The Russians are coming! Well, actually they've already gone and I have the pictures to prove it.

It's November and in Junior Hockey circles, that means the SUBWAY Super Series - the annual pre-World Junior series between teams from the three leagues in the CHL and a touring team of Russians.

This series is used by Hockey Canada scouts and coaches to get a final read on which players they would like to invite to the final selection camp before the World Juniors next month in Saskatoon.

I'm not planning on shooting the World Juniors this year so this is as close as I am likely to get to international competition this season.


The SSS offers some unique challenges for me. I need to get the regular assortment of action shots from the game and profile shots of each player but I also have to keep an eye on what is happening with sponsor elements during the games and make sure I can get some interesting shots that will help tell the story of the vent to the people that help finance it.

I recently picked up the gear that I needed to run a remote camera so I was anxious to use that as well.


Game 3 of the SSS was in Barrie on Thursday Nov. 19. There isn't a catwalk at the Barrie Molson Centre so an overhead remote was a no-go. Terry Wilson, my other shooter for OHL Images, is the regular Colts photographer so I knew that I had lots of back-up for that game.

I shot the first period on the seating level and the second between the benches and then wondered around during the third period looking for other interesting angles.


Four days and three regular league games later I was in Windsor for Game 4 of the series. The new WFCU Centre is a marvelous place to shoot in and has a catwalk so I was able to put in an overhead remote. I ended up with a few good frames from that camera.



Most of my best images from that game came from shooting on the end of the Team OHL bench.


This is the first of the CHL/OHL special events for this year. We're back in Windsor in January for the Home Hardware Top Prospects Game and then a little closer to home for the OHL All-Star Classic in Kingston in February.

For this event, I used a Nikon D700 and D300s with a 200mm 2.0 and 24-70 2.8. For the overhead in Windsor, I used a D300 with a 70-200 2.8.

For more images from the SUBWAY Super Series, please visit www.ohlimages.ca

Hockey Night in Canada

With apologies to CBC, Hockey Night is back in Canada.

For me, that means lots of Ontario Hockey League games over the next several months. That sounds like fun to me.

I have a couple of new hockey projects on the go this season, including expanding the OHL Images program that I started last season. OHL Images is a photo program that provides media sources with quality action images of players, teams and special events throughout the season.

I am primarily working with Terry Wilson, who mostly shoots in Barrie to develop an online resource of images of each team in the OHL over the next several weeks.

The other project I'm working on this fall is the launch of a new local hockey site and publication called Quinte Hockey Magazine. I'm working with some great writers and photographers to bring readers and viewers the best coverage of the local hockey scene.

Stay tuned for more updates along the way.

The images in this post are shots that I took for the OHL Images program this season.

Cool Bikes By The Bay

My summer theme has definitely been trying to make some cool images that have nothing to do with hockey. The thinking is that it will help me become a better all-around photographer and theoretically, that will help make me a better hockey photographer.

With that in mind, I called up a couple of my buddies that have cool motorcycles and asked them if they wanted to do some photos. They were a little skeptical at first but after a bit of convincing (begging?) I was able to talk them into it. I promised them that my goal was to make some shots that they would think looked very cool.

We started with a few on the open road to get the wind-in-the-hair look (well, for Aaron anyway, not so much for Jim). We had to wait out some rain so the sun was going down pretty quickly. Pretty much everything I got from the front was blown out by their headlights.

After giving up on the road shots and agreeing to try to do them another day when we had a bit more light, we went looking for a good place for some portraits. The sun was going down and we were getting some really cool colours in the sky so we decided to do something down by the Bay with the sunset in the background.

I was able to talk Aaron (who was hobbling from a weird accident at work earlier in the day) to get his bike down very close to the water. He wasn't thrilled about the idea until I started showing him the images that we were getting on the back of the camera.

All-in-all, I was really happy with how these ones turned out. I'm hoping to get out soon with some more daylight to do some panning and other techniques that I have learned at the race track.

All of these shots were with my Nikon D700 with a 24-70mm 2.8 lens. For the still shots, I used one SB-800 strobe with some light shapers that were professionally managed by my wife and partner Shelley. Not much retouching on them (obviously a sepia tone and some burning on the second one). What you see is pretty much what came out of the camera. I did a print of the first image and added some more burning and tried to eliminate some of the reflections in the chrome.