As featured in . . . . ESPN the magazine

I have some stuff coming out in a few magazines this month and I thought I would share the story behind the story so to speak.

'March of the Penguins' (above) is a piece on the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team for ESPN the magazine, centered on four players, two younger (Crosby, Fleury) and two older (Gonchar, Roberts) youth and experience and how this mix has helped change the teams fortunes and drive them to NHL playoffs.

The (pesky) Penguins were a little more uncooperative in reality than we had been led to initially believe. The magazine had asked me to concentrate on the 4 and my brief was to get individual portraits, group if possible, player interaction, practice, the locker room and anything else that caught my eye. My main problem going in was that the Penguins PR had shot down the idea of the group shot and I would not be able to schedule any individual one on one time nor would I be able to set up a small portrait set, I would have to grab everything on the go, fine I have done this before no problem. Well as it turned out things got a little trickier.

I did not realise (nor did the magazine) that I would be part of a larger press pool and would have shared access in the locker room and where ever else. It was a bit of a scrum and the players were seldom without a microphone in their face. On top of that the players were not told of my presence nor was I introduced to any of them by the PR and had to pick them out myself, so it was impossible for me to establish any connection with any of the subjects, frustrating.

I attended two practice sessions, one @ their training facility, the second @ the Mellon Arena the following day which was a game day. I had no access to the players before practice, when they were on the ice I was stuck behind the glass and then had to make a dash for the locker room with the media pack. It was all a bit sketchy. Whilst the first day was a little chaotic I was assured the second would be more self fulfilling. This as it turned out was not the case. One of the players Gary Roberts wasn't even in the locker room the second day, good job I had gotten 5 frames on him (although not very good) on the first.


The job was shot on Canon 1DS Mark 2 (digital) a change from my usual mediums of choice (hasselblad/film). The format is certainly a challenge and I am more inclined to shoot horizontal as I find the vertical to be a little long and skinny especially with my attraction to the square format.

As you can see from above and below my pictures underwent some dramatic cropping. I gave the magazine full frame 35mm files, I try not to crop my own work and this is especially easy for me when shooting square, my books are square. It can be quite the challenge for an art director to work the square on to a rectangular page and my work is usually cropped in some fashion but there are some great (good) layout surprises from time to time.

Photos © AH

I think the layout looks good all things considered. Did I get anything for my own book ? Probably not but that was not the exercise, in trying circumstances like this one needs to put the clients needs first.

As it turn out and per an earlier post I have had limited fortune with Pittsburghs finest (sport stars). Having dealt with a contrary Ben Roethlisberger (his luck took something of a bad turn shortly after our encounter) maybe the torch has been passed onto the Penguins as they were dumped out of the 1st round of the NHL playoffs last night. Looks like you are free of the Hetherington hex Ben, good times are here again for Steeler nation !