An Unfortunate Performance

You often hear athletes saying something along the lines that they had an off night when things don't end up going their way.  Well, I can tell you that photographers can have an off night as well.  I've been photographing hockey games for a little while now, but never have I had a more frustrating experience than I did Friday night during Game One of the Regional Championship Final between Les Rapides de Champlain and Les Félines du St-Laurent.  My favourite goaltender, Florence, was in the nets and there was excitement in the air as the winner of this Best Of Three Series would advance to the Dodge Cup which will be played in Quebec City area in mid-April.  Things got off to a good start for Les Félines as they jumped out to an early 2-0 lead, but I was already having my problems.  I couldn't seem to properly follow the play, my shots were out of focus and the ones that were in focus seemed to get ruined by having either a referee or another player blocking the view of the action, or the puck at important moments. Sadly, Les Félines ended up having as rough a night as I did, losing the game 3-2 in Overtime and giving Les Rapides a 1-0 lead in the series.  Though there are lots of photographs in this series, I still feel like I came home a little empty handed as there is only one 'save' photograph in here.  I did manage to grab a few action shots, and some of the other players as well, but I'm missing the big saves that really grab my attention.  The first photograph here, of Les Félines in their prematch huddle was taken at f/2.8, 1/800sec, ISO 3200 at 102mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/640sec, ISO 1600 at 140mm and the third photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/800sec ISO 1600 at 200mm.  Here are several more photographs that I took during the action that took place at the Aréna Jean-Rougeau in St. Basil-le-Grand.

f/2.8, 1/800sec, ISO 1600 at 155mm

f/2.8, 1/800sec, ISO 1600 at 155mm

f/2.8, 1/640sec, ISO 1600 at 135mm

f/2.8, 1/800sec, ISO 1600 at 142mm

f/2.8, 1/640sec, ISO 1600 at 182mm

f/2.8, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at 170mm

f/2.8, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at 142mm

f/2.8, 1/800sec, ISO 1600 at 200mm

f/2.8, 1/1600sec, ISO 3200 at 200mm

f/2.8, 1/1600sec, ISO 3200 at 200mm

f/2.8, 1/1600sec, ISO 3200 at 150mm

f/2.8, 1/1600sec, ISO 3200 at 142mm

f/2.8, 1/2000sec, ISO 3200 at 110mm

f/2.8, 1/2000sec, ISO 3200 at 200mm

f/2.8, 1/2000sec, ISO 3200 at 95mm

Needless to say, spirits were low after the match.  The girls were obviously saddened to have lost the game and I felt that my performance was less than stellar as well.  All isn't lost.  If the Félines can win a game on Saturday night, it will force a third game in the series to be played on Sunday, and maybe we'll all get the chance to redeem ourselves.

Tournament Action

Though our local National Hockey League team is having a rough season and won't be seeing any playoff action this season, one of my other favourite teams is currently playing in a tournament in the hopes of playing in Quebec for the Dodge Cup.  I am of course talking about Les Félines du St-Laurent and my favourite young goaltender, Florence Bouchard-Maynard.  I made the short drive out to Saint-Basile-Le-Grand after hearing from her father, my good friend Emmanuel, to watch the team in their tournament opening match against Les Rapdies de Champlain.  Both teams were heated rivals over the course of the season and this match was no different as it ended up in a scoreless tie.  Just because there were no goals that doesn't mean that there wasn't any action.  Both teams had scoring chances and the final few minutes saw both teams get power-play opportunities, but neither were able to capitalize on the opportunities. Since there were fewer scoring chances, I tried to practice photographing some of the action that was taking place at other places in the rink.  My priority while at these games is usually to focus on the play of Florence since she's the daughter of a friend.  As such, I usually place myself in a corner of the arena where I get a clear view of the net.  I generally like to place myself either just behind the glass near the goal line of the net she is defending, or higher up in the stands near the blue line of the zone she is in.  However, this means that there are another 2/3rds of the rink that are out of my reach.  I decided to give my zoom lens a little bit of the workout and tried to follow the action in the other zones a little more than usual.  Rather than going through my photographs and doing a little on-the-spot triage of what I had, I tried to snap a little bit more.  As a result, I ended up coming up with more photographs that usual, but I also got some decent action shots from the rest of the game as well.  The first photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/1000sec, ISO 1600 at 115mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at 88mm.  The third photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/800sec, ISO 1600 at 125mm and the fourth photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/1000sec, ISO 1600 at 120mm.  Luckily, I had a day off from the Day Job, so I was able to go through all of my shots and present a little update here today.  And what an update it is.  There are lots of photographs, so get yourself some popcorn and a cola because it is time for the action to start.

f/2.8, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at 200mm

f/2.8, 1/1000sec, ISO 1600 at 115mm

f/2.8, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at 142mm

f/2.8, 1/1250sec, ISO 1600 at 110mm

f/2.8, 1/800sec, ISO 1600 at 90mm

f/2.8, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at 170mm

f/2.8, 1/800sec, ISO 1600 at 100mm

f/2.8, 1/800sec, ISO 1600 at 100mm

f/2.8, 1/320sec, ISO 1600 at 125mm

f/2.8, 1/640sec, ISO 1600 at 80mm

f/2.8, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at 142mm

f/2.8, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at125mm

f/2.8, 1/320sec, ISO 1600 at 123mm

f/2.8, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at 102mm

f/2.8, 1/2000sec, ISO 3200 at 100mm

f/2.8, 1/1250sec, ISO 3200 at 200mm

f/2.8, 1/1250sec, ISO 3200 at 200mm

f/2.8, 1/200sec, ISO 3200 at 100mm

f/2.8, 1/500sec, ISO 3200 at 145mm

The lighting in the arena wasn't that great.  They appeared to be some new led light banks in the place where neon lights would have been.  The aluminum roof didn't add much to the lighting either, so I had to shoot at a very high ISO in order to get the shutter speeds necessary to freeze the action.  I was still able to get some frozen pucks in my shots, but they're a bit more grainy that I would have liked.  It was still a fun night at the rink, and hopefully there will be a few more as Les Félines continue on their road to the Dodge Cup.

Chocolate Nut Cookies

I guess you could say that I have saved the best for last.  Of all the different varieties of cookies that My Lovely Assistant made recently, these were my favourite.  This cookie was made out of a mixture of date paste, apple sauce, assorted nuts and chocolate, with a little slice of almond placed on the top.  To create the photograph, I grabbed a small plate from the cupboard, placed it on our cutting board and added a few of the tasty treats, making sure that I had one facing towards me at an angle to get a nice look at the texture and the almond on top.  The photograph was taken at f/4, 1/100sec, ISO 100 at 42mm with some flash bounced off of the ceiling.  I've always been a little intimidated with photographing food items, but I really liked the way these recent cookie photographs turned out.  It was great fun, and the results tasted great.

Dad's Birthday Cake

For many of you reading out there, March 20th is the first day of Spring.  A day that I know many of you out there have been waiting for to arrive. March 20th has a different meaning for me though, as it's my Dad's birthday.  We had a little birthday party for him this weekend and My Lovely Assistant made one of her delicious cakes for the occasion.  Of course, I took advantage of her cooking to continue playing in the kitchen with my camera.  This was a chocolate cake with pear halves baked into the crust.  She added some sparkles and chocolate shavings onto the chocolate mousse topping to make a surefire hit for any chocolate lovers out there, but still something light and fruity that doesn't feel overly heavy to eat.  In order to get my photographs, I had to be a little more creative with certain things as the cake was wider than the white background that I usually use.  It came in handy for the first photograph, which was taken at f/5.6, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 40mm.  I tried to follow the line of the plate with this shot, while also showing the toppings.  For the second photograph, taken at f/5.6, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 43mm, I listened to a suggestion from My Lovely Assistant, who lived up to her title, who suggested that I use the kitchen wall as a background. This allowed me to get the entire cake into a shot.  I used a simple cloth for dish drying to cover the table and add a little colour and texture to the bottom of the frame.  The third photograph, taken at f/16, 1/25sec, ISO 800 at 60mm was a fun close-up of the sparkler and chocolate toppings.  My Lovely Assistant did a great job with the chocolate shavings, melting some dark chocolate into a fine layer before chipping at it with a knife.  I wanted to capture her handy work and my little Macro lens did the job almost as well as she did.  As with most of her creations, this one didn't last very long after being served.  As for my Dad, I think that he had a good evening surrounded by family.  Happy Birthday Dad, I hope that there are many more of My Lovely Assistant's desserts waiting for you in the future.

Dessert Is Served

We take a little break from cookies for this update, to take a look at another of My Lovely Assistant's creations.  When I asked her how to describe this dessert, she said that it was a kind of yogurt/pudding treat.  It's made with almond milk and a selection of fruits and nuts.  In this case, My Lovely Assistant used a diced pear, flaked almonds, chia seeds and some honey.  It then passes the night in the fridge and is ready to be eaten, or in this case photographed, the next day.  For this series, I had initially wanted to photograph the dessert on a shiny platter to get a reflection of the service dishes.  I couldn't find anything shiny enough in the house so I improvised and went in the other direction of finding a colourful patterned dish towel on the table while putting the desserts on a fancy plate and adding some spoons to complete the image.  I also shot the dessert from different angles as the straight-on shot failed to properly show the texture of the dessert toppings in the first photograph.  Everybody likes a good two-for-one deal, so you get two photographs for the price of one with this update.  Both photographs were taken at f/3.5, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  The dessert dishes were actually quite small, so a Macro lens helped make everything look a little larger and a little bit of bounced flash brought out some added colour and texture in the finished product.  As an alternative, the almond milk could be replaced with chocolate milk.  A nice, cool little light dessert.

Several Servings

It's time to feature another of My Lovely Assistant's recent cookie creations here on the old blog.  This tasty creation was initially supposed to be one huge cookie, but she decided to break it up into several individual sized portions instead.  Probably a good idea since in its originally planned size, it would have never fit into this jar.  The jar is kind of a key element for me since I always struggle with finding a way to present the things she cooks.  As soon as I saw the jar, I was reminded of a photograph that I took of some candies coming out of a jar that was placed on its side.  It worked for the candy, so I was pretty sure that it would work for the cookies as well.  The idea for the first photograph, taken at f/4, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 32mm, was stolen from something that I saw on the internet, but I added my own little touch by placing one of the cookies outside of the jar, leaning against it.  The second photograph, seen below and taken at f/5.6, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 24mm, was the repeat of my candy photograph from a few years back.  Both photographs were taken by bouncing some flash off of the ceiling to get better lighting.  As for the cookie itself, it's a buckwheat and molasses mix, with sunflower seeds, coconut shavings, raisins, walnut pieces and chocolate chips all mixed together.  Tasty and good for me.

Tasty Boost Of Energy

My Lovely Assistant, as it has well been noted on these pages, enjoys creating in the kitchen.  She recently came home with a new cookbook full of cookie ideas.  When My Lovely Assistant gets to work in the kitchen, it often inspires me to grab my gear and try to get a little creative as well.  Food Photography has always been a subject that mystifies me, though I think that over the past few years I have gotten better at it.  Thankfully, My Lovely Assistant is a whiz in the kitchen, which means that there is often a selection of tasty treats around that I can practice shooting.  It also means lots of snacks as well.  These cookies, called Énergie de fer, were a mix of peanut butter and molasses, with some apple sauce, date puree and some nuts and seeds tossed into the mix.  To make the photograph, I piled a bunch of them together, got out my white background, put the cookies on a little pan holder which was made by my mother and shot everything using a new flash that was given to me by my brother.  As you can see, I kept the whole production in the family.  The photograph was shot at f/8, 1/160sec, ISO 100 at 30mm.  There were a few more of these that were created, so expect to see them up here as well as I continue to collect photographs for her first cookbook.