Off-Season Shooting, Furry Subjects, a Trip to the Homeland, and Inspiration

The off-season may only be a couple of weeks old, but my shutter has already been busy! For a hockey photographer, the regular season usually consists of cleaning the camera, testing the camera, and shooting big hairy Canadians knocking seven bells out of each other on a weekly basis. The off-season presents the chance to widen the repertoire a little, not just in the sense of having no hockey to shoot, but in the sense of having more time to visit more places and look for more subjects.

That being said, this off-season so far I've mostly shot one of my usual subject areas, Lucy and Lola. Shooting hockey means that you get accustomed to shooting unpredictable occurrences with no notice, and this turns out to be perfect training for shooting two moggies. In fairness they're easiest to shoot when they're asleep, which is most of the time, but that doesn't always make for a thrilling shot! So in order to get some slightly more active shots, I took advantage of the early summer and took the pair of them out into the garden for a photo shoot.




But even when we're playing, Lola still manages to find time to cuddle her ball and have an impromptu nap:



I will admit freely that before last summer, I wasn't a cat person. Cats were something to be shooed out of the garden, tolerated or ignored. My partner Yolanda had a cat in her previous marriage, and when she divorced she had to leave him behind and I know how much that broke her heart, so I figured that a trip to have a look at the moggies at an RSPCA Centre not too far away might go some way to putting a smile back on her face. To cut a long story short, Lola and Lucy chose to adopt us (I realise it's supposed to be the other way around, but that's the way it happened) and since then my life has been changed 'fur the better' (see what I did there?) So I've now become one of those people who finds pictures of cats cute, and can't stop shooting my own two. Even when they steal my lawn chair...



This past weekend, I went home. Back to the Homeland, the place where my family still resides, Grimsby. Whilst there, I squeezed in a few trips to visit family and friends, and to shoot a couple of familiar places. I always try to get a shot of Waltham Windmill in whenever I go home, for some reason I never tire of shooting it, and this time I was experimenting with a polarizing filter:




I also squeezed off a few shots at the War Memorial in Waltham, not far from the windmill. I have a soft spot for shooting older things, like windmills, monuments, statues, castles, churches and cathedrals, and I have no idea why! It just gives me a sense of peace, and I enjoy it, so I'll carry on doing it whenever the opportunity presents itself. In this particular instance, the war memorial was lit by the sun from behind, which presented a challenge in itself, but I managed to get this particular shot which I'm fairly proud of:



Visiting Yolanda's relatives over in Hull meant a trip over the Humber, and a chance to shoot the Humber Bridge from one of the two viewpoints. This time we stopped off at the north viewpoint, at Hessle, and I wandered onto the shingly beach to shoot the bridge:




It's a huge structure, completely unnatural, but it does give me a sense of calmness and wellbeing. It links the north and south shores of the Humber and gives drivers a shortcut to Hull, but to me it's a thing of beauty, and I shoot it every chance I get. It doesn't move (much), it doesn't physically change, and yet every time I go I see something different to shoot there:



Recently I have been corresponding with a fellow photographer on Flickr, a young lady by the name of Chris Willis, and she's been encouraging me to try out some of the 'challenge groups' on Flickr, groups where there is a theme set each week and the idea is that you go out and shoot something that fits in with the theme. The general idea is that you can get some inspiration and try your hand at something new, and before long I will probably be immersing myself in the challenge. So far though, Chris has challenged me to shoot a Zoom Burst of a dandelion, and so I've given it a go. A Zoom Burst is a shot where you manually zoom in on your subject whilst the exposure is taken, and here's my attempt at it:



I'm looking forward to more challenges from Chris and from the Flickr groups this summer, and hopefully some of the shot will be featuring on this blog in the near future!

My Flickr page can be seen here.

The Play-Offs, the EPL Champions, and the Off-Season Begins...

The photo ops are getting warmer, which can mean only one thing: the end of the hockey season has passed, and the Off-Season has begun. Five months with no pro hockey to watch live. There's a part of me that's already saying "Roll on September" but there's also a part of me that's breathing a sigh of relief, putting its feet up and looking back on a season of memories.

In my last blog entry I said I'd cover the Play-Offs themselves in this next entry, so here goes:



The first Semi-Final was Manchester Phoenix versus Milton Keynes Lightning, and to be fair the Phoenix were odds-on favourites for this one, having beaten the Milton Keynes team five times out of six in the regular season. The Lightning came out hitting hard, and the Phoenix had to match, deviating from the traditional 'skill versus skill' battle plan that had served us so well all season. The Phoenix, however, can still make their mark when it comes to physical play!



However, the hockey Gods weren't on the Phoenix's side, and with the play going to overtime and everyone on the edges of their seats, a goal-mouth scramble saw the Lightning put the puck into the Phoenix goal and advance to the Final.



It was an absolute heartbreak to see, and the shell-shock didn't wear off until after the second Semi-Final. The game itself, between the Guildford Flames and the Peterborough Phantoms, turned into a bit of a mismatch, with the Flames dominating the play all through the game. Of the photos I took during that game, I think this one just about sums it up. I call it "Ah, Dammit..."



The Final, between the Flames and the Lightning, was actually a cracking game. The smart money was on the Flames, so when the Lightning scored first it certainly set the nerves jangling! But the Flames took control of the game, and earned themselves the last piece of silverware for the season:



Further shots from the Play-Off weekend can be seen here.

The ending of the season also means that I can upload the 'embargoed' photos from the night that the Phoenix won the EPL League Championship. I'd been asked by the club to sit on any photos that showed either the whole team together in a group shot, any photos that clearly showed the winners' individual trophies, and any photos that showed the League Trophy. Now that the season is done and dusted, I can upload shots like these:




I won't lie, it's been a little frustrating to have to sit on those shots, but now I'm pleased to be able to share them with you, loyal readers! To see more, here's a link to the full album on Flickr here.

As for the Off-Season, it reopens the range of photo opportunities that present themselves. During this past hockey season, the vast majority of my shots have been of the hockey itself. Even when I'm shooting additional things such as the live bands that appear during Phoenix games, the number of shots still pales into insignificance next to the action and player shots, so now that the off-season is here, I'm already casting my eye wider and looking for opportunities wherever they may occur. This includes whilst mowing the lawn!:



Whilst strimming the edges of the garden, a whole host of spiders escaped the whirling blades by running up the fence, and so I stopped to grab my camera and macro lens and snapped the above shot of a garden spider. It may not be everyone's idea of beauty, but I do like shooting these little creatures!

Also, just in case it had escaped your attention, I like to shoot the moon. I don't know why, but I'm drawn to it, and shooting it is always a challenge that I like to rise to! So over the past couple of nights I've wandered out with the camera and tripod, and shot through the clouds. Normally I don't like to have shots of the moon obscured by cloud, but I do think that this one works:



My love affair with the moon can be seen here.

And so, to the Phoenix's season, I say fare thee well, and to the Off-Season, I say hello, let's see what you have in store for me!

EPL Play-Offs 2011

This past weekend was the end of the line for the 2010-2011 season - the Play-Off Finals Weekend! It was the Phoenix's second season in the EPL, and the second season that the team has made it to the weekend in Coventry.

Later I'll be posting a blog entry about the weekend in a little more detail, but for now I just wanted to extend a heartfelt 'thank you' to all the friends, old and new, who made this weekend one to truly remember!




What makes an excellent Play-Off Weekend isn't the hockey (although that's a bonus), it's the people. The Weekend gives us a chance to catch up with friends old and new, to spend time letting our hair down with those who mean the most to us, and to share in the fun with so many likeminded people. It's a wonderful experience that only comes around once a year, and when it's over we all breathe a sigh of relief as we put our feet up, have a breather, and count the days until the hockey season starts all over again!

A full set of albums from the weekend can be seen here on Flickr

The Actions of the Minority, the Need for Restructure, Multi-Coloured Hair and a Couple of Furry Faces

This past Sunday, the Phoenix took on the Steeldogs in a home-and-away series for the Play-Off Quarter Finals, over at Ice Sheffield on Saturday and at home on Sunday. I couldn't make the away leg, as I was at a wedding reception for my good friend and former student Glyn Wade. Glyn's taste in music has always 'leaned to the exotic', for want of a better phrase, as he was at one point a member of a local punk band, so when he married Claire at the weekend, the dress sense was suitably colourful! Here's a shot of Glyn and myself at the wedding reception:



It was a cracking night, with plenty of opportunities for me to show myself up on the dancefloor, only with a little less energy and ability than I used to! Glyn looked the part completely, right down to the purple checkered bumflap. I, on the other hand, looked like Dennis The Menace during his troublesome teenage years....

On to Sunday's game....

It had come to light during the week that the Manchester Phoenix organisation, fresh from the successes of winning the EPL Championship title the previous weekend, were facing problems away from the ice. The problems in particular took the form of what we'll class as 'knock-off merchandise', with a couple of entrepreneurial souls deciding to cash in with a small range of products that the Club hadn't approved and had no revenue from. Fellow photographer Lauren Freeman and myself were informed by the Club management that some of our photos (amongst others) had been used on the merchandise, and that one of the supporters in the stands had been taking photos and selling them on to a merchandising company. As a result, the Club went into damage limitation mode, protecting its image rights and trying to stop the knock-offs. I won't bore you all with the details, but suffice to say that after hours on the phone during the week, the photographers were called to a meeting before Sunday' game.

Now, before I go on, let me say that since joining the Phoenix as a photographer, I have repeatedly said that we need to have a proper structure in place for the outputting of images from the photography pool. Other teams have a photo gallery on their websites, but this is something that we don't have. Our routes of distribution for photos aren't clearly defined, the infrastructure just isn't in place. Other clubs photographers have their own Flickr feeds, and so do we, but the infrastructure at Club level just hasn't come about fully yet. It is needed, it always has been, and this recent episode with the unauthorised merchandise has highlighted this. Lauren and I have talked on the subject several times, and we're both in agreement that a distribution system is essential. But until that system is fully developed, we've been publishing our shots on our Flickr feeds. The supporters love the shots, the players love the shots, and there's no problem with that. The shots are watermarked, they're copyrighted, and the ability to download them is removed. So in that respect we're doing all we can to make sure they're not nicked and used without authorisation. But alas it's not just us who are shooting at games, and when a fan in the stands sells their shots on to a third party, there are going to be repercussions. Expect changes next season, ladies and gentlemen, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out what one of those changes will be...

The actions of the minority have certainly ruined it for those who want nothing more than to shoot their team and share in the photos, who seek to publicise the club and not hurt it, who want to see more people coming to games and don't want to see people ripped off. I think it's fair to say that in terms of the outside world, very few people have given a damn about this team all season, but once there's a trophy won, a title claimed, and a little press coverage, everyone wants a piece.

Anyway, the meeting happens. Without going into details, it doesn't go particularly well on all fronts. Certainly, the need for infrastucture review is the forefront, and that's great, it's what I've been saying all along. The need for fairness in photo distribution is recognised, the need for a proper system is agreed by all sides. We're all coming from the same angle, we're all on the same side, the same team, but the concerns of all parties can't be worked through in an impromptu meeting at the rink before a game. Knee-jerk measure are brought in, which instantly limit the processes that we normally enjoy the freedoms of. The phrase "We don't really want you to upload anything yourselves from tonight's game" doesn't go down well with Lauren and myself. We can submit pics for the match report but that's it. No self publishing outside of a maximum of five or six shots, that's all the Club will allow.

So, Lauren and I head down to the bench to shoot the warm up. The mood on the ice is great, the players are happy, they've just won the league and are going into the second leg of the Quarter Finals with a 6-2 lead over the Steeldogs, but the mood on the bench is far from happy. Both of us are feeling like we've been sent to the naughty corner, regardless of the intentions of the meeting, and neither of us are feeling much like shooting anything much. I tried to generate the enthusiasm to shoot, and to be honest the appearance of James Neil did help. James was proudly showing off his Play-Off 'tache and was keen to have a photo taken, so I duly obliged!



After the warm up, it was time to head to the stands. I kept my camera ready, but the enthusiasm was still completely gone. After half-heartedly shooting for a few minutes at the start of the game, I decided that it was time for a night off. I kept the camera out just in case Andrew Sharp got his hands on Kriss Grundmanis, but since that didn't happen the camera pretty much got a night off too. I did however spot something that made me smile, and I duly snapped off a few shots to make sure I'd captured it. Lauren is an old friend of Steeldogs coach Andre Payette, from when he played with us last season, and during the second period the pair of them caught up with each other on the stairs opposite my seat:



I daresay that that particular moment was the highlight of Lauren's evening!

With the 'ban' on self-publishing and the frankly non-existent enthusiasm for shooting on Sunday, there's no album of shots from the game. Phoenix went on to comfortably beat the Steeldogs and secure a place in this coming weekend's Semi-Final game against Milton Keynes in Coventry. I'll be there, camera in hand, shooting like there's no tomorrow. I won't be there as an official Phoenix photographer, as the EPL only allows one snapper per club and Nick's got the accreditation for this event, but instead I'll be there as a supporter, shooting from my seat through the netting (which is always fun). It's going to be Yol's first Play-Offs, it's also going to be my friend Jim's birthday, and I'm determined to have a weekend of fun, hockey, and shooting like a man possessed!

Since the weekend, there has been more time spent on the phone with the Club, and the mood is a little more positive now. But there's a lot of work to be done, a lot of restructuring to take place, and a lot more procedural polishing to happen before all parties are fairly looked after, protected, and coordinated.

In the absence of a hockey gallery this week, instead here's a photo of Lucy in a bag from after the game. She really does choose the most uncomfortable places to find comfort!:


There's a saying that goes "Don't let the cat out of the bag", but frankly when she's nodding off on a pile of school books, sometimes you've got to go against popular wisdom!