Breakaway! Atom (9-10) Hockey

[cstewart]

While waiting to shoot one of my Pee Wee games this weekend, I warmed up a bit by shooting an Atom (9-10 year olds) game before us and got this nice breakaway sequence of the son of a good friend. The defencemen bothered him enough that he missed the shot (no penalty) but his team won the game to win the league title.

EXIF: 40D, 70-200f2.8L, ISO 3200, f2.8, 1/400, AI Servo, Custom WB, Evaluative Metering, RAW.

http://www.cjscons.com/suns/IMG_8711.jpg

http://www.cjscons.com/suns/IMG_8712.jpg

http://www.cjscons.com/suns/IMG_8713.jpg

http://www.cjscons.com/suns/IMG_8714.jpg

http://www.cjscons.com/suns/IMG_8716.jpg

http://www.cjscons.com/suns/IMG_8717.jpg

http://www.cjscons.com/suns/IMG_8718.jpg

http://www.cjscons.com/suns/IMG_8719.jpg

[lexluth1]

very nice work!

[JSJR4]

nice shots

[Copilot]

Ohh another victoria person.

[ataricult]

Have you ran these trough any NR software?

[jcpoulin]

Well....is there a tripping penalty to follow, or did the kid lift the stick nicely. Was there a score!!! Of course, there could have been a good goalie save. You brought us through the sequence...don't leave us hanging!

[Brad999]

I can't see the ice. Maybe its just my monitor...

[Darsk47]

Chris - big blowout of the ice and whites over here too. Check your levels. Darcy

[dmwierz]

Chris - you've gotten some good input from others (I agree that the whites look a little hot).

Let me offer that, in order for a sequence to be interesting AS a sequence, it needs to show something developing that tells a story from one frame to the next. What you have here, however, are a bunch of basically the same images, that don't change much from frame to frame. Plus, why describe in words what happened at the end of the breakaway? Why not show us a image of this happening? You know, thousand words, an all.

If this was a sequence I had shot, I would choose one frame and go with it. If the defender were in focus, my choice would be the first frame. Since the D is OOF, I'd choose the shot where the kid on the breakaway is showing the best face and eyes.

[Shadiow]

Ok... I am sure that the player in white is a good player, but that little guy from the blue team is going to be a great hockey player. he is a little over center in his skating, but his edge control is fantastic. Non-hockey people are going to look at this series as not that great, but as a series they are fantastic. I don't think that any one of the shots would stand alone, but the fact that people don't understand is that this happened in less than 2 seconds. That is fantastic speed at this level. It really is. Fun capture, not your best, but I am really into analyzing the ability of the players from a photographic POV.

[Brad999]

The little guy in the blue looks like "he" might be a little girl...lol.

[cstewart]

Thanks for the input guys...thought this series had died a slow death!

JC Poulin...no penalty, no goal. They won though!

Dennis...good point on sequencing, I probably could have pulled a photo or two out of it.
As to the "next" image, because of where I was shooting from, the next image was at a tough angle thru the glass and too close for my 70-200 on my 40D to grab it! I really was just hanging before my son's own game and saw this develop and grabbed a quick sequence of shots and got pretty lucky.

Darsk...thanks on the whites...I struggle with this in post processing and I think this series was posted before I started "darkening" my images more. Maybe see some of my later threads and tell me what you think. Like Dennis (I think) said in another post I also like to expose in post for jerseys and faces and sometimes the ice gets too hot as a result.

Shadiow...you must be a power skating instructor or something! Great analysis!

Brad...great insight as usual :)

[Brad999]

I guess you can continue to post these improperly exposed pics week in and week out, but you really need to work on your post processing.

Take a look at these links to see how the ice is supposed to look:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=475738

http://www.sportsshooter.com/muls

Also, you can take a look at these podcasts to help with what makes a good action photo

http://www.sportsphotographycast.com (http://www.sportsphotographycast.com/)


I hope this adds more insight than me just commenting that I can't see the ice under the players...I think you almost are there, you just need a little tuning.

[dmwierz]

Further to Brad's comments on the ice - rarely is ice actually white. The same thing can be said for the boards. In most rinks, the grandstands are not lit, and the ice is not only lit, but it is a bright, white-like color. Because of this, we assume it's white. Our brains see all this "white" and we adjust our perception of the colors we're seeing.

However, our cameras are just instruments - they aren't normally fooled by things like this, especially if you're shooting manual and exposing for the players. Most teams' white uniforms are closer to real white, since they can be bleached and laundered.

So, what can end up happening is you get a properly white balanced image and the ice looks "off". Here's an example of this:

http://www.pbase.com/dmwierz45/image/90145200.jpg

Every time I shot at this local rink, I struggled to get the white balance near correct since the light was an off color and the ice was always, always a dirty color. I tried to get the uniforms close to an actual white, but you can see what color the ice ends up looking.

Also notice that the ice isn't blown out, and it is distinct from the jerseys and players.

Here's another example of different shades of white:

http://www.pbase.com/dmwierz45/image/94001216.jpg

You'll notice the ice is a different color than the boards, and they are both different than the white in Thornton's jersey. Also note that the detail in the ice is still visible and not blown out (notice the blue line peaking out from beneath the dirty ice, in front of Thornton and the puck).

Hockey isn't an easy sport to shoot under the best of lighting. But, it's a great sport where you can get some very, very cool images even at youth levels.

[cstewart]

The little guy in the blue looks like "he" might be a little girl...lol.

Brad:

The above comment was the "insightful" one I was referring to not the lighting one. I agree that the ice is too blown in these and images I posted after these are probably a bit better (this thread was originally posted 1.5 months ago). Thanks for the links too, I am always trying to learn and the only way to do that is to post photos and get feedback which is what I have been doing. And then post again. I think for the most part all the hockey images I have posted have been decent enough given the lighting issues faced. I know the post processing is difficult especially when everyone's monitors are all different, some are calibrated, some are not, and we all see the images differently. I suppose given all the feedback I have received that my monitor is a bit off as I seem to always over brighten my images. I'll certainly need to adjust this. I have certainly learned a great deal on this forum and I will continue to do so thanks to all the helpful comments received.

Cheers!

Chris