Olympics in Milan: My favorite 30 images from these Olympics

Now that I am back home (and laying low), it has given me a couple of days to reflect on my amazing Olympic experience in Milan. That reflection is comprised of stories, key moments, different stress levels and a chance to see some of the beauty of Milan. Most importantly to us photographers, this was a chance to add new images to my portfolio, for which I am really proud. 

What you see in these photos is different from what I see. Because I was the one taking the photos, I remember what I was thinking at that moment, the logistics in getting to that location, the camera settings I chose, and maybe even the challenge of getting that shot.

In this blog post, I want to share with you all my top 30 favorite photos from these Games. I will also try to explain why these made my top list.

This photo is in the collection for two reasons. It was on my first full day in Milan and my first photo assignment for USA Hockey. We had already done the formal photos for the women's team, and right before they left the ice, I suggested a more informal and fun shot. The fact that they were not only open to it, but embraced it, made it even more special. And secondly, I just love the happiness that exudes from them.

I really loved the opening ceremony, especially after the let down in Paris. I loved the colors in this photo. I remember, even when taking this photo, that it was a really cool and colorful moment. 

It is always tricky trying to time photos of pyrotechnics. If I shoot too early or too late, it may not look good. But here I captured that spilt second where there was just the right rotation of the fireworks.

This was a happy accident with the Canon RF 7-14mm lens. I shot a really wide image, but when opening the file in Adobe Camera Raw (and since there is no lens profile for this brand new lens), it opened my wide shot to this. I loved it!

When I saw that the teams would be entering through this gold ring, at the perfect angle from my photo position, I was really happy. I love this shot of Team USA making their entry. 

This is a photo of Aerin Frankel, who was absolutely outstanding in net for the women of USA Hockey. I got this shot with the puck coming right at her.

As I have said so many times before, people's reactions are often more powerful than their actions. This photo really shows that!

I was very excited to photograph the "Quad God" for the teams competition, knowing that it was my only chance to catch him in action. (Note: I knew that the next time he would skate, I would be shooting hockey games.) The second I saw him lean back right in the middle of the Olympic logo, I fired a bunch of shots with the Canon R1, knowing it would make for a cool composition.

During the teams competition, Ilia nailed his performance and ended with this reaction. A golden moment!

Speaking of reactions, this was the first really nice goal scoring celebration of the Games for me.

I have always enjoyed creating motion pan photos (where I slow the shutter speed of the camera and I move the lens at the exact same speed as the athletes). This was one of those moments. I saw these two in this position and I tracked them as closely as I could. I knew that if I could get a sharp image of their faces, that this would be a cool shot.

Brady Tkachuk scored a goal and turned right in my direction with this awesome reaction. 

For most of my long track speed skating photos, I took them at slow shutter speeds, but not for Jordan Stolz. This guy is so fast and I wanted to make sure I got a nice shot of him in action! I put myself in a position to get him coming around a turn with a nice Olympic background. 

When selecting my favorite images from these Games, even I was surprised at how many of the photos I selected were reactions vs actions.

I spent a lot of time keying in on Hillary Knight, as she was on the cusp of setting a new US Olympic record. I love this shot of her coming right in my direction, with just her and all the opposing players in the frame. 

I have to include at least one shot of the Winn brothers. They were hysterical for the entire Olympics.

These next photos were taken on my one free day of shooting no Olympic sports, but getting a chance to see the beautiful city of Milan. 

When I walked into the Galleria, I immediately knew this would be a cool location for the RF 7-14mm fisheye lens. I took a bunch of photos and thought I was done, until I saw these two gentlemen. The minute I saw them, I knew that they would be the perfect subjects in front of an already amazing background. (Note: I made sure that they were dead center in the frame so that they would not be overly distorted by the curvature of the lens.)

I took many photos of the Olympic flame that evening, but I think this is my favorite (also taken with the fisheye lens). 

This was the game winning overtime goal in the women's gold medal game. I was happy to capture this image with the puck just crossing the goal line in this historical moment for the team!

The image still gives me chills. I love all the levels of emotion that is captured in this one frame!

This is not my first time capturing the women winning gold, but something I hope for every time.

This was a special moment for me as four-time Olympian, Kendall Coyne and five-time Olympian, Hillary Knight grabbed a flag and skated towards me for this photo. As the team photographer, this is just pure gold!

I could not pick favorite images of Milan and not have at least one photo of the Duomo. This was taken after I had recorded the second interview for NBC. You can see the studio lights on top of the building to the left of the Duomo. I ended up staying in the area to get some blue hour photos, about 30 minutes past sunset.

It is not often that I would pick a warmup photo as a favorite, but this is one of those shots that I am really proud of. I was pushing myself to get something different and unique after shooting so many of these over the weeks. I remembered seeing, in previous warmups, that Jaccob Slavin would stay in one position stretching while others would skate and shoot around him. I thought this would be a fun slow shutter shot and it was.

Finally! After weeks of trying to get a really solid fisheye shot on the glass, it finally came in the men's semifinal game. I really hated the fact that both teams were wearing similar colors, but in this case it worked out well.

It was the last day of the Olympics and the big gold medal game for the men of USA hockey. The first goal of the game was scored by Matt Boldy, and he gave this celebration right in front of me. I knew immediately that this would be a keeper.

Just like the women's celebration photo, this one shot has so many levels of jubilation in one photo. 

We all know the story about Jack Hughes being the hero for Team USA, missing teeth and all. I love this shot with his bloody mouth and finger raised in celebration.

Connor Hellebuyck was arguably the best player on the ice for the team, and I love this shot of him basking in the glory of the win.

This photo captures one of the most poignant moments of any of the Olympics that I have covered, when the men paid tribute to Johnny Gaudreau by including his jersey and kids in the team photo...an absolutely amazing moment, captured in a single frame.

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Olympics in Milan: The second NBC piece on me

I just received the second interview from NBC, which was done in the NBC work room by the Duomo. Garvin Thomas (who did the interview) had reached out to me months before the Games and wanted to do a piece with me giving advice for taking sports action shots.

You can click the image above or just click HERE.

This one is only a couple minutes long. :)

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• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Africa, Iceland and more.

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Olympics in Milan: The Recap and Exhaustion

As you can imagine, tackling the Olympics, even for a photographer, is not an easy endeavor. I wore my Apple Watch 10 the entire time to keep track of my stats, and some of them are a little crazy.

Walking

There was no shortage of walking in Milan, mainly because all the photographers were left to use the metro as our primary source of transportation. The metro in Milan was a little tough to navigate in the first 3 or 4 days, but once I got the hang of it, it was actually quite good. The only problem was that it was a lot of walking from the stations to the venues. As you can see, in the 22 days that I was in Milan, I walked a total of 155.6 miles. 

Climbing

Most of the metro stations also had an abundance of stairs. Sometimes I would find an escalator or elevator, but most of the time, it was just faster to climb the steps. As you can see, I climbed a total of 320 flights of stairs in those three weeks. Yes, my legs are a little sore.

Shots taken

Since I have been deleting images along the way, this is only an estimate, but I figure that I took somewhere in the area of 50,000 images during the Games. I have kept about 20,000 of those, which takes up almost 1TB on my QNAP server.

Memories

I have countless amazing memories from these Olympics, and was really happy to share many of those with you all.

The Blog

When I started the blog back in 2008 during the Beijing Summer Olympics, I think I had about 8 readers a day. Since that time, things have changed a lot! This month the blog had approximately 400,000 reads. That is crazy! The average blog post took me about an hour to write, and as of this post, there were 45 blog posts written. I must also thank all of you who would email me, comment on the blog, or post comments on social media. I really appreciate the kind notes.

Exhaustion

I did not sleep a lot while I was over in Italy and the exhaustion is real. I actually ended coming home two days ago and have been sick in bed since getting home. I am trying to take it easy now, so I can recuperate and get back to work.

More cool stuff to come

For those of you who are newer to the blog, soon I will revert back to weekly posts. Until the Summer Games in LA 2028 that is. But I promise that there is a ton of other exciting photography to share with you all in the months to come. 

Now I am going back to bed!

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Africa, Iceland and more.

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Olympics in Milan: Some more photos from the USA GOLD medal hockey game

Since sharing the last blog post from the men's gold medal hockey game, I have had a bunch compliments (thank you) and questions about the game and the photos. I didn't sleep a wink on the flight home last night, but was able to catch up on email, blog and social media comments. I also went through all the images from the last game and deleted the rejects. As part of that process, I also retouched some additional photos and made some different crops of a select few. 

I thought I would share with you a handful of new photos from the celebration of this awesome game.

A lot of people have asked me if I got a shot of Jack Hughes with his missing tooth. Someone even asked if I got an action photo of his tooth being knocked out (which I believe happened on the other side of the rink from me.) When going through the photos on the plane, I came across this one and laughed.

You can really see the damage to Jack's mouth, but I don't think he cared one bit.

I had a version of this photo in the last blog post, but felt that it would be stronger with a tighter crop.

Here is a photo of the Hughes brothers in a celebratory embrace. I couldn't decide whether to do a tight vertical crop on them, or leave it like this with Brady Tkachuk admiring the moment from the left side of the frame. I decided to leave it wide like this.

Here is another shot of Jack with his missing tooth (which had been cleaned up a bit for the medal ceremony).

I also decided to do another crop of this moment, with the boys including the Gaudreau kids. As I mentioned on the last blog post (and many of you have commented about as well), this was a really poignant moment at the game. Even though I had to crop out some of the athletes to the right of the frame, I like this medium crop a lot. I think that this Olympic-sized gesture deserved another image.

I retouched some additional photos of the guys singing the national anthem.

I saw Charlie McAvoy go to the edge of the stands and give a big hug to his kid, and really liked that moment.

(Photo credit: Heather Pollock)

And lastly, people have asked me if I was able to wear a gold medal and the answer is yes. One of the guys let me borrow his medal and I was able to get this photo. I was a special moment and a photo I will always cherish.

This is one of those times in my life that I will never forget. I was there and got to experience this firsthand! 

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Africa, Iceland and more.

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Olympics in Milan: WOW! What a hockey game and what an ending for Team USA at these Olympics!

About 24 hours ago, I was sitting rink side photographing the men's gold medal game against the Canadians. As I mentioned in the last blog post, there was a lot of stress going into that game. Mostly for the athletes and coaching staff of course, and a little for me to make sure I got good photos for the team. 

I knew that, for this game, it was not about the action on the ice, it was about the reaction after it was over. It was either going to be photos showing disappointment or celebration. But little did I know at the time, that we were in for another overtime game that will be remembered for a really long time.

Now I will take you through the game from my perspective (looking through a camera eyepiece).

Team USA was listed as the visiting team, which meant that they were coming out of a different tunnel from the past games. This was good because I liked the backdrop better. As I waited for the team to enter, I moved my focal point slightly to the right, so that I could focus on the goalie in the front position but also have the other players behind him. I framed this shot to include some of the Milano Cortina 2026 banner, the athletes, and the USA fans with the flag.

As always, I looked for good action shots.

I saw Matt Boldy take the puck and break away from the defender. I tracked him and fired the Canon R1 at full 40 frames per second.

He scored the first goal of the game...

...and thankfully he turned to the right and came right by me with this awesome reaction! This was my favorite photo from the game (so far).

Both teams had really good scoring chances.

Connor Hellebuyck deflected this puck and it bounced off of the post. Phew - that was close!

During the second period, the Canadians were playing strong and dominated our team. I did not have a good feeling at that point. I saw Connor McDavid get a breakaway and it was one on one. Connor against Connor.

When a goalie is playing really well, we say that the goalie is really "standing on his head." And let me tell you, Hellebuyck was doing just that!

He stopped shot after shot!

During one of the breaks, I was looking into the camera to see what I had captured in the last couple of minutes of play. When zooming in, I noticed that the puck actually said "GOLD MEDAL" on it. That is so cool! 

I had to do a tight crop of one of the images to show you this.

The Canadians scored a goal in the third period and everything was tied up at one goal a piece. Oh no - another overtime nail biter!

At this point, I knew that the game was going to end with a TON of emotion. One team was going to go crazy and the other would feel the weight of the defeat. But which team would feel what?

The overtime started and I braced myself for either scenario.

And then it happened...Jack Hughes got a great pass from across the ice and scored the game winning goal. I only caught the tail end of his shot and honestly had no idea that the puck had gone into the net, until I heard the crowd go crazy! I also saw his reaction and did my best to keep focus on him as he went wild.

After a couple of seconds, I turned my camera to my left and fired off a bunch of shots of the team going nuts.

It was mayhem, but in the best way for Team USA.

I took as many photos as I could from behind the plexiglass and waited for them to let a select few of us through the penalty box and onto the ice.

I saw the guys grab the Johnnie Gaudreau jersey from the bench and start to skate around with it. For those of you who do not know the story, "Johnnie Hockey" was a great American hockey player who was tragically killed with his brother two years ago. A drunk driver hit and killed both of them while they were bike riding right before their sister's wedding. It was horrific on all levels.

I saw Connor Hellebuyck skate around with the flag and was happy to catch this moment. He was nothing short of amazing yesterday.

The team lined up for the medal presentation. I took tight shots like this with the Canon R1 and Canon RF 70-200mm lens...

and wide shots with the Canon R6 MKIII and Canon RF 24-70mm lens.

I know that all these guys play for the NHL, but you could tell that this was a special moment for them.

They were enjoying every second of it.

I was going back and forth between tight shots...

...and wide shots.

After the medal ceremony, it was time for the team photo. That was awesome as always.

After taking some photos, I saw a couple of the guys skate away from the group and go through the penalty box towards their families. I thought that this was a strange time to break away from everyone.

Then they came back with Johnnie Gaudreau's two kids, and wanted another group shot. I got teary-eyed when I was shooting. What an amazing gesture by the boys!

Here is a tighter shot of them.

Just following those shots, we took a group shot including all the staff from USA Hockey.

A bunch of the guys then left the ice and went to celebrate with their families. I stood on one of the photographer's benches to get this shot...

...and this shot of Charlie McAvoy jumping up onto the railing to share this moment with his father. 

There was a lot more celebrating after this, with amazing moments between the guys off the ice and at the team party. But as usual, those photos are private and not to be shared. Suffice it to say, they enjoyed this evening to the fullest! 

Please excuse any typos. Normally I try to proofread everything before I post, but here at the Olympics, time is a commodity. I definitely miss some things. :)

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Africa, Iceland and more.

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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