The 2016 Summer Olympics

AKA "The finale near the favelas"

My final assignment for AFP was to head to Rio 2016, to cover the beach volleyball in the fantastic custom-built arena on Copacabana beach. Never having shot the sport before, my only reference point was that in London 2012, the team would leave before anyone else and return after we'd had dinner, only to be rarely spotted stumbling around the hotel corridors like Walking Dead extras.

Each match lasts around an hour on average and, for the first six days, includes 12 matches every day. This means that the first ball can be spiked at 10am, with the last one hitting the sand well after 1am. In previous years, the team has had to work together and cover every match but this was changed for Rio, allowing us to carve up the day into shifts.

Unlike other venues, the beach volleyball arena is designed to be more of a party environment with costumes encouraged, dance moves for the crowd depending on the state of play and bursts of music in reaction to points scored and saves attempted. Luckily, these extra bursts of noise and music help to keep us all awake as the coverage is certainly a mammoth task.

Rio 2016 will be my fourth Olympic games and I appear to have become one of the "outside" team. There have been times when this proved to be a curse rather than a blessing, such as when I was trudging up a mountain side in the rain during Vancouver 2010 but on the whole, I'm much happier seeing the sky.

The Olympic venues are surprisingly identical in so many ways that if you cover an indoor discipline, you could very easily be anywhere in the world. Thankfully, my assignment for Rio 2016 couldn't be further from that, with the heady mixture of delights that is Copacabana beach.

Right, gear. For the 2016 Olympic games, I had the genuine pleasure of using two of the Nikon D5 bodies which just proved to be the most exceptional cameras, day after day. I've had them for a few months now and I have yet to find a fault. The autofocus is astoundingly accurate and consistent, the white balance is better than ever before, giving excellent colour rendition, even under artificial and mixed light and the build quality is bulletproof. These things were baked in the midday sun, covered in a heady brew of sun lotion, sweat and fine beach sand and didn't fail once. The venue got pretty dark for the later sessions but the 16000ISO and above is like water off a ducks back to the D5. As I said, exceptional.

For the glass, I mainly opted for the 200-400mm f/4G ED VR II and the 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II for longer shots, with the 24-70mm f/2.8G ED and the 14-24mm f/2.8G ED covering the wider end.

Now that we're all safely back to our respective homes, I have to bring up the issue of security. To say the level of theft taking place in Rio was "breathtaking", would be neglecting to include "camerataking", "laptoptaking" and "phonetaking". On the first day of action for Team AFP, days before the opening ceremony, one photographer was surrounded on the beach, metres from the busy promenade and mugged at knifepoint. From there, the thefts came thick and fast. By the day of the opening ceremony, we'd lost eight camera bodies and eleven lenses. Some of these were opportunism, some of these were calculated brazen thefts, some were armed mugging and others were just a mystery with kit vanishing into thin air. Pickpockets operated pretty much unchecked with one AFP photographer calling one out when he spotted his phone missing on a busy metro train, only for it to be handed back with no embarassment or excuse.

I've genuinely never been to a place that made me feel so aware of my surroundings and the potential imminent threat of crime. Usually at Olympic games, one of my main pleasures is wandering the streets and events outside the venues to catch those random "moments" and local colour. In Rio, we all removed any signs of media accreditation before leaving the venue and didn't carry anything of value. That environment certainly shaves the edges off the freedom of creativity, if not chainsawing it off altogether.

Due to the previously mentioned schedule at beach volleyball and the crime levels, the venue didn't allow any equipment to be stored in the lockers overnight so either my colleague Yasuyoshi Chiba or myself would find ourselves leaving the media gate after 1am, with £40k of gear on our backs, onto the streets of Copacabana. One tip given was to always put my gear into the taxi boot as armed guys on bikes held up taxis with visible bags on the bag seat. Relentless.

Jonathan Nunn, a friend of mine who now lives in Rio, pointed out that sadly a lot of the Government's attempts to prevent crime were "Para inglês ver", meaning "for the eyes of the English" i.e. an impressive display but not actually effective. The battleships in the bay were a perfect example. I'm not quite sure what effect a battery of naval cannons would have had against a lone gunman but thankfully we never got to find out.

After saying all that, I have to make it clear that you weren't mugged at gunpoint as soon as you stepped out of a building. Thousands of people were wandering the beaches and promenades of Copacabana without a sniff of trouble. The issue was that just one of the camera bodies we were all carrying was equal to buying a new car out there. Multiply that by four or five when you factor in second bodies and lenses, and you create a ridiculously tempting proposition for thieves. In some ways I could almost forgive it if it had just been entirely opportunist theft by someone desperate for money, but when people with media accreditation walk into the AFP office and leave with a roller-case full of equipment, despite CCTV and security, it was clearly well organised gangs. Anyway, moving on...

As mentioned above, to set itself apart from the other sports and venues, the beach volleyball arena goes for the wild and loud approach, with the audience encouraged to join in with dance moves after certain plays are made. I'm still having dreams involving "Monster Block! Monster Block! Monster Monster Monster Block!" Aside from the dance moves, the resident DJ liked to go all "daytime TV" and play tunes that have tenuous connections to the players. Think "Homes under the hammer" and you'll get the idea. US player called Brooke Sweat? Easy, we'll go with "Gonna make you sweat". Qatari player called Cherif Younousse? That would be "I shot the Sheriff". Even something as small as losing your baseball cap triggered the Full Monty soundtrack.

If that wasn't enough, the audience provided their own amusement, ranging from a bizarre chant of "oooooooOOOOOOHHHHH! ZIKA!" as a player served the ball, through to one Canadian fan who spent a match constantly shouting questions to German player Laura Ludwig about her personal life and playing style. I always thought Canadians were the nice people, too.

One of the shots every photographer is looking for is the classic Superman dive through the air, with as little ground contact as possible, which is remarkably hard to get, mainly due to having to photograph through the other three players on the court. Nearly every time it happens, someone runs in front of you, or the player dives behind the net support. Thankfully, the venue gives photographers the chance to work from nearly any position so the options are there to move around as you hunt for the elusive dive.

After becoming deeply buried in the daily repetition of beach volleyball coverage, it was a refreshing change to get out and see another venue, my first new destination being the triathlon for the men's final. Not only would it be a chance to shoot a different sport but also my only chance to hopefully see some British gold, thanks to the exceptional Brownlee brothers. As expected, they cruised straight through with a gold and a silver medal to add to the collective family cabinet.

I'd planned to get up to the "Christ the Redeemer" statue at some point, even if I wasn't able to emulate Lee's selfie, but sadly the chance never appeared. One benefit of being on Copacabana was that I at least had the chance to see it from the arena, albeit on the 400mm end of a lens.

A few days after my first triathlon experience, and I was back at the Copacabana fort for the women's final. Triathlons are just insanely hard tasks, comprising of a 1.5km swim, followed by a 40km cycle and a cheeky 10km run to finish off. It's never a good start when you fall over in the first ten steps.

Away from the joys of sport, one of my most memorable experiences of the Games came as I made my way to the athletics stadium in an Uber car to photograph Usain Bolt's final Olympic race. Getting in, I followed the well-used plan of putting my gear into the boot ("trunk", to my Transatlantic colleagues) and we hit the road. Half an hour into the journey, the driver signalled that he needed gas so we pulled into a service station. Having been asked to leave the car by the pump attendant (due to it being LPG), we both stepped out. Noticing a drinks machine, I grabbed a can and turned to find both car and driver gone.

Convinced that there's no way this could be happening, I walked around the forecourt until the attendant noticed me and her jaw dropped. "He... he... GO!", she stammered.

Opening the Uber app, there's the taxi icon heading off into the distance so I watched for the next five minutes as he drove and drove in a straight line, away from the station. I was, to coin a phrase, flummoxed. How could he be robbing me? I knew his name, had his registration and was watching as he disappeared into the night with all of my cameras. No amount of unanswered calls or texts through the app had an effect.

Fearing the "Lochtegate" effect may be raised when I eventually made my report to the AFP management, I had time to take a panoramic of the forecourt on my phone to prove I was stranded.

Eventually, the driver's car stopped on my screen and, following thirty seconds, the car spun around and returned to the garage via a series of back streets and alleyways. Screeching to a halt, the driver leapt from the car and ran over to hug me; "Mr Leon! Mr Leon! You too quiet! I drive and drive and turn to talk and YOU NOT THERE!"

"Yes, I did actually notice that", I replied.

Having watched nearly the whole of the beach volleyball tournament, I have a serious amount of respect for the moves these men and women pull off at incredible speed in the Brazilian heat. Personally, I think I'll stick to just laying on the sand with a cocktail, thanks.

Now that the Rio 2016 Olympic Games are over, it's not only the end of my beach volleyball coverage but also the end of my time at Agence France-Presse. After nearly ten years as a staff photographer, I've decided to move on, so am starting at Getty Images with their editorial news team in September. Life with AFP has been an incredible experience. Let the new adventure begin!