Yesterday was the first hockey game for the women of USA Hockey and it was a good one. The team won by a good margin and it was my chance to get started with the competition photography. The women came out and showed that they were ready. I, on the other hand, made a couple of errors that I will have to correct in the coming days.
First of all, I took some photos of the ladies warming up, but did not submit those to the team before the game. At the end of the game, I was so busy editing the images for the team that I completely forgot to go into the mix zone to capture images of the athletes being interviewed. Oops! This will change next time.
I shot in manual mode with these settings:
ISO 1000
f/3.5
1/1250 sec
Servo focus and subject detection (depending on what I was focusing on)
For those of you wondering - yes, there is that much light in the arena so that I can shoot at a low ISO like 1000. In most local rinks at home, I would be shooting at a minimum ISO of 3200.
Canon has been very good to me over the years and is letting me use the BRAND NEW
Canon RF 7-14mm fisheye lens. This lens was just announced yesterday, so it was a treat to use it for the first time. I keep it mounted on the
Canon R6 MKIII, sitting right next to me. If I see potential action right in front of me, I quickly grab that camera, hold it up and fire.
Here is a picture of the new
RF 7-14mm fisheye lens as compared to my older EF version. I really love the build of the new lens and how light it is. It seems much more solid and less susceptible to damage than the older model, and of course the optics are very good. This will be added to my lens repertoire as soon as I get home.
Then it was back to the
RF 70-200 for more action shots.
As always, I prefer to get shots with the puck in the frame...
...and I love to get celebration shots after a goal.
I look forward to getting MANY more of these in the coming days.
My job is to get photos of the action and the reaction.
During the second period, I stayed on the same side of the rink to get some shots of Aerin Frankel doing her job in front of the net. (Coincidentally, I had a really nice talk with her father on the walk back to the train station after the game.)
Aerin totally focused.
More action.
I really like how the puck is framed by all of the athletes in this shot.
I heard that JD Vance was in the arena, so I felt compelled to take this photo of him and his family for the team. No political comments here on the blog please (from me or you)!!
For the third period I was back to shooting the offensive push.
I kept using the new RF 7-14mm fisheye lens, and hope to get even better images in the days to come.
Hillary Knight (team captain) in action.
More celebration after scoring a goal.
It is always great to get smiles and reactions from the athletes.
This shot was taken during a face off. I thought that it would be artistic to photograph Megan Keller (in focus) over the body of the other skater (out of focus).
A little more action in front of the net.
After the game was over, I ran over to the other side of the rink to get this celebration shot. Unfortunately, there was a reflection in the plexiglass above the athletes, but we are not allowed to remove those.
For this last shot, I noticed that they had opened the door to the penalty box. I quickly jumped in there to get a shot without any plexiglass in front of me.
Oh, one more thing I have to tell you. You have probably heard me talk about the 15 minute deadline to go through all the images and get the 10 (or so) best images to the team. With the new ProGrade Digital Iridium memory cards (running at 3550MB/s) and their new USB 4 reader, I was able to download all my images in less than 30 seconds. I had them selected, retouched and delivered in less than 6 minutes! I actually had spare time in between each period. That is nuts! I promise to do a blog post later to describe this in detail.
I am writing this blog at the MPC and getting ready to head over to the stadium for the Opening Ceremony.
Please excuse any typos. Normally I try to proof read everything before I post, but here at the Olympics, time is a commodity. I definitely miss some things. :)
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