While visiting Denver, I spent an entertaining evening as a spectator at a college ice hockey game between two of the best teams in the US – Denver University and Boston University. I was seated high in the stands, a long distance from the playing surface. I had a small Canon G6 digicam with me – hardly the kind of camera able to stop fast action in full stride. But by using time itself as a medium of expression, I could use my small digital camera to blur action, expressing two essential aspects of ice hockey as a sport – its speed and physical violence.

The level of existing light in the ice arena required me to use a slow shutter speed of 1/8th of a second in “program” mode – perfect for what I had in mind. This slow shutter speed causes the bodies of the players to become flowing blurs of color – some more, some less, depending upon skating speed. Hockey is a very fast and violent game, as players battle each other for possession of a small disc of rubber and try to blast it into the opponents goal. The Denver team, defending US national collegiate champions, displayed a swift and crushing defensive style, stopping the Boston attackers time and time again. Knowing this, I focused on an area where the Denver defensemen made their stand, and in this shot I capture three of them (wearing white) stopping the Boston offensive players (wearing red).

It is impossible to carefully compose this picture because of the continual action. However, since I am using a seven-megapixel camera, I could later crop it dramatically, creating a composition that defined the nature of this game for me. I placed a blurred Denver defender in the upper left hand corner, diagonally opposed to a blurred Boston attacker in the lower right corner. They are symbolic “action anchors.” The point of the picture is expressed across the center band of this image. At left center, a red Boston attacker, legs pumping wildly, tries frantically to get around a defender in order to receive a pass from a teammate at the right edge. The Boston effort fails because Denver’s defense was too strong, and too fast. The player in red at right edge will never make his pass because he is about to be slammed by that blurred Denver defender just to the right of center. This moment in time encapsulates the fast flow of not only this particular game, but the essence of the violent sport of ice hockey as well.