Olympic Curling - Stones, Brooms and Ice

As an American, I am not very in tune with curling, but I usually end up photographing this sport every two years at the Olympic Games. The other day I photographed a hockey game for Team USA in the afternoon and then had time in the evening to cover another sport. Since the curling venue is close to where I am staying and I wanted to shoot this sport for a little bit, it made sense to head over there for an hour of shooting.

I started shooting the curling with my Canon 1D X MK II on the floor of the venue, using the Canon 70-200mm lens.

This time I actually started shooting with a slow shutter and panning with the curlers.  Knowing that this sport is slower, I felt that it needed the motion blur to keep the images interesting.

Since these guys are not moving very fast, I shot these images at 1/10 sec to create the necessary blur.

I did move to a faster shutter speed to get your run of the mill curling shots.

But soon after, I went back to the slower shutter speed. I decided to zoom in all the way to 200mm to try and isolate the curling stone and just the lower extremities of the mens.

After 30 minutes of shooting on the floor (or what they call the "Field of Play"), I decided to walk up into the stands and shoot from the bleachers. I even slowed the shutter a little more, this time to 1/5 sec.

After I got those shots, I wanted to give this an even more creative flair.

I turned the camera and shot the rest of the photos at an angle.

I was at the venue for an hour or so before I went back down to the floor to where I left my gear,  to pack up. While down there, I decided to try the off-angle shot from down low, and I captured my favorite image of the night.

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