San Diego Gulls Hockey Opener 2016

The San Diego Gulls kicked off their 2016-2017 season with a win over the 5-3 win over the Tucson Roadrunners. It was a fun night of hockey and good to be back photographing the action. For this game I used three different lenses, the usual combination of the 24-70mm f/2.8 and the 70-200mm f/2.8, and the 200-500mm f/5.6. I had rented the 200-500mm from my local camera store – Nelsons – for the RiseUp as One concert shoot but decided to take it out for a test spin at the Gulls game. I really didn’t think the lens would be fast enough to shoot hockey but since the concert was taking place mostly during the day it would be fine.

I was wrong. The lens is great. I worked great at hockey and absolutely killed it during the concert shoot.. but more on that in later post. For now, I’ll just post some of my favorites from the game.

This was shot from across the ice at 500mm. All the seats in the building were draped with a rally towels which made for a cool shot and a good test for the lens (at least for a stationary subject)

One of the photos that I am always trying to capture are the players coming out onto the ice through the smoke. Shooting from behind the players gives me a pretty unique view. I especially love when the players interact with the fans.

The rest of the a ton photos were taken with the Nikon D750 and Nikon D4 cameras bodies and the 70-200m and the 200-500mm. The 70-200mm shots were taken at f/2.8 while the 200-500mm were taken at f/5.6. I can’t tell the difference, can you?