On the crisp but sunny morning of Thursday January 9th, my buddy Mike and I made the trip downtown to catch the annual outdoor practice the Leafs hold at City Hall’s ice rink. I wasn’t able to make it last year, so I was keen on catching it this year.
The place was packed so the sight-lines weren’t great. The black safety netting surrounding the rink didn’t help either. So I’m kinda disappointed with my lack of decent “on ice” photos.
My best shots from the event are likely the ones from after the actual practice, when the players walked from the rink towards their bus. Fans young and old lined the narrow gated pathway with hopes of a quick autograph or selfie.
Because I knew how poorly most of my on ice “action” shots had turned out, I made a point of trying to capture the interactions between fans and Leafs. No posed or pre-planned images. Just raw, unfiltered, human interaction. More times than not, these make for the best kind of photos.
I’ve been a hardcore Leafs fan my entire life. So has my dad and his dad before him. Although I’ve been fortunate enough to see a handful of games live at Scotiabank Arena (formerly the Air Canada Centre) there’s just something special about being this close to them.
It’s easy to imagine these guys as “god-like figures” from way up in the 300 section or on a TV screen, but when you’re mere feet away, you’re reminded that they’re only people, just like us. Many of them even younger than me.