Manchester Phoenix, EPL Champions!

This past Sunday saw Manchester taking on Swindon Wildcats in the final game of the season, needing to gain only one point to secure the EPL Championship. Swindon came out hitting hard, they didn't want to be the team that handed over the title, and with Guildford going full strength against the Tigers down in Telford, the race for the trophy was truly coming down to the wire.



But for everything that Swindon threw at Manchester, the Phoenix had an answer, refusing to be intimidated, and doing a fair bit of intimidation themselves. Swindon's Josef Kohut came in for particular attention, finding himself put down several times during the game:




The Phoenix knew that this was it, the League was theirs to lose, and they did everything they could to make sure that didn't happen. Even at 4-2 up, nobody was relaxing, and it was only when Curtis Huppe let fly for the empty netter did the pressure finally drop from the players's shoulders and the reality of being champions could start to sink in!





For me personally, all of the work that so many people had put in for so many years was paid off in that one evening. I've been with the Phoenix since before they were the Phoenix, I started working with the Manchester Storm before they folded, I was involved in setting up Friends Of Manchester Ice Hockey (FOMIH) with Neil Morris back in 2001, and I've worked behind the scenes at the Phoenix since the first skate hit the ice. All of the hours, the late nights working, the miles on the road, the bleary eyes in the edit suite, everything was worth it to see the trophy lifted!

Due to league restrictions on the publishing of photos of the medals and trophies and their presentations, I can't show you some of the shots that everyone wants to see here, at least not just yet. A week or so and those pictures will be up on here, but for now I can post some of the most incredible shots of hockey players that I have taken. I say that not out of technical skill or anything like that, but purely out of the emotion that these shots capture. Being one of the Phoenix's official snappers, I had the honour of being allowed out onto the ice with the players to capture their joy, their excitement, their relief, and their sheer energy:




That night is a night that I will never forget for as long as I live, and I hope that during my time with Phoenix I will see many many more nights just like it!

Manchester Phoenix, English Premier League Champions, 2010-2011 Season!

Full album can be seen on Flickr here: Phoenix v Wildcats

Permissions, Clearances and a Lovely Man!

Yesterday evening I was looking online for some game score updates for the Slough Jets v Basingstoke Bison game (just out of curiosity) when I came across an article on the Bison website about the upcoming 'Evening With Dave Simms' event. We had one of those a few weeks back and it was most entertaining! But there was something about the article that caught my attention, here's a screengrab of it:



The photo that accompanies the article, that's one of mine:



Slight snag though, nobody had asked me if they could use it. So I posted something about it on my Facebook page, and sent a mail off the Bison office asking who'd given permission for the shot to be used. This morning, one of the Bison's photographers Grant King got in touch with me to say that he'd spoken with the Marketing chap Paul West, and that Paul would like to speak with me personally.

So I phoned Paul, and he couldn't have been nicer about it! He was incredibly apologetic on behalf of the club, and surmised that the use of the photo was probably down to the home rink rather than the club itself. He's promised to look into it further, and fully appreciates that unauthorised use of photos is unacceptable at any level. Paul has also offered to sort me out with photo passes next season when the Phoenix travel down to Basingstoke. I couldn't have asked for a better response, so on that level I'm a happy chappie!

The bottom line is that I'd have been more than happy to allow my photo to be used, if someone had actually asked. In fact, I'm still ok with it being used so long as I get a credit for it. But at the end of the day, a photographer has to look out for the rights to use their photos, and nobody should ever assume that it's ok to use something without checking. I realise that this isn't the fault of the Bison or their Marketing staff, so on that level I'm incredibly pleased with their response and their approach to the issue, but someone somewhere has used the shot without permission and that's a no-no.

In an age where everything is available online by typing a few words into a search engine, I can't help but wonder how many photographers are having their work used without due permissions, clearances and credit....

Phoenix All-Star Game

This past Sunday saw the annual Manchester Phoenix All-Star Game, an evening of skills and fun on the ice, this time done in conjunction with the Trafford Metros. It comes at a high pressure part of the season, so in a way it's an ideal avenue for the players to let off some steam, have a laugh, and put the title race to one side for the night.

The shooting of the night was thrown into doubt before the doors had even opened, as my friend Helena was taken ill upon arrival at the rink. After scaring the bejesus out of us all, Helena was taken off to hospital, accompanied by my better half Yol, and myself and Vicki were under strict instructions to stay at the rink and shoot the game as normal. So that's what we did. I'll cut to the chase and say that Helena was kept in overnight, but is now back home and well on the way to recovery. Naturally, the photos that I took are dedicated to Helena and Yol, who had to miss seeing the event in person. I hope you can get a sense of the evening from the shots!

Other than the off-ice drama, the evening was very entertaining. The Phoenix and Metros players were mixed up by the two team Managers, who were the two winners of the recent Fantasy Phoenix contest. One of whom was my very good friend Adam McArdle, who took command of the white team and oversaw his squad's efforts from the bench:



The game was played and the challenges contested in the spirit of the evening, with the players taking the opportunity to have some fun. At the start of the season, James Neil had promised to have a fight by the end of the year, and so he fulfilled his dream by taking on team enforcer Andrew Sharp:




The evening also gave me a chance to go where few photographers have gone before, into the locker room, and capture a lovely moment between Marcus Kristoffersson and his two year old daughter Selma. Selma had been playing with an adult-sized stick, so Marcus sawed it down to her size and handed it over:



Back on the ice, and the Skills Contests saw me shooting from the scoreboard end of the rink, and it let me get some shots that I wouldn't normally be able to get, a new angle on the events on the ice:





But the most memorable moments came late in the game, when the goal celebrations got more and more outlandish, with Joe Miller and Andrew Sharp quite literally taking the hot-dog with their goal celebration!



The full set of photos from the event can be seen here: Phoenix All-Star Game

More "Plexi", a subdued game, and the "Supermoon"

A midweek home game for the Phoenix, entertaining the Slough Jets, and a second night's filming for Vicki Smart's documentary "The Other Side of the Plexi". This time the crew consisted of Vicki and Ben Spencer, shooting more cut-aways to go with the interview footage shot at last Sunday's game. Ben's been to the Phoenix before, having served as a camera operator on the match night crew, but this time he was shooting the 'artistic' shots of the players in action on the ice as well as some more footage of the match night volunteers hard at work.




The game itself was one that started filled with hope, Phoenix needing only three points from the remaining fixtures to secure the League title. Slough aren't a team to be taken lightly though, and they didn't want to be the team that paved the way for the Phoenix to get to within a point of the trophy. The Jets came out hard, pressuring Phoenix on every play, and with both teams pushing for the points the game saw 10 goals. The game had plenty of highs and lows, the look on Curtis Huppe's face after a goal being one of them!



Unfortunately the split of goals was 4-6 in the favour of the Jets, the last one being an empty netter that our defence just couldn't stop. It was this moment that gave me the shot that, for me, summed up the evening:



More photos from the game can be seen on my Flickr page here: Phoenix v Jets photo album

Saturday night saw the Phoenix pick up two of the three necessary points down in Milton Keynes, but it also saw the occurrence of the 'Supermoon' (a term that most scientists hate but hey, it's what people know it as). This is when the orbit of the moon is at its closest to the earth (at its perigree) and it coincides with a full moon. The net effect is that the moon appears larger in the skies, particularly at sunset. Alas, sunset in Stoke On Trent was a rather cloudy affair, but once the skies cleared, I was able to head just a few metres up the street and shoot between the houses to get this shot:



I've always had a thing with shooting the moon, so a chance to shoot the moon on a clear night when it's larger in the sky than usual (albeit not by much) was too good to miss!

Moon shots album on Flickr

"The Other Side of the Plexi"

As mentioned in my previous entry, my friend Vicki Smart is making a documentary about the match night volunteers of the Manchester Phoenix Ice Hockey Club, working title "The Other Side of the Plexi". Being a photographer who's always on the lookout for subjects to shoot, I'd jumped at the chance to shoot some Production Stills to go with the documentary, and sure enough the whole experience gave me a chance to experiment with slower shutter speeds at high ISO settings. Normally I subscribe to the notion that if you're shooting hand-held, don't shoot at less than 1/60th of a second, but due to the lighting I had to shoot some of the shots as slow as 1/20th. Through more luck than judgement, the subjects remained fairly still, and with the wide-angle adaptor on the end of my lens I was able to get some fairly nice results!




Vicki and her crew of Rich Stephenson and Marco El Gabry managed to get around eight interviews done in the space of about 45 minutes, which is pretty impressive for a documentary shoot! Documentary shoots require a lot of quick set-ups, and this means quickly generating a level of trust between the crew and the interviewees, especially when it comes to putting the microphone in place!:


But still, it's always advisable to check your wallet afterwards!

A set of Production Stills can be seen on Flickr at this link: "The Other Side of the Plexi" Documentary Shoot

Being In Front of the Lens, and Capturing a Shared Moment

This past Sunday saw the Phoenix at home to the Basingstoke Bison, it wasn't a classic game by any standards but it was still a game with a difference. My friend, student, and former Phoenix match night crew-member Vicki Smart was shooting a documentary about the off-ice volunteers who give their time and efforts to support the Phoenix club, and I ended up being one of the interviewees. Vicki also interviewed several other volunteers, including my fellow snapper Lauren Freeman, and after the interviews were done, Vicki and her crew proceeded to get footage of their interviewees carrying out their duties. It's a little unnerving when you're taking photos in the warm up and you turn around to see this behind you!:

The gentleman in the shot is Rich Stephenson, one of Vicki's cameramen for the evening, shooting on a rather nice Sony EX3. Lovely piece of kit!

As Yolanda was with me at the game, I was shooting from my seat up in Block 15. Sometimes that can be a little limiting, shooting around peoples' heads, but sometimes it can present opportunities for shots that I wouldn't get elsewhere. In the second period, Marcus Kristoffersson scored a hat-trick, and on the third goal he presented me with such an opportunity:




Marcus celebrated by blowing a kiss to his fiancee Maria and daughter Selma, who sit a couple of rows in front of me in Block 15, so I was able to get not only Marcus blowing the kiss, but Selma catching it! A shared moment, a tender moment between a big burly hockey player and his two year old daughter in front of an audience of hundreds. Yet another reason why I love hockey!

My full set of game photos can be seen on my Flickr page: Phoenix v Bison

Credit where credit's due: Chapter 2!

The British Ice Hockey website have posted an article on last night's Phoenix v Bison match, and I've had a photo credit in it. The article can be seen on their website.

One small snag though - the image isn't mine, it's one taken by my fellow Phoenix photographer Nick Ogden, so I've mailed BIH's admin staff to ask that they change the name and give Nick the credit. Cracking shot Nick, nice work!

More of Nick's handiwork can be seen alongside some of my shots in the Phoenix website's match report.

UPDATE - Blimey they work quick over at BIH! The credit has been changed and Nick's work is properly attributed to its rightful snapper!

Credit where credit's due, preferrably spelled correctly...

Today at the Phoenix v Bison game (pics and blog entry to follow), it was mentioned to me that one of my photos has been used on the CBSport.org website on a piece about the Phoenix. So I just had a look, and lo and behold there it is:
CBSport Article

The photo used was one I shot back in October, at the Halloween game versus Guildford Flames:


It was used in the Manchester Phoenix website's match report, and it's also been published on my Flickr account as well. Now, whilst I'm all for my shots being used to promote the Phoenix, there are two things I like to see happen before they're used:

One is to get permission for their use - I'm currently in the process of checking with the Phoenix office to see if anyone gave the nod for that shot to be used, because I know that I've not directly been asked in this case.

Two is that my name is spelled correctly.

I'll keep you posted on the first bit. As for the second bit.... *sigh*.... I don't know who this 'Richard Allen' person is, but he sure gets a lot of credit for my photos!


UPDATE - it turns out that my photo was accidentally forwarded on to CBSports in an e-mail sent by one of my fellow Phoenix photographers back in November, and CBSports have used it in good faith. So all is well with the world! Currently trying to get my name spelled correctly though!

FURTHER UPDATE - CBSports say they'll fix the spelling this evening. Double result!

FURTHER FURTHER UPDATE - Still waiting on the spelling fix, a week on. Ah well!

Shooting Through Nets, and Filling The Page

This past Sunday the Phoenix had no home game, but instead were on the road against the Sheffield Steeldogs at Ice Sheffield. For those who have never been, Ice Sheffield is a dual-pad ice rink especially designed to cater for hockey at all levels. As facilities go, it's a cracker. So Yolanda, Vicki, Helena and myself jumped into the car and off we went!

There is, however, one big drawback to photographing hockey there. The lighting isn't as bright as at the Altrincham rink, but that's not the main issue for a budding lensman (or lenswoman!) The main issue is the mesh netting that surrounds the ice pad. Now, it's not uncommon to have safety nets in place at a rink, our own Ice Dome has nets up at both ends to stop stray shots from injuring spectators, but the hockey pad at Ice Sheffield has netting along both sides. I appreciate that pucks can do serious damage to the unwary spectator, and nobody in their right mind wants to see a fan hurt, but the inclusion of netting along the full sides is overkill in my opinion, especially as it means shooting through a mesh screen.

So, as a result of this netting, all of my shots from the game have a mesh pattern on them. In some shots it's more noticeable than others, and in some less, but it's there in all of them.

Anyway, the game itself was an absolute belter. Andre Payette of the Steeldogs had been stirring the hype machine in the run-up to the game, hinting at 'settling a score' against his old club which many people interpreted as him wanting to take on our own enforcer Andrew Sharp. In the warm-up, Andre and Andrew had words, and both then went to talk to Tony Hand (Phoenix's player-coach) who appeared to be giving his blessing. It looked like it was on.

At the end of the warm-up I took the chance to pop up to the Phoenix TV crew on the balcony above me, to give them a heads up about the possibility of a fight at the first face off. Whilst up there I bumped into Neil Morris (Phoenix team owner) and mentioned what I'd seen. Flash forward to just before the players come out, and my phone starts ringing - it's Neil, he's in the players tunnel and he's just confirmed with Andrew that the fight is on. So I'm straight on the phone to get a message to my 'Phoenix Photo Buddy' Lauren Freeman, who's shooting from down by the plexiglass. So, when the puck dropped, we were ready:



The game then started 'properly' and we had some real end to end hockey, with the Steeldogs taking a lead into the second period and then extending that lead to 2-0.

The Phoenix got off the mark less than a minute later, and then sure enough, it was time for Round Two. I'd spotted Andre and Andrew lining up next to each other again at the face off, both talking, and then as soon as the puck dropped we watched as Andrew waited to get the nod from Tony Hand on the bench before dropping the gloves and going with Andre again. Naturally, I was clicking away like a man possessed!:



Shooting fights is arguably the hardest kind of shot to get, save for the puck hitting the twine. The fight is breaking out, you can't anticipate what's going to happen, the fists are flying unpredictably and you snap away over and over again, in the hope of getting a shot of a punch landing or a facial expression that tells the whole story. So after the second fight, I'd had more experience of shooting fights in one night than I'd had for the rest of the season! Imagine our collective surprise when after the Phoenix tied the game at two apiece, the gloves went flying for the third time:



In previous blog entries I've mentioned the notion that sometimes the chance for a shot will present itself so long as you don't mind going looking for it, and the third fight gave me a chance to go look for a shot that I wouldn't normally get. Our seats were up behind the penalty boxes, so whilst the referee was sorting out the calls, I popped down the stairs and got this shot:

That particular shot made it into this week's Phoenix news letter, which was a pleasant surprise! Something that was less of a surprise but made me smile nontheless was this week's match report. After each game I spend a chunk of time getting the photos prepped and mailed in for use in the match report, and Sunday night was no exception. By Tuesday morning, nothing had appeared on the Phoenix website, so I checked with Mags and Neil, and as it turns out the Phoenix didn't have a reporter at the game. The net result is that I ended up putting together a match report, and this afternoon it was uploaded onto the Phoenix site along with some of my photos! The article can be read here.

All in all, shooting the game in Sheffield was a great experience for someone looking to get some fight shots, and I'd like to personally thank Andrew Sharp and Andre Payette for belting the living daylights out of each other three times! Cheers, gentlemen!

The full set of game photos can be seen on Flickr: Sheffield Steeldogs v Manchester Phoenix

Close, but no cigar!

Last night I had a new message pop up on Flickr from someone who worked for an advertising agency, asking me to get in touch with them about a shot of mine. So, I sent them an e-mail getting in touch as requested. This morning I had a reply from them, they were interested in a photo that I took a couple of years ago of the Tyne Bridge:



Link to photo on Flickr can be found here

The agency were interested in buying the image rights, and using it in a national advertising campaign for a rail company. Their payment offer was more than I'd have expected, but the trade-off would be that it would no longer be my photo, I'd give up all rights to it.

Now, bearing in mind that it was a spur-of-the-moment snapshot that I'd taken whilst on a short break in Newcastle, I decided to get some advice from a photographer colleague of mine here at the University, and she essentially said "go for it". So I got back in touch with the agency to say that yes I was interested but wanted a little more info on which rights I would retain.

They replied an hour or so later I received a reply which said "I’m afraid the client has gone with another route".

Ah well, nothing ventured nothing gained!

Taking Chances, and a Surprise Compliment

As I've mentioned before, the shots that I can get on a match night tend to be governed by who I'm with, in the sense that when I bring along my better half I'll shoot the game from in the stands, whereas if I'm flying solo then I'll shoot from everywhere! However, at this past Sunday's game against Telford (second night of a double header) I found myself faced with a couple of opportunities that turned out to be too good to miss...

During the warm-up, I'm usually found on the team bench, snapping away alongside my 'shooting buddy' Lauren Freeman, and then in the first interval I'm usually swarming around the Stage area taking shots of whichever band is playing. The second interval is my chance to go and have a natter with friends, or to sit and take a breather (and get some hot chocolate down my neck).

This week I was having a nice chat about photography with another of the Phoenix Lensers, Nick Ogden. Nick's work often features in the club's media output and promotional materials, he's got a cracking eye for action shots, and like me he appreciates the more artistic opportunities that present themselves. So we were chatting away through the interval, and whilst chatting I took a shot of one of the Telford players sitting outside the dressing room. We carried on chatting, and before I knew it the two teams were amassing to go back onto the ice. Normally by this point I'm back in my seat, but on Sunday I found myself with an opportunity to get some shots from a new perspective:





For me, these are the kind of photos that I really love shooting. Spontaneous portraits, people in their natural environment, no poses, just captured moments of time. Action shots provide their own challenges, but for me it's the portraits that win every time.

The end of the game presented another opportunity that was too good to miss. Phoenix's kit manager Paul Turner was celebrating a birthday, which resulted in an impromptu Team Photo on the ice at the end of the game. Phoenix Announcer Pete Hagan had given myself and Lauren the heads-up about it, so we were in position ready to shoot at the end of the game:



The game is over, the players breathe a sigh of relief, and even though they're still on the ice they can let their hair down and let the smiles flow, and those moments are priceless!

Link to match photo album: Manchester Phoenix v Telford Tigers

After the Flickr set had been uploaded and the Facebook set tagged, I received a message in my inbox which put quite a smile on my face. The message was from Martin Clarkson, the Telford Tigers netminder, who had been tagged in a photo by Steve Brodie, Telford's photographer and a friend of mine on Facebook. The message from Martin simply said "Just thought I'd tell you that you took some great pictures from the weekend game. Nice work." The profile icon that sat next to the message was made from this shot:



Seeing that icon, and reading that message, that's one of those little moments that makes me love what I do even more. I don't take pictures for fame, glory or recognition, that's not what I'm in it for, but to get a message like that from someone who I've photographed, personally it means a lot. Thank you, Martin!