GLIMPSES: In Olympic volleyball, hands from the darkness
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.From the darkness, hands emerge, reaching for the volleyball.
They belong to Kenya’s Sharon Chepchumba Kiprono, blocking the ball during the women’s volleyball preliminary round pool A match against the Dominican Republic at the Tokyo Games on Saturday.
A shot like this — which evokes magic and shadows and feels compellingly alive — does not come about by accident. Not hardly. Let the Associated Press photojournalist who made the image, London-baed Frank Augstein, explain:
“We came up with ideas every day by concentrating on the highlights and by learning what is important in this kind of sport," Augstein says. "The visual stuff can be reduced to hands, arms and balls. So when some players turned up with arm sleeves to protect themselves from the ball impact, I only needed to wait for them to wear black ones and look for a dark background.”
Some photo positions at the volleyball venue gave him the opportunity to capture such a background, but it took a lot of tries to get it just right — and not only because he wanted the hands to look like they're coming out of nowhere.
“I tried for two days, as I wanted to have the ball showing the Olympic rings,” Augstein said Saturday. “Still not perfect, though, but still have another week to get it better.”
___
More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2020-tokyo-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports