So I spent last weekend in Syracuse. Yes, I voluntarily traveled to cold snowy Central New York in January. But for one weekend every January, Syracuse is the Mecca of North American broomball, hosting the annual Can-Am Broomball Tournament. Syracuse is also home to the annual ass-kicking of Cincinnati broomball teams (as in, we get our asses kicked quite thoroughly by big burly Canadians who think broomball is a professional sport).

Anyway, once you get used to the frigid air and the intricate details of the mercy rule (if a team is up by 4 or more points with less than 10min left in the game, they win. we were rather proud to hold all of our opponents to less than a 10 point spread when the games were called ), it”s actually a rather fun trip. Apparently in Canada, there are only 3 things to do for fun: watch hockey, play broomball, and drink. So needless to say, there are some fun parties back at the hotel. All in all, a good trip this year. Aside from breaking my thumb at least (and yes, I broke it during a game, not a party!). Next year I will remember to get out of the way when my goalie charges the big burly Canadian I”m chasing (we sandwiched him, and he landed on my hand. and actually he was from Minnesota, but that”s close enough to Canada).

Broomball tournaments are pretty much my only opportunity to practice sports photography. Probably because I don”t like watching most sports and only make an exception when I know the people playing (or for hockey. I like hockey). Sports photography definitely has some interesting challenges, and I still don”t think I fully understand it. I”ve watched people with cheap cameras stop some decent action shots without knowing what they”re doing. Meanwhile, I”m sitting here with a Canon 40D and in the (albeit poorly lit) ice rink I had to crank up my ISO to 1600 just to get a shutter speed of 1/200 at the maximum aperture of my lens. Granted, I could buy a more expensive lens to help . . . but this still seems ridiculous.

If you didn”t follow that, ISO 1600 means turning up the “gain” on the image sensor . . . which means magnifying the amount of grain. Shutter speed of 1/200 means I could stop relatively slow motions, but people sprinting or broomballs flying resulted in a lot of blur. And maximum aperture (f5.6 if you”re wondering) means a big hole that lets in lots of light . . . and makes for a very short focal plane. Which means frequently I was focused on, say, a person”s stick (by accident) which resulted in their body being out of focus. I obviously couldn”t use a flash both because it would have been distracting to the players, and the flash is only good to about 16 feet in front of the camera . . . and I was taking photos from the 20 to 100 feet range.

Ice rink lighting is also apparently miserable for color cast (ie it”s yellowish), and it casts terribly harsh shadows. That last one surprised me actually. The lights are pretty far overhead, which normally would soften them a bit (think of the light spreading out over space), plus the ice is white and reflective, which should have thrown some light back up from the bottom. But obviously I was wrong. Anyway, here are a couple of the better photos I got just to prove that I captured some decent ones.

Shot!

Diving for the ball

A nice lift