Your son, daughter or grandchild plays hockey. You gotcha a camera and are fixin’ to take some great hockey pictures of him tearing up the ice. Boy are you going to be disappointed. If you don’t end up with a bunch of blinding flash reflections off the glass, then you’ll probably score some really nice shots of the safety netting. And even in a best case scenario, you’ll get a memory card full of very dark blurry images of what looks like might be a hockey player, but could just as easily be Sasquatch.

Been there, my friends. And it ain’t pretty. But if you’re really determined to take good hockey action photos, listen up. I’m gonna tell you exactly what you need to do to make it happen. Read the rest of this entry »

I do a lot of digital imaging in Photoshop in my professional life as a designer. We’re always passing around cool images that other artists have created – impossible situations created with multiple photographs. If you enjoy looking at this type of surreal photographic images crafted by talented Photoshop wizards, check out Worth 1000 – as in ‘a picture is worth 1000 words’. Below are the links to a series of hockey-themed images submitted as part of a contest. You can see them all by clicking the links below or using the drop-down menu at the website.

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I’ll apologize in advance for this partisan post, but it’s really good to be a Pittsburgh fan these days. I was thinking about this the other day. My son, despite having been born in Florida, is a rabid Steeler and Penguin fan. I guess that’s my fault. I grew up about 30 miles from the Steel City and along with my father before me, have always bled black and gold. But I don’t think my son realizes how lucky he is. Certainly the fans in cities that have been waiting decades to even come close to a championship know just what I’m talking about. It just doesn’t happen all the time. And here is my 17-year-old son, with a couple Super Bowls and now 2 Stanley Cup finals under his belt. I just hope there’s not a draught of any kind on his horizon. I’m afraid he just might not be able to handle it.

So, for all you Penguin fans out there, I found this really cool poster of this year’s Penguin studs. It features Sergei Gonchar, Evgeni Malkin, Marc-Andre Fleury, Jordan Staal and Sidney Crosby. The 16×20 poster is available at AllPosters.com for $34.99. I’ve seen it for a lot more at other places. If you’ve seen it for less, please post a link in the comments.

And here’s a shameless plug for two of my Pittsburgh t-shirts: got ‘burgh? and The Joy of Six