Hockey On A Sledge

The Phoenix club this season have set up both a women's team, and a sledge team, and I was asked a couple of weeks ago to photograph both teams during training for the MPCSF website. 

The sledge hockey training is no problem, but when it comes to the woman's team...well, it would be kind of hard to photograph and train at the same time. I could have photographed the woman's team earlier in the month when I was out for a week after getting a head hit and a virus, but I was banned from training by the coach!

The sledge team is made up of both able and disabled. The Phoenix team have a few GB team members on the squad too.

Players sit in a sledge and use their stick to move themselves along the ice. Sledge hockey is also full body checking too, and sometimes it can get really rough out there!

The head coach of both teams, Pete, and one of the sledge players, Steve, are doing a 100-mile walk from Altrincham ice rink to Coventry ice rink. This is all in aid of the MPCSF and a charity called Stick n' Step. They're doing it over a week.

The Manchester Phoenix Community Sports Foundation helps introduce sport to disabled and underprivileged children in the North West. While Stick n' Step provide free education and support to children with cerebral palsy, along with their families and careers.
If you would like to donate, it doesn't have to be a lot...as they say, a little goes a long way, you can donate here:
www.everyclick.com/charitywalk 

If you could share it, that would be great too.

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Three Things

Thing One

At the end of January I had to fly solo for a game, as Richard and Yolanda were attending a close friend's birthday party.

Being a lone photographer for a team is nothing new to me. I was solo all last season with a different team, so I knew the crack and what to expect. I wouldn't be able to cover everything that happened in the game, I'd just have to hope I'd get lucky and the goals and other action would happen where I was.

I did forget that there is a certain pressure to being the only photographer. If you get it wrong, you can't fall back on the other members of the team. There's just you. You and what you have on your memory card. So I did worry my camera would through a wobbler and I'd end up with hardly anything, or nothing at all!

Luckily, I stood in the right places at the right time. Normally in the third I'm in the home end, but that game I went to the away end and was right to do so. Two fights happened. The first to drop the gloves was Andy, the second was Ondrej.

Another thing to come out of that game was the photo of Andy got printed in the M.E.N, which is my first published photograph (that I've seen for myself!).

Thing Two

I made my first trip to an away game at the beginning of the month, which didn't go unnoticed by one of the players who commented, "This is your first away game this season, what has taken you so long?"
It is a good point. The team I photographed for last year was 80+ miles away and sometimes I was there 3 times in a week, so I'm just done with long journeys. Done! But I made this one because it was the first leg of the semi-final of the Challenge Cup.

Thing Three

Last year, I wrote about the new team calendar and how it was a two part project.



Well, the second part of this project is on its way! I'm not sure when or what day it is due out, but I can tell you the second part is a recipe book.
I got sent the food ideas from the boys and researched them, and then did a bit of food photography. I'm not a natural when it comes to food photography but I gave it my best shot and I hope everyone likes it.

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Smoke And Ice

A couple of games ago, my photo buddy Richard Allan wrangled us onto the ice pre-puck drop. We were going to photograph the guys charging onto the ice as their names were shouted out after the intro video.

The only problem I have with this is that my camera doesn't like low light and shooting through the smoke. My camera is slowly crapping out on me, like the last one which isn't fun. So, I decided to give another camera a whirl.

The other camera, which belongs to my dad, is a Lumix G3. It is a mirror-less DSLR, which I'm not really a fan of. The camera is too small and I don't like what I see through the view finder, but I'll pass that aside for the fact that it can shoot in low light just great! So along with that I was using a fixed focal lens of 45mm which stopped down to F/1.8.

Before we hit the ice, I gave it a try:

It seemed okay, but when they turned the lights out and the lad on the smoke machine got going....how good was it going to be? Well, there was only one way I was going to find out.

The lights went out, the music played and then the boy on the smoke machine got a bit trigger happy. It looks nice, don't get me wrong, but it is like photographing through fog. It is annoying during the first period, you end up with hardly anything!

ANYWAY.....back to shooting.

It was a bit hit and miss, as the boys move so fast when leaping out onto the ice and it is so dark...and you have the smoke to contend with. So with all these factors, your camera has a pretty mean job of focusing and shooting fast to get the images you want.

I missed a couple of the guys coming through the smoke out onto the ice because every now and then the camera struggled to focus, which is no worry as long as you get some of the other boys stepping out.

Some of the photos I had on the memory card were just the empty door, no players. There's a skill to it, you have to know your camera, what it does and how the settings you choose will affect the final image. Your basic settings, aperture, ISO and shutter speed are all interrelated. So how you set one will affect the others.

I am pleased with images I captured. The first of Luke Boothroyd being the best out of them all...I would like to try again without a fixed focal lens, so I could zoom in that little bit closer. However, I wouldn't be able to use my own camera due to the reasons stated above.

Although, having said that, these shots give me an idea for a photo shoot.



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Test Shoot, Photographing a Photographer and Jessops

Test Shoot

So! Last week I went down to sunny Staffordshire to meet up with my photo buddy, Richard Allan. We were going to do a test shoot for a photo session that I'll eventually end up doing with the team.

While writing an essay at university, I was researching a photographer and their work, and I saw a couple of photographs that I thought the fans would like.....and the hopefully, the boys would like too! These photos will be different from anything either set have seen before, and its technically the most difficult shoot we'll probably ever do.

Having been taught like a Canadian, I deconstructed the images and came up with a plan of how I thought the photographs had been taken. So, Richard and I set about putting my theory into practise. After about an hour and a half, maybe two, we'd tried two different methods of capturing similar images. We came to the conclusion that there was a very large possibility that the final image was a photo shop job, as we couldn't quite get it like in the original image. I mean, I don't think you'll ever take a photo and get it 100% bob on, you can get very very close though.
The important thing was, we had the test shots in the bag. We'd taken the original images and made them our own.

We should be getting underway taking them later this month....hopefully.

Photographing a Photographer

After completing the test shoot, I photographed Richard in his hockey gear. Richard plays for the Blackburn Buccaneers, a recreational hockey team. We set-up the lights and the backdrop and away we went!

It is always nice photographing some you know, someone you're friends with. I find you have more to talk about, and it's more relaxed. That's something we don't when photographing the players. It's normally an hour (or maybe less) before warm-up, and the rink is full of the general public and the 'DJ' is playing some god awful music way too loud....so even if we wanted to talk to the boys we were photographing they couldn't hear us anyway!

When shooting someone you know, you can play around a bit more with the kind of images you want to capture. If something goes wrong you can take the time to figure out what and why, instead of doing a quick fix so the boys can be on their way pronto.

I thought Richard was an excellent model, even if I did have to stand on a chair for some of the shoot!

Jessops

As I type this, it has just been announced that photography chain store Jessops has gone into administration.

Yes, it is sad because of all the staff could potentially lose their jobs. But this is what happens when stores fail to diversify quick enough, and what happens when large supermarkets like Tesco and Asda start their own photo services.

Jessops have had to diversify into photo gifts because Tesco and Asda sell photo gifts. But those supermarkets are cheaper than Jessops and more convenient, you put your photos in for an hour and then go and do your shopping and pick them up on your way out. You can also go on about online retailers too, they're pretty convenient too and probably a lot cheaper.

While I don't use Jessops, I buy anything photography related online from other retailers, it would be sad to see it go. Not just because when you start out in photography, its a first call. But because, once Jessops, a shop dedicated to photography, where else can you go to see what you're thinking of buying? Places like Asda, Tesco and PC World only carried a limited stock of cameras and photography equipment, they aren't specialised retailers at all.


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Patience In Game

Patience is a virtue, especially in photography.

Every photographer has a list of shots they want to get, and they'll try every game to get that shot. You can try all game and never get it....you can try all month to get that perfect shot and never get it, you can try all seasons for that one perfect picture. Sometimes on a rare occasion you can get it exactly the way you want it, they way you see it in your head, other times you have to settle for what is on your memory card. You can't control the game, the passes, the plays, the goals or the fights. You have to take what comes your way.

The shots I try to get every game are goal photos. The team can be knocking them in like there's no tomorrow and I don't get one. Last night I missed the first four and a good slice of the rest too. But the ones I got turned out:

A lot of other photographers really like to get the fights. I'm not really fussed about a fight, its not on the top of my list but if it happens I'll take it. They don't necessarily make the best images, especially when a fight is more like a love-in. A large slice of the fights I've seen have so far this season have been more of a hugging session than fists flying. If you have an image in mind these fights mean you have to wait a bit long for that photo you want. However, get a "real" fight and you have to contend with other players and the officials getting in the way and spoiling the images you get.

But the Holy Grail of all hockey photography, that you have to be most patient for, is the team you photograph for lifting meaningful sliver wear. You might have to wait all season and you might not be rewarded, but if you're team is the team you take as much as you can.....line-up those shots you have in mind and snap away.

It doesn't matter what league or country you're in, or what language you speak. Take your colours off and you're list of "most wanted shots" will be very similar. They'll no doubt tell you the same thing: patience is a virtue, wait long enough and you'll be rewarded.


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Out now!

Out now, available to buy from the White Magic Shop is a calendar containing all of my photography.

Well, when I say all......I mean some of the photography I've done for the "Cooking with the Phoenix" project, and the poster / studio shots of the players.

The calendar is the first part of a two part project. The second part, a recipe book, is due to be released in the new year.

The front cover of the calendar was actually a test shot!

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