Last weekend I had the privilege of being able to volunteer at the Alberta Winter Games as a photographer. There were approximately 40 photographers in all covering the 26 sports over the course of three days. I was assigned to cover Men's hockey which featured some of the top Pee-Wee teams from around the province. The games were all held at the Beaumont Recreation Centre (the 'BRAC') and I witnessed some really great hockey and some very talented kids.
This was a challenging assignment to photograph. There were several factors which made shooting quite challenging and a perfect opportunity to practice some of things I've learned during my classes.
The first challenge was finding places to shoot the action. Although I tried a few shots, I wasn't able to shoot through the glass on either sheet of ice. The glass was just too marked up to get a clear shot. At BRAC 1, there was very little room to stand on the benches and my view from the stands was obscured by the protective mesh. Fortunately someone had made a hole in the mesh at one end which was just large enough to get my lens through. Steadying the lens and being able to move the camera around was quite awkward however so I gave up on BRAC 1 and moved over to BRAC 2.
Again at BRAC 2 I was faced with horrible glass and mesh covered most of the area around the top of the glass. Fortunately there was much more room on the benches and even a low wall behind the benches that I could stand on where there was no mesh getting in the way. Probably the best spot however was down at the Zamboni gates where there was no mesh above the glass. One of the games officials was nice enough to get me a ladder which allowed me to stand above the glass and get close in on the action. From here I was able to get some really great action shots in and around the goal.
The 2nd big challenge was metering. Anytime you are trying to shoot in a snow or ice environment, the lighting can play havoc with the metering system on your camera. If it reads it as being too bright, the camera will try to darken the image resulting in the ice looking grey. The metering courses I took came in really handy in understanding this concept and as a result I was able to get my exposures almost bang on every time, avoiding having to spend hours in Photoshop trying to fix them.
Shooting indoors without flash while still trying to capture the action from far away calls for a good telephoto lens. Fortunately my friend Greg had lent me his 70-200mm f2.8 lens. What a beautiful lens it was to work with. I was able to shoot at around f4 at around 1/100 of a second resulting in great exposure while still being fast enough to capture the action. I barely had to use my flash expect when I was shooting in and around the bench trying to get some candid shots of the players and coaches.
A selection of my photos was uploaded to the games web site (www.2008albertawintergames.com). The Photobucket site they are using to host the pictures will only be up for a couple of weeks so I also posted my best shots on my Flickr site at www.flickr.com/photos/momentsindigital.
All in all it was a great experience and a great opportunity to get out there and practice many of the things I learned in my lighting and metering courses. If you get the chance to volunteer for an event like this, I would highly recommend it. It's a great chance to give back to the community, build up your portfolio, and practice the craft.
