A little over six months ago, I participated in what can only be described as one of the most exciting and fun events I’ve ever experienced: the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.

I put together a highlight video of my experiences but realized that I hadn’t actually put that much into words to describe the experience.

This was my first Olympic games. I was inspired to dig a little deeper due to the previous experiences documented by my good friends, Robert Scales, Kris Krug and Dave Olson. All these guys have been to multiple games over the years, all documenting their experiences and sharing them freely with anyone that was interested. What was compelling for me was the fact that they were on the ground, in the crowds, interacting with athletes, politicians and regular people that were fans of the games.

Myself, I was indifferent in the beginning about the games being held in Vancouver. I’ve watched the previous games on television with interest but it was more of the spectacle that was interesting to me, rather than the sporting side of things.

Seeing Scales & Kris walking around Beijing with their cameras during the Summer Games really struck a cord with me. The games are one of the few global events that bring people together for positive reasons rather than war or disaster.

This concept was something I completely underestimated with Vancouver. Despite the years of debate, dissent and protesting, once the games actually started, the negative pall quickly faded away and the city was awash in positive vibes and genuinely happy people…to the likes I’ve never witnessed before in my life.

Even up to a few weeks before the Winter Games, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do during them. I had thoughts of getting out of town for a good portion of the time. Then I received an email that my media credentials had been approved. All of a sudden, I had a means to really see the Games in a way that I wasn’t expecting. So I booked off the balance of time with work and started gearing up.

At the same time, the True North Media House was taking off. People began to see that we all were doing and they began printing their own badges and documenting their own experiences and sharing them through our hashtags and Flickr group.

The week leading up to the opening ceremonies things started picking up with invites to media events leading up to the start of the Games and it never slowed down until the very end.

Over the next few weeks I’d managed to shoot a little over 23,000 photos and dozens of hours of video during the Winter and Paralympic Games.

I met so many amazing people during the Games and am constantly reminded of those people whenever I pass by a spot that I visited during the Games.

On October 4th, there will be a screening/fundraiser for the work in progress documentary, With Glowing Hearts, about the Games impact on Vancouver which I and a lot of friends appear in. I can’t wait to see how the film turns out.

As a result of my experiences during Vancouver’s Games, I’ve already decided that I want to do whatever I can to attend and chronicle the London 2012 Summer Games in a similar fashion and I’ve met with some other members of the True North Media House who want to do the same.

I know it’s difficult to pick one memory that stands out from the Games (I can’t pick one), but what was your favorite moment?

During the Gold Medal Sledge Hockey game between Japan and USA, I shot just over 2200 still photos. I posted a number of them on Flickr but thought stringed together, they all made a pretty neat video:

To make this video, I used a very similar process to how I make my still photo based timelapse movies although instead of my point and shoot, I was using a Nikon D3. I simply exported all the photos in the appropriate size and imported them as an image sequence in Quicktime. I think the resulting video pretty turned out pretty cool.

I got back from Austin on Wednesday and then Thursday morning, I picked up my media badge for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Paralympic games and dove right back in.

Except this time around, my camera is still in the shop. So I’ve been using my wife’s DSLR which is a nice camera, it’s just not as capable as mine is so it started off a little different than I was used to.

Then I discovered the Nikon Professional Services booth inside the media centre at UBC which loans all kinds of gear out to photographers to use during the games. As you can imagine, it’s like a kid in a candy store:

I got back up and running with gear I can currently only dream of owning including a Nikon D3 and D300s camera bodies along with a 14-24mm f2.8 lens and the massive 400mm f2.8 lens:

So far, I’ve already shot about 50 gigs of photos over the course of two days. I’ve attended a number of Ice Sledge Hockey games and Wheelchair Curling with more to come later today and this weekend.

So for now, here’s just a small sampling of photos that I’ve shot with lots more coming once I have a chance to process and upload them all.

The rest of the photoset can be found on Flickr and I’ll be adding to it shortly.

One of the cool things about creating so much content during the Olympic Games is that you can make stuff with it…

Make sure you view the full size image.

I built this using the 1200 photos I’ve uploaded to Flickr (so far) and a fun little program called Photo Collage that I’ve written about before.

I managed to shoot over 17,000 photos and hours of video during the three weeks I was covering the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Whistler, Cypress and even Whitehorse, Yukon for a day.

Here is the 8 minute version of those 3 weeks:

Music: Above & Beyond – World on Fire (12″ Remix)

I managed to kill my DSLR shooting on Cypress Mountain in the rain…it’s in the shop getting looked at so my fingers are crossed. I’m going to miss the first half of the Paralympic Games because I’ll be in Austin, Texas attending South by Southwest but I hope to catch the tail end when I get back….hopefully with a working camera.

A huge thank you to all my friends, family (especially my wife, Stacie), the staff and volunteers at the BC International Media Centre and all those that helped make these Games the amazing, once in a lifetime, experience that it was for me.

I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed making and living it from (mostly) behind the camera.

Easily one of the busiest pavilions, the Royal Canadian Mint had fantastic crowds of people for one simple reason: they let you touch the medals!

A coworker waited 9 hours in line to get his photo with the Gold medal!

The Million Dollar coin (now actually worth about $3.5Million)

Of course, I had to hold a Gold medal myself too

The main pavilion closed at the end of the Winter Games but I’ve heard they are moving to a different location for the Paralympic Games so you’ll still have a chance to handle the medals. The lineups might even be more manageable.

UPDATE: The Mint has announced it’s new location during the Paralympic Games – The Vancouver Public Library.

Science World was transformed into Sochi World to present Russia’s host city for the next Winter Olympics after Vancouver in 2014.

I have to say, it was a pretty wild pavilion…I felt like I was inside a Russian airport from the future…or a wicked set from a James Bond movie. So much going on, so many people and so many unique things I’ve never seen before (having never been to Russia). I think they accomplished their goal of immersing visitors in the Russian culture.

I’m still not sure about their mascot though…

Outside near the enormous line to get in was an impromptu sing along:

I’m pretty sure after the Winter Olympic experience I’ve had in Vancouver, I’m going to do whatever I can to get myself to Sochi in 2014.

Purely a monster name drop post of some of the awesome athletes I was fortunate enough to photograph during my Olympic Adventures:

Jasey-Jay Anderson, Gold medallist for Snowboard Parallel Slalom

The entire Men’s Gold medal winning Speed Skating Team, including double Gold medal winner Charles Hamelin

Clara Hughes, Bronze medalist for speed skating

Ashleigh McIvor, Gold medalist for Women’s Ski Cross

Gold medalists for Ice Dancing, Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue

Kevin Martin and members of the Gold medal winning Men’s Curling team

Cheryl Bernard and the Women’s Silver medal winning Curling team

Maelle Ricker, Gold medalist for Snowboard Cross

Team USA figure skater, Johnny Weir

Canada’s new drinking buddy, Jon Montgomery, Gold medalist for skeleton

Silver medal winning Woman’s short track team

Jenn Heil and the Women’s mogul team

Alex Bilodeau, Canada’s first Gold medal on home soil for Men’s Moguls

and finally, the Great One himself, Wayne Gretzky

Click through on any of these photos for more from each of their photosets.

I was warned that pin trading is a HUGE part of every Olympic Games and Scales & kk couldn’t have been more right

These guys are HUGE pinheads

Here’s just a small sampling of what I scored during the games:

Of course, the fact that Apple had Canadian pins was pretty cool:

But this is probably my most prized pin gift given to me by a Samsung Executive during a press conference where they announced they were an official sponsor of the Paralympic Winter Games:

I’m not sure I’m quite a pinhead yet…but I can certainly see the appeal. We’ll have to see what happens in London…

My view of the win from Robson Square…a perfect close to an amazing Winter Olympic Games for me.