I’m a Nottingham lad born and bred and as I grew up there were (for me) two major team sports to follow - football and ice hockey. I went the football route but several members of my family went down the ice hockey path and are now Nottingham Panthers season ticket holders. I’ve been to quite a few games and it really does make for a great night out.
I’ve photographed it twice too, both times in Coventry at Coventry Blaze games. I went there because they are more photographer friendly than Nottingham - but you are still shooting through the plexiglass. It’s ok, but there are so many more possibilities, so I contacted Nottingham’s National Ice Centre to see if they could point us in the direction of the local ice hockey club.
Our contact is Matt Bradbury, the Head Coach of the Nottingham Lions, the senior team of the Nottingham Ice Hockey Club. When we make these pitches timing is everything and we were really lucky this time because the NIHC have just commissioned a new website, so they are looking for images to populate it. Matt has pulled together a project team of managers across all the age groups right up to senior Lions level to facilitate the shoots.
The project will have two distinct outputs;
Standard photographs of players & matches for their website & social media
Iconic images, closer to art than reality
I’ve created a Pinterest Board for the iconic category - lots to go at there!
I think this will be a long running project and video will be a big part of it - which is great for Alex because he’s massively into ice hockey, although sadly for him it’s the wrong team since he’s a Sheffield Steelers fan :-(
Matt has his own sports coaching and consultancy business. He works with schools and community groups coaching Urban Hockey (street version of ice hockey), cricket and other sports, so we’ve said we’ll help him with that too.
I’m really excited about this one!
This image came from a Coventry Blaze game - I shot this through the plexiglass