Last night (well...technically two nights ago since it is 2am here in Milan) was the quarterfinals for the USA women's hockey team and, as it turned out, they ended up playing against the home team of Italy. I figured that this would be a mismatch and it turned out to be exactly that. But hey, this blog is not about winning and losing, it is about the journey and the photo experience.
As always, I started with the warm-ups, but this time instead of getting a lot of action shots, I thought I would change it up a bit and get some smiles from the players, on the ice...
...and coming off the ice, and seeing family members in the stands.
For this game, we were back at the secondary (and smaller) rink. It would be our last game there, with all future games being played at the bigger Santa Giulia Ice Hockey Arena. I had not been back in this arena for 4 days and the quality of the plexiglass was severely degraded. I talked to the photo manager at this arena and he said that since the men had started playing there, the glass was scuffed up more than ever.
I got to the glass over an hour before the game started and found the cleanest spot of glass that I could find. I took this photo of Hillary Knight getting ready for the face off.
The US took a lot of shots on goal, out shooting the Italians 39 shots to 4 for the game.
The US was so dominant offensively that I did not spend much time photographing in the defensive zone. The goaltender barely broke a sweat and I knew that even though it was a shutout, she was not the story.
Lots of scoring and celebrating.
People have asked me why I am shooting the
Canon R1 at 1/1250 sec, it is because I need a fast shutter speed to grab fast moving action like this.
Hillary Knight is one shot away from setting a US record for scoring, so whenever she is on the ice, I spend most of my time keying in on her.
There are many times when the team (either men or women) score a goal on the other side of the ice. The clarity of the glass would never let me get a clear shot from that far away and at an extreme angle. In these cases, I will turn and try to get fan reactions.
I prefer to get shots of the athletes, but that is not always possible.
If you look closely at this photo (and I need to find images like this in a split second after each period), you will see the puck right at the goalies pad.
This was my favorite shot of the game, with a mass of people in the net. I said to the photographer next to me, "The Italians may not be able to get the puck in the net, but they got a person in there."
The Americans scored a goal and a little scuffle broke out behind the net.
A nice slap shot photo.
This is another favorite photo from the night, because both players and looking right at me. It makes for a more interesting photo when we see their eyes like this.
The Italian goaltender had her hands full. Honestly, she played really well. The score could have been much more lopsided than 6 to 0.
I saw Hillary Knight wind up for this shot and was hoping that it would go in for the record breaking goal. But thta did not happen. Darn it. I had a clean and unobstructed view of her too!
This is yet another fisheye shot from the
Canon RF 7-14mm lens. I am still trying to get that elusive "killer shot" on the boards.
The game ended and I wanted to get one last nice shot for the team. I saw that nobody was by the door, so I quickly opened it to get a shot without any plexiglass distortion. Hey - sometimes you need to bend the rules a little to get what you want.
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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