, but I still had to clean the lens after almost every shot to remove any small drops of rain on the front element, which happened regularly even though I used my umbrella to shelter it as much as possible.
My 16-35mm lens wasn't wide enough to capture all of this in a single shot, so this is a 4-shot panorama. As with yesterday's photo, this shot also had a lot of dynamic range, so I used a 7-exposure bracket for a total of 28 photos.
I'm a British software developer and photographer living in Vancouver, BC. I mainly photograph landscapes, cityscapes, night scenes, and water.
If you're interested in any...
