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I Want To Go To The Ice Hockey World Championship!
Submitted by: JL
EuropeI'm working on television with sporting live events. I have a lot of hobbies. I love sports and I am also a figure skater, but I am also disabled. I have a bunch of iron in my spine but my life is perfect the way it is.
For a long time I have been working on a sports channel. I have met a lot of interesting people because we also produce some events such as KHL local games and much more. But along with this, up until December of last year, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I always knew that I chose right education, though it was in IT and I worked successfully as an IT admin, but it wasn’t mine. I can catch a flying dragonfly on photo because it was my hobby for the last decade, with my hands I can do something from nothing. Event working on television felt like the right direction.
I Read The Secret a long time ago, then I just let it go. I always knew that when the time was right I would figure out what my passion was. When I was searching a job I wrote everything that I wanted from it on some paper. Going through the list I it seemed impossible, everything was illogical and controversial. But a month later, I found everything that I wanted here, on the sport channel.
Our channel is main distributor of the hockey championship in baltic states, and more than a year ago I thought to myself that I want to go work there on the field at the championship. But my specialty isn’t something that is necessary there, I’m not a journalist nor a commentator. So the chances were about zero.
A year ago, for my birthday I bought to myself a new mirrorless camera, pro oriented. But except for one trip to Slovakia, I didn’t used it too much, mainly I did not have the time for it. Somewhere in December, sitting at the hockey game I thought to myself that at the next game I should bring my camera with my zoom lens and try it. I spend a lot time at the ice level during the game, so why not? So I did it. At the next game I was with my camera. After the first 5 shots I realized, oh my God, watching sports for 5 years in a row and having photo hobby probably made me a sports photographer! As my camera has an option to transmit pictures immediately and quite fast, I connected with the PR guy from my team and my pictures went online. Because it was better than just a mobile photo, it turns out that I can compete with huge photographers, though I do not have the experience and my equipment was not that good.
I guess it was my 5th game that which I was shooting when the PR guy from our hockey federation came up to me and asked if maybe I would like to be with the team at the championship as their photographer? I was stunned. First I thought it was a joke. It was surreal.
So for the next 3 months I needed to do an amazing job with this possibility and to buy new lenses, because mine sucked completely, to gain some confidence with new equipment, to buy tickets and arrange for a hotel. Because I was just starting no one wanted to put money out for that. I made arrangements that my pictures will use our web portal where I work. It was huge. And honestly I was scared. Too much, too fast. But, I knew, that sudden events like this often turn out to be a turning point in people’s lives. And it was.
It was an extremely interesting and tough two weeks, I can say that I never worked so much in my life, but I survived through the winter olympics of 2014,which our channel showed for the first time with such an amount of material. During the games with my team, I took pictures, sent them to our PR guy, and he put them on Instagram. After the game, I processed them and sent one copy to him and another to my boss. During the championship I took pictures of 15 games and 5 trainings with our team. And all this with only 6 months experience.
Now, I’m buying my second camera and actively getting ready for the new sport season. I have an offer for the qualification games at the olympics and the next hockey championship.
The funny thing is that today I saw the article from hockey federation about the upcoming qualification games that had one picture. Looking at the picture I thought to myself that it was a very nice picture, interesting, who’s was it. I looked under the picture I saw my name!!
So now I understand that everything that I was doing for the last decade was leading to this. And this is my passion. And this is what I want to do. I want to become a well known and respected sports photographer. In case someone is interested http://instagram.com/j.lv.photo
Dream big!