The London Olympics and Paralympics

As the Rio Olympics gets started, I thought I'd publish a couple of photos I took four years ago when the Olympics were hosted in London. The summer of 2012 was glorious in London and the Olympics really brought out the best in the city. The weather was beautiful, the atmosphere was delightful and commuters used to ignoring each other suddenly had a smile to offer strangers.

With scare stories about how rammed the city would be during the Olympics, many Londoners left the city for the duration but actually the flood of people didn't quite happen and it was lovely to be able to move around the city during the festivities.

The summer of 2012 has other good memories for me too: Liz and I had only met the winter before and were making the most of the good weather and all that was going on in London. Liz volunteered as a Games Maker which was fantastic.

Of the Olympic events, I only got tickets to the football at Wembley which was good fun and I went for a great afternoon with my grandmother. For the Paralympics, we managed to get tickets for the athletics in the Olympic Stadium and that's where I took these photos.

It was a beautiful summer's evening and as interesting as watching the action inside the stadium for me was watching the sky slowly shift through sunset to night.

We were excited at the time to see Oscar Pistorius race, although that feels a rather dubious honour now.

I was pleased they allowed in full size cameras though: I'd been worried about having my Canon gear deemed too-professional on the door and being unable to enter or leave it anywhere safe. Luckily all was fine and so these photos were taken on my old Canon 5D Mark II and using the 24-105mm lens.