What A Save

A couple of weeks back I mentioned that one of my friends, Steven Beaulieu, had passed away.  At the funeral, I ran into my friend Emmanuel and we chatted for a little while about friends and family.  At one point in the conversation, Manny mentioned that his daughter, Florence, was playing a play-off hockey game in Brossard the next morning at 8:00AM.  Getting home after the funeral, I was still a little bit down, and a choppy night of sleep didn't do very much to ease my mind.  My Lovely Assistant was working at 7:00AM that morning, so I ended up being awake early myself.  After sitting at the computer for a little while, wondering what I would do with my day, I remember the conversation with Manny from the night before.  I packed up my gear and headed down to the Complexe sportif Bell in Brossard to catch some early morning hockey action.  Knowing Steven, he would have wanted me to get out and do something that I loved.  There were some surpised smiles on the faces of my friends as they saw me walking towards them.  This isn't the first time that I got to photograph Florence in action.  I had a similar outing last year, and you can see those pictures by following this link.  Florence played goal this season with the Brossard Grizzlies, an all-boys team, and had a great season.  Sadly, they lost this play-off game and it marked the end of their season.  I felt kind of bad because this was the second time shooting her in action, and both times her team ended up on the wrong side of the scoreboard.  I hope that I'm not a jinx because I always have fun getting to shoot some hockey and I hope to get invited back to do so again next season.  The best part about shooting a goalie is that it's not that hard to follow the action.  You know that eventually the puck will find its way to that spot.  Shooting hockey, having the puck in your shot is a big bonus.  Getting the puck in your shot also means that you need a fairly fast shutter speed to freeze that little bugger.  I decided to play around with my White Balance this time, as I figured I'd turn this shoot into a learning experience as well.  I set my White Balance to White Fluorescent Light, bumped my ISO up all the way to 1600, set the camera into AV mode and shot away. The first photograph you see here was shot at f/2.8, 1/800sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm.  The second photograph was shot at f/4, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm.  The third photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/1250sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm.  Photograph number four was taken at f/2.8, 1/1000sec, ISO 1600 at 55mm.  I also chose to make turn it into a black and white shot for two reasons.  One, to give it a kind of old-school newspaper feel, and two, to try something different.  Why not.  Here are a couple more shots to round out this update.

f/4.5, 1/400sec, ISO 1600 at 95mm

f/4.5, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at 105mm

I ended up using two different lenses during the game.  My 24-70mm and 70-300mm Canon lenses.  My 24-70 allowed me to get some faster speed as it allows me to shoot at f/2.8, compared to my 70-300mm which limits me to apertures of f/4.5 & f/5.6 depending on the focal length I used.  I also learned a valuable lesson about trying to edit on the fly.  I tried to edit out some of my less than stellar shots during breaks in play, or when the puck was at the other end of the ice, but hockey is a fast game and I ended up missing a few saves because I was busy looking at my other photographs.  Also, in my rush to try and edit during the game, I ended up deleting one of the photos that I really liked and had intended to keep.  That's what we call a learning experience.  Either that, or it was Steven playing a little trick on me, getting even for all of the jokes I'd played on him over the years.  I still managed to get a good number of shots.  The six you see here and enough to fill a few more updates should I get lazy and need some filler photos over the course of the year.  Congratulations on the great season Florence, I hope to see you again next season as well.