Half-Mast Bison, Shoot What You See, Stay Tight & Pray, and a Chance Capture

It's now well into my second season shooting the Phoenix match nights, and one of the things I learned early is to take every opportunity you can to get a shot. The majority of shots taken will never see the light of day, but if you don't shoot it then you'll never have it. So when I'm faced with an opportunity that I've spotted out of the corner of my eye, you can bet that I'm going to shoot it. Even if it's not the most picturesque of opportunities...



After all, how often will you see a Bison sorting out his undercrackers in front of a thousand spectators?...

...Probably as often as a linesman getting lightly creamed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time!



Shooting what you see, and taking your chances where you see them, are fundamentals when it comes to photography. Sometimes you can see something photogenic in an unusual place, and the urge to grab a camera and take a shot will surge up!



The shot above is a close up of a burned out filament in an 800W bulb that blew in our main studio. I took it down from the lighting rig, spotted the potential for a shot, set the light on a shelf and fetched a camera! Some may see it as a pointless photo, but hopefully some may see the beauty in the image. Sometimes I'll see something and feel the urge to shoot it, and it doesn't have to have a purpose or even a meaning!

In the last Blog entry, I included a shot from a Phoenix game where I'd shot Luke Boothroyd as he waited to go onto the ice. This past Saturday, Nick Ogden and I ventured out to try and get some shots of the players as they stepped onto the ice. Nick knelt down, and I shot over his shoulder. The players had been briefed that we would be there, but that didn't stop either of us from being a little nervous. We were kneeling down very close to the route that the players take when they charge onto the ice, and when they come out through the smoke it's not always easy to see where you're going. The lights are down and the spotlights are up, so our high-vis jackets wouldn't have been of much use, but luckily all of the players managed to avoid us! I've not seen Nick's results, but I know I managed to get a few usable shots from the unique vantage point:




That same game, the Phoenix 2012 Calendar went on sale too, and on a personal note I'd like to thank all of you who picked up a copy and gave me some feedback, it's much appreciated!

The other morning, the moon was pretty much directly opposite our front door, so whilst defrosting the car, I indulged my passions for lunar shooting, and set up the tripod. I fired off a few shots at a variety of f-stops and shutter speeds to try to capture the detail as well as I could, and when I looked back at one of the shots I spotted something that I'd not seen when the exposure was taken:



I'd inadvertantly managed to combine two of my 'guilty pleasures' of photography in one shot, and captured an aircraft trailing away from the moon! Result!

Cheers all, thanks for reading!