Hockey Project

And now, finally, I can share the project that took up so much of my time for the last two months.  Like, I was eating, breathing, and sleeping this project.  I desperately wanted to have it done before Christmas, and that was a good part of the reason why we left for North Carolina so late (and why I was so behind on everything up to that point!).

So, here’s how it all started:  back in September, at a hockey tournament for JJ’s team, one of the hockey dads pointed to the big poster-sized collage at the professional photographer’s stand and jokingly said to me, “So, Steph, can you do that?” It was really impressive, and although I said no at the time, the truth is…I was challenged. 😛 And heaven forbid I back down from a challenge… 😉

You may remember me talking about the lens I rented when Jamie’s football team played at Ford Field.  It was a really high-powered lens that took fantastic pictures, and I used it during the hockey tournament that weekend, as well.  The next month, when my normal lens was damaged, the generous parents on Jamie’s team actually pitched in for me to rent the lens again during our Grand Rapids “away” weekend. 🙂  As I started looking at the pictures, I realized that they might just be good enough to use for a real, poster-sized image collage.  Then, when I took the team pictures, I realized I had a great opportunity to use my prime lens (1.8 aperture–which makes for very high quality photos!) to do close-up shots.  

By then, I knew I was going to do these posters, but I also knew I wasn’t talented enough to create a background and come up with impressive lettering on my own.  I searched the Internet until I found something that I felt would work, an “extraction image” template from Photo Solutions Market.  

Unfortunately, at that point, I had only used the rented lens for one of JJ’s games.  Not enough to get the number of action images I needed! And of course, it was the dad on JJ’s team that started all this, so if I was really going to do it, I had to do it for both teams! 😮 So, I rented the lens one more time and was able to use it for two of JJ’s games (and two more of Jamie’s). 

After I had all the pictures, it took me a full month to sort through them.  I had to first tag each picture with the players’ names, that way I could then just click on a name in the keyword cloud and easily look for the best poses and highest-quality images of each individual player.  

Once I had 7-15 good pictures for each kid, I was ready to start building the posters.  First, I had to edit each individual close-up shot.  These proved to be very challenging, because it wasn’t until I got home and looked at the pictures on my computer that I discovered a very big issue: because I’m very much not a professional, I had no idea that my camera was focusing on the cage and not the players’ eyes.  Here’s a couple of examples:

It’s not as easy to tell in Jamie’s pictures, but in some of the other pictures, it was really bad.  I may not know much about portrait photography, but I do know that the key to a good portrait is focusing on the eyes.  Damn hockey helmets and their cages! 😛  I ended up having to ask both coaches for time during practice to redo about a dozen kids’ pictures between the two teams.  Oops… 😉  They were both very generous about it, though, maybe because I did all the team pictures for free, ha ha!

Once I got all the close-ups right, I loaded them into Lightroom and processed them.  I increased the contrast, brightened the whites of the eyes, and fixed any skin imperfections (especially in the case of the teenagers on Jamie’s team 😉 ).  Jamie’s ended up looking like this:

Way better than the first ones, right?  But…OMG, the yellow!!  In case you aren’t familiar with hockey arenas, there is a big yellow band around the entire bottom of the boards at each and every rink (for what purpose, I’m not sure), and it makes for a seriously ugly contrast to the wonderful red of both my sons’ team colors.  To fix that, I took them into Photoshop and  put a black and white mask layer over the background.

Oh, much better!  Also, isn’t my son ridiculously handsome? 😉 With beautiful blue eyes that he gets from his mother. 🙂

After that, I  dropped it into the template I’d purchased (for only $25!).  Then I did a little final touching up to cut around the edges and fade them. Probably made the black and white mask unnecessary, but I felt it was better to be safe than sorry. (Because yellow is awful!!)

Next, it was time for the action photos! I had to go through and pick the best three  for each player, based on how they would fit in the overall collage.  I went through them all, one player at a time, and picked out three final pictures.  After rough cutting them and dropping them into the template, I had to then cut out each picture, tiny bit by tiny bit, until there was  no background, just the player.  I won’t lie, this is painstaking work, and one little stray mouse click can really wreak havoc.   Now imagine me doing this in the backseat of an F-150 on bumpy roads from Michigan to North Carolina. 😮  Yeah, that’s what I did…for 10 hours!!!

JJ’s team’s posters was finished before we left, but in order to meet my self-imposed “Christmas Eve deadline” for Jamie’s team, I had to do them on our way to visit my family in North Carolina for Christmas.  It was not fun.   I was up for about 27 hours  from December 23 to the 24th, thanks to this little project and my husband’s “drive all night” mentality. 😛 I finally finished them at about 5 PM on Christmas Eve, and I sent them out to  Jamie’s  team then.  Talk about last-minute!

Unfortunately,  I didn’t get the ones for Jamie’s team done in time for them to be printed and presented to the kids for Christmas, but I did get the ones for JJ’s team done and even printed a few of the posters myself  at the parents’ request.   I was able to print them at 20″ x 30″ size,  which is a good-sized poster.   I was so pleased with how they turned out, and not only were the parents ecstatic, the kids were, too!  Many of the parents from both teams posted the final images on Facebook, and thanked me profusely, and several of them sent me pictures of their kids holding up their very own personalized hockey action posters.  It made me all warm and fuzzy to see them. 😀

By the time I was done, I had done 35 posters in all! I won’t lie, it was a lot like running a marathon–when I was in the middle of it, I was questioning my sanity, but when they were all done, I felt so accomplished.   You can probably tell how proud I am of them from the enthusiasm of this post. 😉

Below are some of the ones I think turned out the best (plus my own kids, of course). You’ll see I’ve watermarked the actual images for display on my site, but of course, when I sent them to the parents, there was no copyright included at all.  And yet–I still got grief from the people at Meijer about needing “a photographer’s release” to print them, ha ha! 😛  That was interesting…!

And finally, here they are!

There were so many to pick from, it was hard to choose just a few! We have some incredibly  handsome kids on my boys’ teams!

I’m very proud of these, and what I’m most proud of is that all the pictures used were taken by me.  When I first started taking hockey action photos almost 5 years ago, I really never thought I would get to a point where I could do something like this.  I like to think I’ve really “upped my game” in the hockey photography realm.  😉  And in case you’re wondering, no, I did not ask for any money for any of these, nor would I even consider it.   The reason is simple: the minute I take money for something like this, it becomes work, and I don’t ever want to be work.   I do it because I love to take pictures, and I love all the kids on both of my boys’ teams, and this was an enjoyable way to give back for all the hard work and effort they put into playing every week.

But, as I told a couple of parents who asked me about possibly doing it for one of their other children, the answer is no; the effort I put into this was immense, and because of that, the Hawkins poster shop is now officially closed! 😉

Thanks so much for reading this post that has nothing to do with weight loss or running. 😉