Maine Endwell vs. Union Endicott Varsity Hockey
We had the pleasure of watching and photographing a varsity hockey match-up between Maine Endwell and Union Endicott over the weekend. One of our favorite high-school seniors that we photographed in the class of 2019, Logan, is an assistant captain on the ME team and we went to cheer him on. He was a dominant force on the ice and was fun to watch. We were impressed by the level of play, fast paced, hard-hitting, and very exciting.
One of the absolute stars of the game was Smith, the goalkeeper for UE, I am not sure how many shots he deflected in total but at some point in the 3rd period when I looked, he was at 29 saves on the way to their 3-0 victory. Very impressive and he is the backup tender. The original starter was sitting out do to concussion protocol I believe.
It was also very nice to meet a bunch of the parents from both teams. Some of these folks were the parents of Juniors and we were excited to talk to them about senior portraits for their kids for next year.
Tech Corner
Ice Hockey is a tough one to shoot because it is a very fast paced sport with action shifting from one end of the ice and back again within seconds. To accommodate this, I set up in the corner of the rink with a pair of cameras (Canon 5D Mk IV), one with a wide-angle lens (16-35 2.8) mounted and the other with a telephoto (70-200 2.8) to get shots on both ends of the ice. I had both cameras set to shutter priority (Tv mode) with a shutter speed of 1/500th and let the camera handle the aperture and ISO. The SUNY Broome ice rink is very well lit and the glass is pretty clear. If you are going to do the same concept, here are a few tips for you. Start with your camera at 1/500th and see how your camera can handle the light levels. If your shots are coming out dark (camera and lens combo can’t get enough light) back down to 1/400th or even 1/320th. Any slower than that and you will likely get a lot of motion blur. Stand as close to the glass as you can handle, this will make the marks on the glass blur away to invisibility. If you are using some post processing software, like Lightroom, that can change the white balance, you can use the white of the ice as a white balance point for good color and skin tones after the fact.