Olympics in Milan: The women of USA Hockey take down Czechia and a NEW lens!

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 used the Canon R6 MKIII with the RF 24-70mm lens to capture images of them coming out of the locker room and onto the ice.

Then it was time to use the Canon R1 and Canon RF 70-200mm Z lens for action shots.

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 into my MacBook Pro 16" laptop 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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Milan Winter Olympics: There are some REALLY weird things happening here!

I am currently sitting next to the ice, holding a good photo position, about an hour before the first women's hockey game. Since I am at the Olympics and every minute is precious, I try to take advantage of every second. 

It is for that reason that I have my laptop propped up on my ThinkTank bag as a makeshift desk. I just took this photo to show you my glamorous setup.

This is my second visit to the smaller ice rink, and I have to share with you some of the really weird things about this place. 

Let me start at the beginning.

This rink is held at a convention center in an area called Rho, and this convention center is HUGE! It is so big that it makes the Las Vegas Convention Center look small. When people get off the train, they have to walk a little while to get to the entrance. You get to this spot and think "I am here!" but no, not even close. 

Everyone has to walk more than a mile along this covered walkway just to get to the ice hockey rink and the long track speed skating venue (which are across from each other). What you see here in this photo does not really tell the story, since you only see about 1/10th of the walk. I should also mention that not all the moving walkways work either. It is times like this that I am happy that I walk 7 miles a day at home. There were a couple of writers (who were not exactly in very good shape) who complained loudly about the trek, and said that they would not visit this venue again. Even I have to admit that it seems endless walking to and from the venue.

About half way through the walk, there is an official store, which is fun to visit.

Just before getting to the venue, it is obvious that we are near the end of the trek, as the Olympic Rings make an appearance. 

Once I arrived at the venue, I was immediately reminded that this ice rink is built within a convention center, and it was so weird. This is nothing like the beautiful Olympic venues I have photographed in the past. Do you see the ugly plastic "bags" in the background? That IS the rink.

This is what spectators see when they enter the venue! Couldn't they have at least made it a nice plastic wrap with Olympic Rings or something? All of us photographers are calling it the "garbage bag wrapped" arena. 

Once people enter the plastic wrapped area, it looks a little better.

This is the press area. Nothing very glamorous, but it works.

They have a concession area on the 2nd floor of the press area, with simple sandwiches and soda.

On the day that I photographed the team picture, I was able to get access to areas not normally allowed to photographers, like this soccer area for the hockey players to warm up their legs.

They had two rooms like this, for warm-ups and for exercising after the game.

Here is where the Zambonis are kept when not being used on the ice.

I know this is going to be hard to believe, but these are the back sides of the team's locker rooms. Normally the team management will have me come into the locker room when it is all set up, to get photos showing off the room, but not this time around. And I heard that the men's locker rooms, at the larger arena, are no better.

This is the "mix zone" where the media can interview the athletes after the game is over.

Here are some of the benches for the photo positions. 

I think this is the first time I have ever shot an Olympic hockey game where we have a giant gap between us and the fans. It makes it really easy for us to move around, but I feel very separated from the energy of the spectators.

This is a look down the hallway where the athletes enter the arena and the beginning of each period.

This is a photo of my spot for the first game. I got there about 90 minutes before the game, which turned out not to be necessary, but it gave me confidence, knowing I had the location I wanted, and it gave me time to start writing this blog post.

Here is yet another crazy thing. Look at this photo and tell me what is missing. I can tell you that I did not notice this missing object when I was shooting the team photos. There is no scoreboard in the center of the rink! This drove me CRAZY during the game, because I usually look up to see what is happening on the other side of the rink. I also could not see any of the data, or see what they were putting on the smaller screens facing the spectators.

It is funny that at every Olympics there are crazy happenings that make us frustrated or make us laugh. Sometimes it might be a little of both!

In the next blog post, I will share some of my favorite images from the game.

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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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Milan Winter Olympics: Photographing my first press conference

Yesterday I photographed the press conference for the US Ice Skating team. Normally my first press conference would be for USA Hockey, but they did not have one (at least not yet).

I was sitting up front so I could key in on each athlete with my Canon R1 and Canon RF 70-200mm lens. This is a shot of Madison Chock and Evan Bates, two of the veteran athletes on the team.

Here is a shot of Ilio Malinin, but you might know him as the "Quad God". He was really enjoying his first Olympic press conference.

Another shot of Madison and Evan.

Amber Glenn (3-time US National Champion) was having a good time as well.

After shooting tight shots, I switched to the Canon R6 Mark III camera with the Canon RF 24-70mm lens to get some wide shots. I liked this one the best, with everyone smiling.

At the end of the press conference I went up and asked them to get close together to get this shot of the four of them, before they scampered off to practice.

Now I am back at the secondary ice hockey arena for the first women's hockey game vs Czechia.

And I just heard a couple of minutes ago that the hockey game after the US v CZE game, which was supposed to be Canada vs Finland, has been postponed since 14 of the Finish athletes have Norovirus. Yikes!

__________________________________________________________

• 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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