First Attempt - Prep Hockey

Bryce WilsonBryce Wilson Registered Users Posts: 1,586 Major grins
edited March 9, 2011 in Sports
Hi All:

This is my first post, I'm so glad I found this community. After a couple hours of reading the forums, I already feel like a better photographer. Thank-you.

Although I've been involved with photography for the past 20 years or so, I've never shot sporting events. Well, being as my son started playing for his high school varsity hockey team, I was motivated to start.

Boy, I picked a hard one to shoot for my first attempt at sports. First, the lighting in the ice rink is really, really bad. Dim with poor color. Once you have the WB figured out, you find that the lighting in the next rink is completely different. They have surrounded the playing surface with half inch thick glass, which makes eye level perspective impossible unless you want to shoot through the glass. Then on top of the glass there is protective netting. What I decided to do was to stand on a step ladder and poke the lens between the glass and protective netting. The following are a couple of shots from two games.

Has anyone tried using mono lights on a stand, either direct or bounced off a ceiling at a rink?

Any advice or comments from regular hockey shooters would be more than welcome, I have really thick skin.:D

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e1Farmington Vs. Churchill10 by Bryce Wilson, on Flickr

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Farmington Falcons Vs. Livonia Churchill - Chelsea Showcase by Bryce Wilson, on Flickr

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e3Farmington Vs. Howel16 by Bryce Wilson, on Flickr

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Up Where Mama Keeps The Peanut Butter by Bryce Wilson, on Flickr

Comments

  • aktseaktse Registered Users Posts: 1,928 Major grins
    edited March 9, 2011
    Bryce Wilson wrote: »
    ...
    Boy, I picked a hard one to shoot for my first attempt at sports. First, the lighting in the ice rink is really, really bad. Dim with poor color. Once you have the WB figured out, you find that the lighting in the next rink is completely different. They have surrounded the playing surface with half inch thick glass, which makes eye level perspective impossible unless you want to shoot through the glass. Then on top of the glass there is protective netting. What I decided to do was to stand on a step ladder and poke the lens between the glass and protective netting. The following are a couple of shots from two games.

    Has anyone tried using mono lights on a stand, either direct or bounced off a ceiling at a rink?
    Hockey is a really sport to shoot due to the reasons that you listed. Over all, you did pretty well, but I think you're about a half stop unexposed. On the positive side, you have the fundamentals of a good sports photo since it includes action, faces and puck, mostly straight horizons and tight-ish crops. Also, in #4, were you trying to get motion blur on purpose or was that due to shutter speed issues?

    As for strobes sports, and strobed hockey in particular, check out threads by tjk60. He shoots with with a few speedlights (four?) mounted. I've also seen hockey tourney photographers shoot with two quadras.

    Note: Attaching strobes in any sporting venue is not trivial and I don't recommend any regular GWC (guy with camera) doing it since it has risks involved. I don't have a problem with Pro's doing it. The difference? In general, the professional photographer carries the liability insurance, asked/received permission from the venue for doing this, has the proper mounting brackets and various backup safety mechanism to the attachment point. In any sporting event, you don't want the flash head falling on someone's head or someone tripping on the light stand. You can always replace broken or stolen gear; it's much more difficult dealing with an injury situation.
    http://aktse.smugmug.com/
  • Bryce WilsonBryce Wilson Registered Users Posts: 1,586 Major grins
    edited March 9, 2011
    aktse wrote: »
    Hockey is a really sport to shoot due to the reasons that you listed. Over all, you did pretty well, but I think you're about a half stop unexposed.
    Thank-you for taking the time to reply. I agree with you on the players being a bit underexposed. The problem I had doing test shots during warm ups was that if I had the players exposed correctly, the ice was blown out to the point it looked like they were playing on a pure white surface. Even the blue lines and blue paint in the goalie crease was gone. If I exposed purely for the ice, the players were way underexposed. I decided to split the difference being as I wanted to concentrate on capturing plays in progress rather than getting shots of individual players.
    aktse wrote: »
    On the positive side, you have the fundamentals of a good sports photo since it includes action, faces and puck, mostly straight horizons and tight-ish crops. Also, in #4, were you trying to get motion blur on purpose or was that due to shutter speed issues?
    Thank-you again. You know, when I first looked at #4 I was rather disappointed in the fact that the action wasn't frozen. Because the lenses I own aren't anywhere near as fast as they should be for this venue, (except for a 50mm prime) the most I could squeeze out was a 320SS. I would have preferred 500 but that was not to be.

    After looking at number 4 for a while, it started to grow on me. I like the fact that the goalies face and the puck are frozen and the rest of the picture shows action. Mistakes sometime turn out OK and maybe even better than the original intent.

    aktse wrote: »
    As for strobes sports, and strobed hockey in particular, check out threads by tjk60. He shoots with with a few speedlights (four?) mounted. I've also seen hockey tourney photographers shoot with two quadras.

    Note: Attaching strobes in any sporting venue is not trivial and I don't recommend any regular GWC (guy with camera) doing it since it has risks involved. I don't have a problem with Pro's doing it. The difference? In general, the professional photographer carries the liability insurance, asked/received permission from the venue for doing this, has the proper mounting brackets and various backup safety mechanism to the attachment point. In any sporting event, you don't want the flash head falling on someone's head or someone tripping on the light stand. You can always replace broken or stolen gear; it's much more difficult dealing with an injury situation.

    I will certainly check out threads by tjk60.

    Fortunately for me, the rink they play their home games in has an area that extends from the edge of the goalie net around the boards to the players bench that the general public isn't allowed to go. The rink manager was even nice enough to provide a step ladder for me. The whole idea about using strobes came about because of a couple things. One the ceiling height in this rink is quite low compared to professional venues and on top of that, it has a type of insulation attached to the ceiling that has a silver covering that would reflect light really well. I am a little hesitant to use a direct strobe as it might distract the players, but might try using a couple of Novatrons to bounce the light after I read up on the posts by the individual you mentioned.

    Thanks again for you input on this and any in the future.

    Regards,

    Bryce
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