NHL Hockey - St. Louis Blues vs Chicago Blackhawks 9-26-15

I'm the team photographer for the Blackhawks primary affiliate, the Rockford IceHogs, so I got to shoot a preseason game since so many prospects are playing in the preseason.

For warm-ups, I shot with the 1DX + 200-400 @ 400mm from the 200-level. Game shots were from ice level through a port hole at the Chicago attacking blue line and used the 1DX + 70-200 2.8 mk2. Most of those ice shots were 1/1000, 3.2, 2500 ISO. The lighting here was surprisingly worse than the Rockford arena, as they still have 20 year old fluorescent lighting and we have 2 year old LED lighting. It was also a little harder shooting near the blue line as you mostly got shots in transition, and not many of the net, which is where I tend to focus most. I still managed to get some good transition shots, and got a few good net sequences as well as a penalty shot occurrence along with the shot, as those were on my end of the ice.

Overall, I feel these are average. My monitor hasn't been calibrated for the season yet, so I think some of these are running a little hot to me, but I will let you guys critique for me.

Link to the gallery at the bottom of the page. Enjoy:

1.

Nice! Great reds...

Gotta say, impressively lit area. Getting away with 1/1000s, F2.8 and only ISO 2000 is nearly day light level!

Very best,

they all look good to me...

i THINK i can tell the difference in your lighting. these dont quite have the SUPER snap, of the Icehogs but again, i certainly would LOVE this quality of light...

how do you like that 200-400?

i guess the new semi-pro team got a young couple to shoot their pics for this year. no idea what their skill level is but im CONFIDENT, they wont be as good as your work and honestly, im willing to bet, theyre not as good as what i would produce. ego? yep but ive got lots of good experience in my old barn...

Nice shots. Are you using auto white balance? These seem very bright.

Great job as always. Love the shots regardless of the challenges with a different arena, and I enjoyed seeing what the 200-400 could do from the 200-level as shown in your gallery.

Great background on image #60 with everyone trying to get the goal shot with their camera phones

Image 72 has the pop I usually expect from your images. Maybe that spot had perfect lighting or I'm just keen on it as it has one of my favorite players, Blues #36 Troy Brouwer, who recently departed the Caps

Top shelf stuff as always!!

Thanks for the compliments and comments, all.

In this particular case, I was using AWB, because of the halogen lights. I could have set it to 3500k, but the lights would vary between 3200-3900, so I would have to go back and color-correct anyway.

Dave, the 200-400 was pretty nice to use, although the one thing I didn't care for about it was the tripod mount was in the way of the zoom ring for the way I use the zoom. I was handholding when shooting these, so I just moved the ring around to the right side and it wasn't an issue. Focusing was fast and was pretty accurate. I did take a few snapshots in the yard before the game, and after the game there was a press conference with Seabrook, and those turned out very sharp.

Very nice. I would love to be able to photograph an NHL game or any level of game in a nicely lit arena.

Very nice stuff!

Deveraux,
How do you go about calibrating your monitor/laptop? I'm assuming you are transmitting these images to a photo agency.

love your work!

Hey Figo, sorry I never got to replying to your post!

For these images, I didn't have to give them to an agency, I just brought them home the night of the game and the next day I started to slowly pick through the images and adjust. Since I was shooting for the affiliate team, there was no rush to get them the images the same day. I think I gave them the photos about 2-3 days after the game. But if I were shooting for an agency on this night, I would have probably missed almost half of each period trying to adjust for the color correction.

When I calibrate my monitor, I have a Spyder3 that I use for the calibration, and I typically do it every month. One thing that is really nice about shooting in our barn is that the lighting is extremely consistent with the LEDs, so once I have my preset develop settings done, I typically do not have to do anything for adjustment. If anything, I will bump the exposure slightly if we are playing a team with darker sweaters as they absorb more light than usual.

When I shoot the home games, I have those images turned in before the start of the next period. I will head up to my station with about 1 minute left in the period (it only takes about 2 minutes for me to get up there). What I do is offload my images, rate the keepers, then run my develop settings. After that's done, I crop/adjust as necessary, then save as JPEG. I'll import to lightroom and then publish them to the team Flickr page and FTP site before the next period starts. Occasionally I will run a minute or so late, but 9 out of 10 times it all works out perfectly.

I wish I had a system like this. I do freelance for a local paper and I do the hockey. I have to head back to the office to edit and all that and since the deadline is 9:45pm for everything, I have yet to make it through a full game and have to miss the action at the end of the 3rd which can be much better than the rest of the game combined.

Beautiful shots. I am inspired.

Pro Stuff. Always well done. Cheers !