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!
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