Mimicking ice for hockey photos

Lurk a lot, but figure I'd ask here.

I've got some ideas but thought I'd ask around.

I've been asked to do some team photos and individual shots for a local hockey association. The only catch is that they don't do it on ice anymore for a few reasons.

However, they still want it to look like the players are on ice. Their photog last year brought something in and laid it down and it was a nice, white surface. The association has no idea what it was, but it looked pretty good.

I've been looking at some ideas, and the best I've come up with is piecing together some 4x8' slabs of plain white barker tile or something similar. My concern is that the gaps between the boards would be noticeable, especially on team photos. I was thinking trying to tape the gaps, but that might be obvious too. Nothing photoshop can't solve, but that's a lot for hundreds and hundreds of photos.

My other concern is the durability of these boards. If they'll stand up to 2-weeks worth of photos and still look decent.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

Definitely a tough situation to wrap your head around! I've used tile board and the only issue would be that the scratches are brown rather than white. I suppose you could spray paint over the scratches after usage...

Another issue is how big is the team? You could shoot them on a white seamless backdrop if you have the strobes and from my experience, they don't show up as much if you light it correctly. (In LR or Photoshop you can just use an adjustment brush with +1, +2 exposure to remove any blemishes on the tile.)

If they want the goal and everything in the background, that'll be a little tough fabricating the scene to make it look realistic...

you can buy big sheets of 'fake ice' that is used for practicing stick handling, it's basically the same type of material that cutting boards are made of. Put it in the middle of a larger seamless background, have the player stand on that part and a carefully placed strobe would help it blend into the background.

http://www.hockeygiant​.com/prgrd8994skpdic.h​tml

But shooting an entire team is going to get tricky...

I think I'm going to go with eight, 1/8" thick 4x8' sheets of puck board. I'll use some white gaffer tape to close the gaps and try and keep the white bright and fix any issues in PS later. But at $50 CDN for each slab, it's going to get a bit pricey. Luckily I have the contract for a few years, so it should be gravy after year 1.

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I assume they will have their skates on? Blades are sharp. Not sure what that puck board is made of and how it will stand up to the skate blades?

Jayems wrote in post #13334937
I think I'm going to go with eight, 1/8" thick 4x8' sheets of puck board. ...But at $50 CDN for each slab, it's going to get a bit pricey.

Tell the local hockey association that you'll shoot on it if they buy it. Maybe they'll decide to go back on the ice.

Please tell me one of the "issues" isn't potential liability...

I've done some figure skaters for years and we had an issue trying to get ice time at a time that worked for everyone. In this smaller community that I did this in they only had one arena and we would have needed to have it uninterrupted for a minimum of 6 hours. We used a meeting room that had a crappy brick wall but they did supply me with some sheets of 3/4" white plexiglass that were 8' wide by 12' long. It was as close to ice as we could make it and the club was happy with it. Getting ice time is particularly hard for an extended period of time like that and hockey takes precedent in any event here.

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Did you have to do team photos? If I was just doing individual shots I'd be laughing.

I went and ordered the puckboard today.

In the top right, I can see a bit of tape. Is that just gaffer's tape or what did you use?

Did you have any issues with waving or bubbling with the plexiglass? I just got a quote for it and it's $175/sheet of 8x4'. Ouch.

The big issue with not on the ice is they simply can't afford to give up the ice time for photos.

PhotosGuy wrote in post #13335846
Tell the local hockey association that you'll shoot on it if they buy it. Maybe they'll decide to go back on the ice.

Sigh. Unfortunately it was made clear early that they're not responsible for any of it because the company that did it in year's past brought their own supplies. So it was something I knew going into would be a bit of a hit if I wanted the contract. Hopefully I can get other associations on board and get some use out of them after the shoot (although I've got the contract for next year too).

Well, I'm two days in and thought I'd throw an update out there.

The puck board works very, very well for what I need.

I've taken a series of photos to illustrate my setup, but it's not ideal. I'll post them shortly. Its very cramped, I can't put my lights as high as I'd like, nor can I put them far enough apart due to some immovable objects (walls, support beams). So I'm getting some nasty shadows behind the back row on the backdrop. But I've got some options I'll try next day.

Now, if only I can get the kids to stop trying to skate on the puck board...