OLYMPIC HOCKEY - USA vs. China Women

Well...today was my first day shooting Olympic hockey for Team USA and it was a doozy. The USA women dominated the Chinese team with a final score of 12 to 1. This gave me ample opportunities to shoot images of them scoring and celebrating. Gotta love that!

For most of the shots, I used a pre-production of the new 70-200 lens from Canon, but for the really wide shots right on the glass, I used the Sigma 15mm fish eye lens. I have never used a fish eye lens for hockey but thought that it would make for a cool perspective (as long as the athletes were VERY close the glass. Those are my favorite shots from the day.

This was one of the great moments of the game, when China finally scored a goal. Everyone, and I mean everyone, cheered for them. This is the Olympics and the spirit of the game is as important as winning. You can feel this in the stadium. Even I stopped shooting and stood up and celebrated with everyone else.

I was waiting for an opportunity like this one to use the fish eye lens. This Chinese player came right up to the glass to get a puck and I got lucky blasting off some frames to get this one. Not easy holding a 1D Mark IV in one hand and shooting with a 5D Mark II in the other.