CC still sucks

"Colorado College forward Scott McCulloch (26) is swarmed by teammates as they celebrate his goal against Denver goalie Marc Cheverie (1) in the first period of a WCHA college hockey game at World Arena in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, Nov. 2, 2008. CC defeated their I-25 rivals 3-2 to remain unbeaten with a 5-0-3 record on the season."

 JUSTIN EDMONDS, THE GAZETTE

I had a pretty good night behind the lens, but unfortunately I can't say the same thing for my alma mater. Both teams played well but it was CC goaltender Richard Bachman who stole the show with a stellar 40 save performance. Bachman stoned DU's Patrick Wiercioch with 55.9 seconds to go from point blank range to preserve the win, and their No. 1 ranking. Gazette beat writer Kate Crandall blogs about the game and my shot of Bachman's save here.

I've shot plenty of DU hockey and even had the opportunity to shoot the frozen four in Denver this past April. Despite the fact that I have a hockey photo in my portfolio it is by far my worse sport. I know the sport, the teams, the terminology and the rules but I am just not as good of a hockey photographer as I would like to be.

However I am good at putting my own touch on things and that style is still evident in my hockey photos. The paper shoots every CC home game so I knew that I wanted to try and come up with something different. We have 6 strobes installed in the arena but I only used 4 at a time tonight to achieve a different look. I pointed the two in the middle towards the end where I would be shooting so that I could concentrate all the light in just one end. As a result the background drops off quickly to near black. It really helped the images pop like my shot of CC celebrating a first period goal above. Seeing DU goalie Marc Cheverie's face and body language in disappointment really makes the photo. Having shot from an angle that you usually don't see also made the image different from all the hockey images that get published in the paper.

To further add my touch to the assignment I made sure to set up a remote. 

I set up my 30D and 85mm on a small overhang above the north goal on available light. I also increased the contact time on the Pocket Wizard Multimax to 2.5 seconds so that I wouldn't need to continuously hold down the button. I could hit it once when there was commotion in the crease and get 13 frames. The good thing is that I made half a dozen or so solid images. The bad part is that I had to scan through 600+ frames during my edit. I'm very picky when it comes to making a clean photo and this remote from above achieves the look that I'm after.

Peak action is great but I'm always looking for other ways to tell the story. 

Being that this was a rivalry game between two top ranked teams I knew that there would be plenty of emotion, both jube and dejection to shoot. Knowing that I wanted to get an image with some depth I positioned myself ice level at the end of the rink as I had done in the first period. At the end of the game I caught Denver's Tyler Bozak bent over as CC skated to congratulate their star goaltender. Since I had the strobes set to only fire in the near offensive zone the background, and CC, faded dark and allowed Bozak to pop in the frame. It really brings just enough attention to Bozak that couldn't have been achieved with an evenly lit rink.

Going into the game I was a little anxious because I wanted to show the staff that I could produce solid images from a big game. In the end I feel like the assignment was a success as AP picked up at least the three images that I posted in this entry. Kate, the CC hockey beat writer, showed me the images on the AP exchange server and I couldn't help but smile.

DU may have lost but CC still sucks. Go Pios!

The countdown is on to my 23rd birthday, and the election, but I have one more day at work before I get to celebrate. The good thing is that I have a portrait of the prep athlete of the week for the third week in a row so at least I know that it will be a good day.

-JCE

www.jcedmonds.com