Shots on Goal: Goalie Photography

A New Season Begins

With Summer fading fast and Fall on the horizon it’s time to start thinking about the upcoming hockey season. This means for me it’s time to find my wool hat and socks and a thin pair of gloves so I can operate my camera and still feel my hands at the end of the night.

I’m planning to shoot a number of college games this season to include Army, Air Force, Holy Cross and Bentley to name a few. I’d also like to expand my coverage to some womens college hockey, the AHL and the occasional NHL game. With two weeks of vacation planned this winter I should be able to accomplish a quite a few of these goals.

This is the time of the year when the NHL teams open up their training camps, so I took some time this week and attended  the first Boston Bruins’ practice. The Bruins opened up the TD Bank Garden to the public free of charge. I must say it was quite a pleasure to shoot in a warm, well-lit rink with photographers’ holes in the glass. It just doesn’t get any better than that for me.

Tim Thomas, 2009 Vezina trophy winner, was in good form and looked to be having a lot fun during the first practice session.

Skate save by Tim Thomas

Another skate save by Thomas

Tuuka Rask, possible backup to Tim Thomas lets one through.

Photo Tip: Camera Policy

Before you pack up your camera gear and head out to the game to take some pictures, take a quick look at the rink website and see if there is a camera policy in effect. Most arenas have some sort of policy that dictates the size of the camera allowed. Some only allow a point & shoot, others place a restriction on the lens size and some just say no professional looking cameras allowed at all.

The pictures above were not taken with my favorite lens, the Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8, because it’s too big. Instead, I had to shoot with my smaller Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 lens because it met the 3-inch lens requirement of the Garden. A media credential would have been required for me to use 70-200mm.