Gates-Chili Ice Hockey Begins

Gates started off the season against the toughest team in Section V; Pittsford. The game was played at Genesee Valley Ice Rink in Rochester, N.Y. This was my first time shooting at this rink, so I tryed a couple lens and angles. Lighting was difficult as usual in most smaller rinks.

Overall Gates played well and held with Pittsford for 2 periods. Very defensive beginning with neither team scoring and very few shots on goal.

Shot on net from a tough angle

Hard check in the Pittsford zone

Gates captain with a hip check

Pittsford's breakaway goal with 8 minutes left in the third

This was the only goal in the game and was scored on a shorthanded breakaway by one of Section V's top players from last year. Gates looked good and I think they will do some damage in Section V this year, just was a tough team to start the year with. Good luck Gates!

See the photos here: GC Hockey

Class D Football State Semifinal

I had the opportunity to shoot for a newspaper for the first time last night. One of my favorite forums to visit (NYFalls.com) has a writer (P.J.)from Oneonta who frequently posts on it. P.J. needed to cover his local football team (Walton) who was in the State Semifinal in Rochester at Paetec Park. His paper was short a camera (due to a mishap) so he contacted me through this website to shoot for his paper. I agreed because this was a great opportunity to shoot for a paper.

Anyways, I met P.J. last night at Paetec Park. We received our press passes and began to cover the game through the cold. Those that live in Rochester knows it was very cold and a blizzard at one point last night. Game time temperature was 4 degrees and made it difficult to photograph at certain points. The game was between Walton and Maple Grove with the winner going to the Carrier Dome for the finals. So it was a pretty big game for both teams. Even though it was freezing out, the players did great. It was disappointing that the team I was covering got beat, but I still got some decent shots. The snow made it look like a real football game and added a little background. The photo is up on the newspaper's website and P.J. is gonna send me a few papers with the pics. End score; Walton Warriors-14 Maple Grove Red Dragons-49.

Here is the photo they used in The Daily Star. Click on the link to go to P.J.'s article:

http://www.thedailystar.com/localsports/local_story_327040041.html?keyword=topstory

Another photo was used for an article about the coach taking the blame for the loss. Click on the link for the article:

http://www.thedailystar.com/localsports/local_story_327040046.html?keyword=secondarystory

Heres a shot of Maple Grove's running back hitting the hole.

The mascot looking to get a little help from the referees.

Click for the rest of the photos: State Semifinal

High School Basketball

Fall sports are all done, except for a few state football games finishing up. So with the end of one season brings upon another.....Winter. This new season will bring alot of sports that I have yet to photograph. The first for Gates-Chili was basketball. I wanted to get a few photos in before the season, so I went to their first scrimmage. They played Pittsford Sutherland, who had some pretty tall kids.

I took this shot of the new gym while I was waiting for the scrimmage to start. I used a 18-55mm 3.5/5.6 lens.


Anyways, I wanted to get some quality time reacting to the movement of the ball from player to player and to test out my 85mm 1.8 lens. I have not had many opportunities to use it and this was the best chance to break it in. I actually started the first few sections of the scrimmage with my 70-200mm 2.8 like in this photo. It is the better lens to shoot across the court and catch some solid defense.

I did like the way the 85mm photos came out. The one problem that did occur frequently was missing the focal point and getting some blurry images. I think the speed of the ball movement and the 1.8 aperture caused alot of pics to be out of focus. Hopefully a little more time in the gym will correct this issue.

Here is one of Gates-Chili's football stars taking it hard to the rim. There are a few football players on the basketball team and I think they were still in the football mode (it just ended last weekend). A few more scrimmages and practices will get them back into their basketball state of mind.

I liked the intensity of this photo as one of the Gates players takes it to the rim with a few hands in his face.

The rest of the photos can be seen here: Scrimmage

First Hockey Shoot of the Year

Had a request from a hockey coach that I had done previous work for during the baseball season (Chili Youth Baseball). He was now coaching a Squirt Hockey team from Scottsville (Ice Hawks). I definitely wanted to get out to a few rinks before Gates-Chili hockey season began, this was a great opportunity.

The game took place in Scottsville Ice Rink, where I had played many years ago just a few times. I shot with my Canon 70-200mm 2.8 IS USM lens. I did start with a 1.4x teleconverter but needed to add some shutter speed so I took it off and brought the lens back to a 2.8. I shot around 1/500 ss, 1600 iso, and 2.8 aperture. Here are few shots from the game.

Desperately waiting for the referee to drop the puck.

Skating the puck out of the zone.

Great toe save by the goalie going side to side.

Another great goalie save, this time with the stick.

The rest of the pictures from the game are here Scottsville Ice Hawks

Mt. Hope Cemetery

Mt. Hope Cemetery is located in Rochester, NY and is one of the biggest cemeteries in the area. Many famous people are buried here, they include Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. You can see some Obama campaign material on Frederick Douglass's grave after his big presidential win.

I took a different approach from the usual. I brought a flash with me and a couple of pocketwizards. I don't get to use this stuff enough because I usually shoot sports and do not like the effect of flash with sports. This was my chance to experience some remote flash techniques. Here is a shot with the flash to my left about 15 feet away pointed towards the three tombstones. The photo has some post-processing (pp) in photoshop. I darkened up the photo and also desaturated the colors dramatically. I felt this gave it more of a cemetery gloomy look.

The rest of the photos I also desaturated, but I darkened quite a bit with the brightness and multiply tools. I also used some dodge and burn to enhance some of the tombstones.

The tombstone below is the first burial in Mt. Hope Cemetery.

I liked the dark clouds mixed with a slight blue sky behind this statue.

Another great sky mixed with a broken cross tombstone. Many of the tombstones are broken in Mt. Hope.

Some more from Mt. Hope are here Tombstones

Section V Class AA Championship Game

First off, let me start by saying I love sports photography and most of this blog is going to involve that part of my camera work. I do also dabble in other things like birds and nature, so that will show up from time to time. Also don't mind the watermarks, they are for copyright protection and keep the photos from being taken.

Anyways my first blog is a great game I shot to end my Fall Sports season with a great football team from Gates-Chili High School. I shot almost all there games this year except for one. This game pretty much summed up their season.

The game was played at Paetec Park in Rochester, NY between the Gates-Chili Spartans and the Webster Schroeder Warriors.

Webster started the scoring first. After a few runs for some short yardage, Pete Noto ran straight up the gut for 61 yards and a score. Webster looked good right off the bat and I think it struck fear in the Gates players and fans.

The 7-0 lead was shortlived. It turned into the Gates running show. Rickey stevens did most of the damage with 280 yards on 40 carries including 3 TD's. Elijah Thomas and Nick DiMartino helped out with another 100 yards combined and a score. The score at halftime was Gates 19 - Webster 7.

Defense was a key for Gates. In previous games, pass defense proved to hurt Gates in 2 of there losses during the regular season. Coaches seemed to turn this around for sectionals holding down a powerful Hilton passing attack and intercepting the ball three times in the finals here against the Warriors. That included this Malcolm Frazier interception that put Webster back on there heels.

There was a power outage in the 3rd quarter that lasted about 20 minutes. It seemed to surge Webster and powered their offense to get back on the board.

After Webster scored twice to bring the game to a GC 6 point lead, Gates really dug in. The score was Gates 27 - Webster 21. The Spartans had to punt and the Spartans coverage was outstanding putting the Warriors at their own 10 yard line with 1:20 to go in the game.

Gates defense stopped Webster right there as the Warriors freshman quarterback threw 4 straight incompletions. A simple kneeldown was all Gates needed to seal the victory.

Rickey Stevens was named MVP of the game.

The rest of the pictures from the game are here Section V Championship