Photographing the Australian Ice Hockey League
In 2006, I managed to become an official AIHL photographer, taking lots of photos during many of the games in Sydney, for the Sydney Bears, and the Western Sydney Ice Dogs. The games were exciting, especially since I was often camped out between the teams playing, right on the boards, which gave me unprecedented views of the game, and access to the players. I spent long periods looking down the viewfinder of my trusty Nikon D70s, and 80-200 f/2.8 lens.
I learnt a lot about sports photography, and especially the part where the photo shoot isn’t over when I pack the camera away. I eventually worked out an efficient workflow which I could follow, so that my photos would be post-processed consistently, and get out to the right people at the right times. The hard part wasn’t taking the photos, it was spending the long night afterwards post-processing some 700+ photos, eventually coming away with about 20 to 30 good ones.
During the AIHL off-season, my goal was to upgrade my camera gear, to the Nikon D200, and Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR lens. Just before the 2007 season started, I trudged down to the camera shop, handed over a wad of my hard earned money, and achieved the goal I’d set. Now, the chellenge was to learn how to use them effectively.
The D200 and 70-200 VR lens combo is rather popular among amateur sports photographers. This combo certainly requires a bit more knowledge and skill than general point-and-shoot cameras, because the 10 megapixel size really shows up any softness in the image – and I was getting quite sick of soft and back-focused images.
Just before the Bears first game in 2007, they announced that they’d moved to the Penrith Ice Arena. This was a brilliant move as far as I’m concerned, as the lighting in the Penrith Arena is not bad for photography. Blacktown was downright nasty for photography, as the lighting was very dim – ISO 1600+ will yield ok photos at 1/250sec shutter speed.
I contacted the Bears about photographing the game, and they agreed to allow me. I became now the Bears official photographer, which I was quite chuffed about. With a brand new camera/lens combo, I was a bit nervous about photographing the game, but in the end, everything was fine. With bigger pictures coming out of the camera (10 megapixels), I needed new CF cards – I now go to an ice hockey photoshoot with about 18 gigs of storage capacity! That is a lot of photos!
During the selection and post-processing of some 600 images, I discovered that my post-processing work queue was 100% bigger than the average for last years shoots – I had managed to shoot better photos more often during a game than previous shoots. I could shoot at Penrith using ISO 1000, f/2.8, at 1/400 or higher.
The culmination of the year was photographing the AIHL Goodall Cup – it was the first time where there were numerous photographers at the rink, I was tasked to take specific photos rather than just camp on the side and capture the games, the games were being filmed, and the stands were packed.
Over the two days, I still managed to take about 1200 or so photos, and spent the next few weeks post-processing them. The end result was a mixed bag – I suspect that the majority of photos were being spoilt by a back-focusing problem (which is a known problem with the D200/f2.8 200mm VR combo).
Some photos came out nicely, however.
In the end, the Bears won the Cup. Unfortunately, I was so overjoyed with emotion (after following the Bears for three years…) that I forgot to take those really defining emotions that the players went through – the ecstasy of victory, and the agony of defeat, especially given the Bears won in overtime.
Since that game, I’ve not taken a single ice hockey photograph. I would have loved to have been invited to the Div II World Championships in Newcastle early in 2008, and continued my work from 2007 with the Bears in 2008. My real work commitments (working on an $8M project), and a lack of direction/devotion with ice hockey in late 2007, interfered with my plans for 2008.
Maybe by next year’s Winter competition, I’ll have a new camera (a Nikon D3), and focus on this hobby (and addiction) once more.