Shooting the 'Dawgs, and Shooting Out In The Cold Air

Last Thursday the Phoenix had a rare weekday home game, with our friends from over the Pennines popping in for the evening. A visit from the Steeldogs means, amongst other things, a visit from my former shooting buddy Lauren Freeman, who is now shooting for the Sheffield team. Such a visit when I'm still testing out my 35mm f1.8 prime lens could have only one result, and so as expected I shot Lauren on the team bench during the warm up:



The game itself was pretty tense, with very little to separate the teams until the third period, when the Phoenix broke through the tight Sheffield defence and kept plugging away to win the game 3-0. Shooting hockey is always a challenge, but it's even more of a challenge when there's not much scoring going on. A big part of my remit is to provide shots not only for the Phoenix's official Flickr page but also for the official website's match reports, a remit that can be increasingly difficult to fulfil when there's no distinct 'narrative points' such as goals being scored. The shots that we publish on the match reports are chosen to illustrate the account, to help tell the story of the game, but when the game is scoreless and played end to end without major incident, it can be hard to choose shots to use!





The end of game presentations, as ever, gave me a chance to shoot some more candid material, when the players are letting their guards down and relaxing a little after the intensity of the match. This is where a lens such as the 35mm prime comes into its own, as the shots it can facilitate are really worth it, in my opinion:





With Phoenix having played on the Thursday night, and being scheduled to play on the road on the Saturday, I was presented with a rare weekend off from the hockey. But on Saturday I was permitted to indulge another of my photographic passions, thanks to Vicki Smart, my friend and fellow snapper. Vicki is currently planning and researching a documentary film shoot, and I've been asked to shoot the production stills, so on Saturday we jumped in the car, picked up cameraman Alex Dean, and headed off to Tatenhill Airfield for a location recce. Vicki's documentary will focus around the pilots and trainee pilots who use the airfield as a base, and so we had an appointment to go and view the site to scope out potential filming locations and interview spots.





The location recce gave me the opportunity to shoot some aircraft, which is something I find myself inexplicably drawn to. I shoot hockey, the moon, churches, portraits, the night sky and aircraft, and the rationale behind those is something I can't always put my finger on! But, never one to turn down an opportunity, I found myself looking through the viewfinder at some lovely aircraft:




The main attraction though, for a nerd such as myself, was the presence of an Antonov AN-2 in full working order. An oddly beautiful aircraft, we were given free access to the outside of the plane to shoot as we saw fit, and shoot we did!







The set of shots from the location recce can be seen on Flickr here - thanks for reading!

Testing the f1.8 on the Big Stage, and Going For The Candid Shots Again

This past Saturday night, the Phoenix were at home entertaining the Guildford Flames in the first night of a double-header (the second leg being down in Guildford on Sunday), and it was time to give the f1.8 35mm prime lens another outing. Fellow Phoenix photographer Nick Ogden and I had arranged to be on the ice for the players' entrance before the start of the game, and as such it was time to see what the lens was capable of in the variable low lighting, with the spotlights twirling and the coloured lights flashing. To play it safe and to preserve the fast shutter speed, I went with an ISO of 1600 which allowed me to shoot at 1/400th of a second, and prayed that the auto-focus was fast enough to keep up with the speed at which the players jumped onto the ice. Now all that we needed was for the lighting guy to get his cues right, and hit the players with the spotlight from the front. So, first to step onto the ice was netminder Steve Fone, and as you can see, the spotlight was a little late....



However, the spotlight being late turned out to be of no consequence with this shot, as it gave me a cracking silhouette to shoot. Luckily, the spotlight turned up on time for the rest of the player introductions:




The lens performed very well, even at ISO1600. I can safely say that I'm very pleased with how the shots came out, but this next one is my favourite:



It's not every day that you get to shoot a hockey player as he barrels onto the ice with his tongue pointing out at you!

I've been chatting a lot with Nick and with Rich Murray (the programme producer and pro photographer) about content for the programmes, and all season I've been producing a series of 'profile' articles about Phoenix match night staff. The final profile in my current batch was used up this past week for the Guildford programme, and so with that in mind I've spent the last week getting in touch with more people to profile. The replies that I've had have been excellent, which takes care of the bulk of the text parts of the articles. My main task is to shoot some portraits to go with the articles, and with this in mind I went into Saturday's game with the intention of shooting no fewer than six people's portraits! Here are some of the ones that I got in the bag:





Even though these portraits are semi-posed, they're still in-keeping with my preference for spontaneous portraits and candid moments. Don't get me wrong, I do love the challenge of shooting a 'proper' posed portrait (as demonstrated recently) but the style that I'm most enthusiastic about is the candid, the spontaneous, the captured moments that freeze time and give us a permanent reminder of what would normally pass us by. With that in mind, I was snapping away like crazy at the end of the Phoenix game, and came up with moments such as these:





I know that I don't get paid by the Phoenix, and that I do all of this of my own volition, but I can safely say that this phrase applies to me when I'm at the rink with my camera in my hands: I love my job!

New lens on home ice, portraits and still life, and Lauren's exhibition

The Phoenix's home schedule finally gave me a chance to try out my new 35mm f1.8 prime lens from the home bench this past weekend, when the Milton Keynes Lightning came to visit. Previously I'd borrowed Vicki Smart's 50mm f1.8 prime, so shooting with the 35mm would hopefully give me that little bit more distance from a close-proximity subjcet, and with this in mind it was down to the bench for the warm-up that I went!:




I think I've made a sound investment! It certainly paid off with the post-game celebrations shots that I like to get, the clearness of the image becoming apparent in the relatively low lighting of the rink. Certainly the rink's lighting is amongst the best in the country, but in terms of the amount of light getting to the sensor, it's still fairly low. But with the f1.8 iris the light can be more than compensated for, and even though an f1.8 has a traditionally shallow depth of field, it can work well when the subject is distant enough that the focus can be set to 'infinity':



On Wednesday evening, I'd planned to do a Still-Life shoot with the new lens, using a rather nice glass paperweight as my subject. The end of the working day came around, and there were still some students burning their films to blu-ray who needed a little longer in the edit suite, and so I had an idea - go from shooting the Still-Life to shooting some portraits, using the students as subjects. One of the students was accompanied by his missus who'd recently done a make-over shoot, and so I pilfered her to start the shooting process. And so it came to pass that Shelbie Wark and I ended up setting up a three-head 300w set up, and shooting some portraits of Shelbie:





Before long, other 'subjects' became available to be press-ganged into appearing before the lens:






Again the lower light capabilities of the lens paid off, giving me the kind of portrait results that I was looking for. The experiments with the lighting continue though, and there are definitely some lessons to be learned from this shoot. I'd used diffuser on the key and fill lights, but for future shoots when shooting a female subject, I'll be using a proper soft-box to make the diffusion more effective. The sharper shadows don't seem so out of place on portraits of 'menfolk' but with female subjects it seems that more diffusion is the general rule. You'd have thought I'd have learned that after the last sets of portraits: setting up a soft-box can be a pain in the neck, but it's always worth taking the time to do it!

Incidentally, I did manage to get some of the Still-Life shots done that I'd originally set out to do!:



Friday night saw Yol and myself taking a trip up to Manchester to see the closing night of the New Vision Photography Exhbition at 4 Piccadilly Place. The Exhbition is staged by photography students at Bolton University, and amongst them is my friend and fellow hockey snapper Lauren Freeman. Lauren's section of the exhibition consisted of some visually striking portraits of players from the Sheffield Steeldogs, taken on the ice Here's a shot of Lauren standing in front of two of her exhibited photographs:



Lauren took us for a guided tour around the Exhibition, allowing us to take in the work of some of the promising and up-and-coming photography talent that Bolton University has to offer (as well as some other work that was also exhibited). Thank you, Lauren, for the tour and the insights into some of your fellow artists!

After the Exhibition, Yol and I went to grab a bite to eat at the Bella Italia around the corner, and again it gave me a chance to see how the f1.8 would perform in low light:




All in all, a cracking week for the lens!

New year new lens, shooting the mistress, and a trip down to Telford

For a while now, I've had my eye on a lens. Or rather, several options for a new lens. I couldn't make my mind up as to specifically which one I wanted, but I knew the kind of thing that I would be going for. I wanted to add a nice low f-stop prime lens to my collection, partly for portrait shooting and partly for getting shots on the bench at the hockey.

My lovely family, knowing my passion for photography, had given me a Jessops gift card for Christmas (thank you guys!) and so the possibility of getting a new lens became a reality! With this in mind, I'd mentioned my desire for a prime lens to a few fellow snappers to get their opinions, and one of those snappers did me a favour and lent me a lens to use for a game. Vicki Smart is the proud owner of a rather nice 50mm f1.8 lens, and so armed with it I went down to the players entrance for the start of the Phoenix v Bees match on January 2nd to see what the lens could do:




Let's just say that my experiences with that lens were enough to convince me that a similar purchase had to be made!

The only drawback of the 50mm lens that I had borrowed from Vicki was that, for me personally, I couldn't get as much of the subject in the frame as I wanted to when I was shooting players at the team bench. There's not much room on the bench, and shooting players that were only a couple of feet away was very tricky with a fixed 50mm lens. Therefore the logical solution for me was to order a 35mm f1.8 lens, which I duly did!

So far I've not used it at the hockey as I've not had a home game to go to since picking the lens up. But, as you'd expect, I've used it on my local supply of willing models!






My passion for shooting the moon has been indulged a couple of times already this year, and we're barely a fortnight into 2012. I just can't help but shoot the moon whenever I get chance, be it during the night or the day. If she's in the sky, I'll reach for my camera! Recently I've been trying to shoot her freehand, without the use of a tripod or remote shutter trigger, and so far the results are fairly pleasing:




One day I'll get a shot of the moon that I like so much that I'll know I can't top it, and maybe I'll stop shooting it. But until then....

This past weekend, the Phoenix were on the road and had no home games, so we jumped in the car on Sunday and headed down the M6 and across to Telford to watch the Tigers host our boys. Telford ice rink is quite something for photographers, as I've mentioned in previous blog entries - the lighting in there makes every player look like they've overdone it on the fake tan. It's enough to put you off satsumas for life! Shooting the game is always a fun experience for me, even when I'm doing it from in the stands, and I always try to get shots that tell the story of the game. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but with the Telford shots I'm fairly happy:





One shot in particular seems to have caught the eye of one or two people, and it's a shot I took as the players were coming out onto the ice at the start of the game. Telford's game intro consists of killing all of the lights, and having a spotlight aimed at each goal that pulsates on and off. Seeing a chance for a shot, I waited until the Phoenix netminder Steve Fone was in his crease doing some pre-game preparation, and I snapped this shot:



Sometimes a nice shot can be found where you least expect it, and it's just a case of keeping your eyes open, your camera ready, and taking a chance!

Cheers for reading!