In an effort to reach my goal of doubling the amount of photos I take in 2006, I went to a local women's hockey game last night to give my "trigger finger" a workout. (For those who don't know, I like to call myself a sports photographer. In my next life, that's what I'm going to do.)

First off, I'd like to take a moment to discuss women's hockey. For the first time in my life, I went to a hockey game where I saw a penalty called - for BODY CHECKING. I played in a men's D league for a few years. It's not non-contact, but there is no real checking allowed. Years of doing that, I never saw a BODY CHECKING penalty called. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of overly physical hockey. It's a much more exciting game when players are allowed to show their skill. But no checking? That's not hockey.

Anyway, back to photography. It was not quite like riding a bike. I was slow to react, I was not anticipating the play properly, and I was downright unlucky. Exhibit A:

Trust me, that was a great play in front of the net.

Exhibit B will take a little explanation. When shooting sports for publication, you're supposed to occasionally take pictures of the scoreboard. This helps give you an idea of what point in the game that photos were taken, what the score is, etc. In this case, the scoreboard also showed the name of the person who scored. It was all set up perfectly. The one catch is the incandescent bulbs in the scoreboard. The light they emit goes on and off very rapidly, faster than the eye can detect. NOT faster than a camera shutter at 1/400th of a second can detect, apparently. (The first photo below is how the scoreboard is supposed to look. The second is how it looked 3 of the 5 times I tried to photograph it.)

Overall, it wasn't bad. Sports Illustrated won't be calling anytime soon, but I had a good time. For those interested, I posted the handful of shots I liked (of the 200+ I took) here.