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Photo: Up close and personal with a body check less than 15 feet from our seats.

Sure, fighting gets a lot of attention in hockey, especially in the AHL, but as a former defenseman, I’d have to say the real action is along the boards when you’re defending your own zone.

Call it chance or just an unspoken rivalry, we experienced quite a few more crashing body checks right in front of us in the 2nd row than the previous games. One woman in front of us even received a little snow shower as a stick blade made it higher than the glass and sprinkled the wet snow down on her. Just a little, though.

The Shot

I’ve been working on a shot like this for a few games now, but this is only as close as I’ve come so far. Having the ability to shoot f/2.8 with my rental lens was a big help, but a minimal focal length on the heavy Canon 70-200mm was a little hard to position with. Plus, I was shooting in Full Manual mode, so my shutter speed was one notch too fast to get enough light here.

Timing is pretty key here, too, since these plays develop rather quickly. I think it will be a matter of time and some more luck to get where I want this to be.

And unlike my playing days, this type of practice I sure don’t mind.

– Kris

More Bonus Links

Well, yesterday I shared the Flickr Group links for both these two teams, so today I thought I’d pass on their respective Facebook pages.  Checkout the Chicago Wolves and the San Antonio Rampage on Facebook for fun and fans of the American Hockey League. And while you’re there, don’t forgot to visit my Facebook Page, too.

The edition of the Before and After series is an anniversary of sorts. It was exactly one year ago today that I took the before image that you see below, and it was during our overnight stay in the heavenly town of Hana along Maui’s east coast.

Being able to view the sunrise in Hana was a special moment for me personally, so now that I look back one year later and relive those moments, I wanted to make this image a little more special.

The Before Image

This image does a pretty fair job as-is for taking me back to that moment. There were a few things I wish I had done differently back then, and here’s a short list.

• Scout out a location the day before – it was a pretty long day driving all the way to Hana, but I still could have taken 15 minutes to find a spot before we went to dinner that night.
• Remember the tripod – left it in our cottage, and by the time I realized that I needed it (because of the low light), going back to get it would have meant missing the moment.
• Shot bracketed exposures – I wasn’t shooting HDR at the time, and I’m not necessarily saying it was a strong HDR candidate. If I had bracketed shots – and that tripod – I could have used a few other multi-RAW techniques in post.

Okay, enough with what didn’t happen and onto the after image.

The After Image

Although I may still go back and try to recover some of that orange glow around the sun, this image is where I’m leaving it for now. Wanting to make this one special, I played around with a few tricks to get to this look.

• First up was a little cropping. It ended up putting the sun closer to the middle than I prefer, but there was too many distractions in the foreground otherwise.
• Next was multi-RAW processing in ACR using a gradient layer mask to blend separate exposure adjustments for the sky and the foreground.
• To bring in more detail, I used two different tools from Topaz Labs. The first of which was Topaz Adjust by applying the Clarity preset and tweaking the Noise tab to clean up the clouds a little bit.
• Topaz Detail was then used by applying the Feature Enhancement preset to add just a little more definition to the clouds and the surface of the water.

Thoughts?

Let me know what you think or if you have any other suggestions of things I should try differently. I like the after image being a little brighter, but tried to avoid getting to bright so that it didn’t feel like dawn anymore.

– Kris

Photo: A Rampage defender has a wolf in his sights.

Enough with the cute stuff, let’s get to the action!

With our seats so close to the ice and to the net, I was working on a few shots in the near corner as the puck made its way from behind the cage towards us.

Part of me wishes I had the depth of field wide enough to get both players in focus together, but the other half likes the focus on the “hunter” which slightly de-emphasizes the “prey”. Definitely more intensity in the look of the defender.

Let me know what you think.

– Kris

Bonus Links

If you’re a fan of Flickr and want to see more hockey action, check out the groups for both the Chicago Wolves and the San Antonio Rampage.

Photo: A rather odd illustration made on the side of Drew MacIntyre’s goalie mask.

Okay, just this one last almost hockey photo from Sunday’s game before I get into the action shots.  Something about that potato head guy/girl on Drew’s goalie helmet really creeps me out. Of course, I had to snap a shot of it, otherwise no one would believe me.

Remember, I warned you that goaltenders a not like other hockey players.  This is just more proof of that, I believe.

– Kris

P.S.: Sorry for the bad play on words in the photo’s title. If you’re not sure what I’m referring to, say the title again but slow down for each syllable.

Photo: Chicago Wolves mascot Skates lets off the fireworks during the pre-game festivities.

Man was it a great day to be a hockey fan on Sunday. I shot my first of two Chicago Wolves games for this month, and the new lens I rented was a huge advantage over my previous games. Plus our seats were incredible again, with only 1 row separating me from the glass. It’s going to take a few days to get through most of the keepers, but I’m excited.

Go Team USA!

The other reason it was great day to follow hockey was the result of the much anticipated Olympic showdown between Team USA and Team Canada, with the Americans coming out on top for the first time in the last 50 years of Winter Olympic competition. That gives the good guys a bye in the next round, and they’ll be waiting for the winner of Switzerland and Belarus I believe.

As you can guess, the blog posts this week will be hockey oriented, so stay tuned for more action this week – and likely next week as well.

– Kris