Togging in Tampa Bay

During our family holiday to Florida, I had previously managed to obtain accreditation for an NHL match between Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers. It was a shock when we arrived to find I would be shooting rink side with the media team, including Scott Audette.

To start with it was a trip to their 'den', equipped with TV feeds from the games, cameras and lenses and a couple of ibooks/imacs to upload their shots straight to the NHL websites. Next off for some food, which I wasn’t looking forward to as my money was upstairs with my son and the rest of the party who had been given VIP Guest passes, but I didn’t need to have worried, I walked into a fully staffed restaurant where their were four/five entrees, starters and deserts. People in here were top management, NHL referees and Time keepers.

 Once it was time to go and shoot the match I was given my own shooting hole, Home end and off I went. The lightning in the rink was amazing and I could shoot at iso400 1/500 @ f5 instead of my usual settings at Telford of iso1600 1/320 @ f2.8-f3.2 if lucky. So was a very very happy snapper. Meeting the players and getting a few autographs at the end of the match was a fantastic finish to a day I will never forget.

A fair few of my shots have been used on the http://insidehockey.com/ website, and i will need, when i have time, to go through the Panthers players and submit them as well