Best Getty Images from the 2024 Paris Olympics: Week 3

Between the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Getty Images will have a team of more than 80 photographers shooting as many as 5 million images. Those breathtaking photos are then run through a team of more than 40 editors, live-editing remotely from offices in London.

It's a massive undertaking, a complex amalgamation of human ingenuity and artistic vision with radical technology — top-of-the-line lenses, remote cameras, robotic and underwater cameras and more.

The results are breathtaking and help bring all the emotion of excitement of the games to people around around the world. FanSided is lucky enough to be partnering with Getty throughout these games and each week several photographers will be sharing some of their favorite photos with us and explaining the stories behind them.

Here are Elsa, Jared C. Tilton and Clive Rose sharing what they captured in the final week. Stay tuned for a full round-up of all the best images from the games after the closing ceremonies.

Elsa

This is my fourth Summer Olympic Games as a staff photographer for Getty Images. Paris is a fabulous city with incredible venues. As a photographer, it has been amazing and at the same time a grueling grind. Paris is easy to navigate by train and the grind is similar to my home base of New York — but much more intense. I am covering different events each day so my gear pack varies with my assignments. For most of the first week, I was covering assignments solo. This second week I am working with a team of our photographers covering medal events. 

So far my favorite venue has been the beach volleyball — situated next to the iconic Eiffel Tower. Everyone was chasing a sunset picture from the top of the stadium. I did as well but also wanted to get a version from down below to be a bit different than the rest. 

At some events, I would join our photographers who were assigned to cover a specific sport throughout the games. I would try and fill in where they were not to get a different angle. This was the case for the apparatus finals of Artistic Gymnastics. During the medal ceremony for the floor exercise, we had photographers at floor level and I went upstairs in the stands to find a different view.

Over the past few days, Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles had been singing the praises of Rebeca Andrade and I had a feeling they would do something special. What I love about his image is it shows what the Olympics and especially gymnastics are all about — athletes supporting one another. To me this image embodies the Olympic spirit perfectly. 

For athletics, I was stationed just after the start of the 200m and the last turn of the Women’s 400m hurdles. Oftentimes, the medalists will do a victory lap so being in that spot was great for capturing those moments as Sydney McLaughlin-Leverone did her victory lap after she won gold and set a World Record.

I also got the chance to shoot badminton for a day. It is not as easy as it looks! They return their shots so fast. I used a 50mm 1.2 lens and shot it at 1.2. I love to use the bokeh of fast primes to make challenging backgrounds beautiful. I wasn’t sure about this lens at first, but it is fast becoming a favorite in my camera bag. I love reaction images. I think we can connect more as humans with them. 

I love reaction images the best in sports photography. It is easier to make that human connection to what they are feeling. I try to get both the joy of victory and the agony of defeat in a single image as that tells the whole story. 

Jared C. Tilton

As a motorsport photographer, I was ecstatic to find out that I would be a part of our cycling coverage for Paris 2024. Although I had never covered a cycling event as an editorial photographer, I felt it would be right up my avenue after covering NASCAR and Formula 1 for many, many years. 

There are some similarities to the overall coverage of racing, whether it be on a bike or in a sports car. Similarities such as understanding the racing line or identifying key moments in a race have allowed me to have an advantage in an unfamiliar sport. With those similarities have also been some challenges to covering a sport at its highest level for the first time. Daily preparation and the assistance of a great teammate have played a large role in understanding certain events in track and road cycling. 

One of my favorite images from this week was a photo of the Peloton racing past The Louvre Museum during the Men’s Road Race. After photographing the start of the race at the base of the Eiffel Tower, I had to quickly take a metro and walk to the museum to ensure the prime center spot for this photo. The center spot was key to the alignment of this very symmetrical composition. I arrived and waited four hours for a photo that happened in 20 seconds, then they were gone. The biggest difference has been that there are not hundreds, or even dozens of laps to obtain your vision for most events. You may only have one shot at creating that image, so the pressure is really on. 

But, at the end of the day, it’s still racing and I continue to try and show the speed and color of the sport the best I can. That is what I personally like about the next two photos. In one, the colors of the Olympic rings in the visor bring you into the photo and set a sense of place for the event. In the other, it not only brings the color and light in the venue to life but, it also shows the pure speed at which the athletes are competing.”

Clive Rose

One of the best things about covering Artistic Swimming at the Olympics is that teams will perform new routines giving you something fresh to work with. You never really know what will happen when teams walk out to start their routines. 

In this case, Team France, the home nation and first performance of the night, performed in a new costume that included faces on the back of their heads, which caught me by surprise initially as it looked very strange at first glance! I decided to cover the ‘land-based’ part of the performance as nowadays this part of the performance can be quite interesting. It definitely added a unique aspect to the performance and makes you look deeper into the image.

I think it’s generally underappreciated the level of strength and fitness that is involved with Artistic Swimming. The work that happens under the water to produce spectacular aerial acrobatics during the routine is incredible, particularly if you keep in mind the entire time everyone’s feet don’t touch the ground. Everyone must lift (swim upwards) in unison to generate the necessary power for take-off and the athlete must then perfectly execute the spin or tumble as shown in this image. Capturing a single athlete in a team sport might seem strange but to me, every one of them has contributed to the success (or failure) of this moment and therefore it's as important as any other part of the routine.