Scrimmage v New Prague, Part 3

Faceoffs are easy to photograph. The puck floats frozen in the air above the players' sticks, just released from the ref's hand. The players wear looks of concentration, and so does the ref.

Here's Gavin facing off against one of the Trojan players. The puck is just reaching the blade of Gavin's stick here...

...and here a split second later it's ricocheting back up toward the ref.

In these two shots, Max B and his opponent manage to send the puck directly back at the ref.

He seems to be in a tough spot as both of the players in the faceoff turn toward him, and Max D. is right behind him. Those refs almost always come out unscathed.

You may notice a distinct and different color cast to the photos. The first one is sort of sepia. The second definitely green, and the third starting to turn pink. The last one is very pink. All computer monitors are different, but I'm almost certain we owe the color shifts to lights like this:

I'm not sure just what they're called. I think it may be mercury vapor lamps. They're different from the yellow/green cast we're familiar with from tungsten lighting. One way you can see that they're not tungsten is the oscillation across the color spectrum. Tungsten lights are consistent in their color cast. In person, you can't see the oscillating colors because it happens fast and our brains interpolate for us. But it fools even smart cameras with automatic white balance. I could have fixed the white balance in the minimal post processing I do, but the color cast is kind of nice once in a while. It's red and green for Christmas.