Photo-Op: Olympic Torch in San Francisco
Sunday, April 6th, 2008
For those who are local to the San Francisco Bay Area, this coming Wednesday (April 9th) a historic event will occur on the streets of San Francisco: the Olympic torch will be making it’s only North American appearance. For Bay Area photographers, this is a wonderful chance to capture both the Olypmic Spirit as well as the protesters who will be present during the torch’s passing.
If you are planning on attending, best advice would be to take public transportation: The Embarcadero BART stop is right near the finish for the route, and the starting point can be reached by taking MUNI to SBC Park. The event is expected to start at 1 p.m. and it should take the torch about an hour and a half to traverse the approximately 6-mile route. Expect large crowds and plan to scout locations for the best shots, as well as routes to get from point to point along the route, well in advance. Due to the nature of the politics and protests around the torch’s appearance, I would expect crowds to start building by 9am or earlier.
Here is a list of sites with more information about the Olympic Torch Relay:
- Official Beijing 2008 Olympics Torch Relay site
- SFGate’s Olympic Torch in San Francisco Portal
- SFGate: San Francisco’s Torchbearers (includes the essays they wrote to earn the honor of being a bearer).
If anyone attends the Torch Bearing, please send us a link to your photos or post a link in the comments. It will be great to see the images that everyone captures of the event!
(Map courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate)
