Chicago Blackhawks

[Mirandaguat12]

What do you guys think I can improve on this shot? I was pretty happy with it, but i'm an amateur and was wondering what you all thought. I did some white balance adjusting in Lightroom.


ISO 1600, F/8.0, 1/160sec

My first ever pic i'm posting for critique. Kind of exciting!

[Jim Bryant]

This is during practice? You need to take pictures when the actual games starts. that would be an improvement for starters. I don't what type of lenses you use, but use the lowest f-stop. That will give you a shallow depth of field and a higher shutter speed ti stop the peak action.

[sgeary]

looks good to me I would also prob. crop it to just the guy in the front for a different...I love when you can get more than one print out of a photo...

[HermanVonPetri]

I have to disagree somewhat with Jim Bryant and stick up for those of us who like to shoot hockey during the warm up. It's often the only time you can catch many of the players in uniform without their helmets on (although, not for this picture.) Also, unless you are shooting pro with a media pass you aren't getting any kind of access near the ice without paying mucho dinero $$$ for glass seats. Many of my favorite sports shots are actually those casual moments shared between teammates (or competitors) when the TV cameras aren't on.

But, Jim does have a good point about opening up the aperture. Hockey is fast paced and motion blur will haunt you if you can't get enough light in to shorten the shutter speed. Keep in mind that most zoom lenses can't maintain their widest aperture all along the zoom range, so you might have to spend more time wide-angle on players nearer to you. Budgets suck, but lenses than can maintain a F/2.8 or faster will serve you well - if you can nail the focus.

As for the individual photo, the legs of the player behind #25s hip and the three Islanders behind his head are a little distracting. Not much you can do about that, but there is something you can try next time. Again, if you use a wider aperture the background will tend to blur out more. Also, I'm not sure if you shoot in RAW or JPEG mode, but I've begun to go against the grain a bit recently. Although RAW is usually preferred, I've started using JPEG almost exclusively for sports photos. The burst mode on your camera will almost certainly operate much quicker in JPEG and give you many more choices of the scene. But be sure to take a photo of a clear patch of ice first and set it as your custom white balance, because you won't have as much freedom to color correct later if you aren't shooting RAW.

And I know this is really late, but I was rooting for ya'll over Vancouver. Better luck next year.