Why Can't We Be Friends

The play-off series between the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins continues with each team having one win a piece.  Game 5 goes this evening so I decided to reach into the archives to pull out this little photograph that I took back in the Spring of 2009.  I was taking a Photojournalism course at Concordia University and one of our assignments was to go out and photograph an event.  This was the first year that the Canadiens began to have their FanJam events before home play-off games so I headed down to the Bell Center to see what was going on.  I'll freely admit that taking pictures of people is not one of my strong suits, but taking photos of strangers is even tougher.  I'm a wee bit on the shy side, despite what you may think based on my writings here on the site, so going up to strangers and asking to take their photograph wasn't really an option.  Instead, I choose to go with my strength, which is laying back and not being noticed, which isn't really that easy to do when you're someone my size.  A few minutes after arriving, I came upon these Bruins fans and I knew that if I stuck close to them, I'd be sure to get a little action.  Sure enough, a press photographer came by and asked for a photo, at which point some young Habs fans joined the fray, and voila, I snuck in and snapped my instant play-off moment.  After the game began I went to my friend Julie's place, who was a classmate at the time and who I ran into at the event, and we watched the rest of the game before deciding to go back for the end when people would be exiting the building.  The Bruins won that night and eliminated the Canadiens, and I was seconds away from capturing an irate Habs fan throwing a punch at the Bruins fan, but I hadn't brought my flash with me and ended up missing the shot.  Just for fun, I've added it to this post.  The first photograph was taken at f/4, 1/60sec, ISO400 at 24mm.  The second photograph, in its blurred glory, was taken at f/2.8, 1/8sec, ISO 1600 at 43mm.  It certainly was an eventful evening.