I was approached by Fischer Hockey to do a shoot for their new catalog and image campaign last year. I always wanted to do a hockey shoot because the element of ice combined with the action is just super cool to capture I believe.
I came up with a studio like concept and planned reduce the images to a maximum by over powering all the lights on site with my flashes. The result should be a dark image with a stadium feel and the player and the Fischer branding really popping out.
We had to set up a full studio on the ice and moreover needed to make sure not to use too many cables so that the players could move freely and deliver their best performance.
To save the surface of the ice and keep it nice and shiny we started shooting static things like standing, portraits and details. Then we moved on to the action like skating, bully, body checks and shooting. That was the time when I realized how fast ice hockey really is and how tricky it can be to catch the right moment and freeze it perfectly.
Therefore for some of the action I switched to HS mode using my Move units combined with Siros L. I still needed a few tries but eventually managed to get all that we needed.
After a while the shooting spot got so many tracks that we decided to move the setup a few meters to the side for some fresh ice. And that is the great thing about shooting with batteries – you are simply free to move and change on the go and at the end that makes complex shoots like this so much easier.
