Pre-Nationals!

So guess what's coming up this week? Well if you read my title then you already know, but if you're lazy then I guess I'll tell you: Nationals are this week! This week will be an incredible experience, although it will also be very sad. Yes, it's nationals for hell's sake, but that also means it's the end of the season. So I'm really excited, but I'm also very sorrowful. For this post, I'm basically gonna just describe what's ahead of me this week. From my schedule, to teams, to pre-game stuff, to everything else; I'll describe it all in detail.

To start, we have to go over the schedule. This tournament is the Tier II Bantam National Tournament. Teams from across the U.S. come to compete in this tournament and represent their states. Now not every state has a team represent them, so around 40 teams are coming to Salt Lake City this year for the tournament. So this year, my team got a good schedule, playing teams from across the U.S.. Our first game will be against Mission Red from Arizona. This game is on Thursday morning at 11:45. This game will be interesting, because according to the US Rankings, Mission Red is 249th in the nation. My team, the Grizzlies, are 159th, so this game will be interesting. Our next game is against the Nashville Jr. Predators. This team will be much more challenging because they're ranked at 111th. We beat them last year at Nationals but this year it will be a greater challenge. Our last game for the qualifying round is against the Manchester Flames. This team is basically the same level as us, as they're ranked at 162. This game will be a really evenly-played game, and I can't wait to play this team. If we win at least two out of the three then we will move on. From there it goes into quarter finals, semis and the finals... Now for the preparation...

So in preparation for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I have to do a few things. One major thing I have to do is stay healthy. If you're sick, you obviously won't be able to play at the highest level you usually can. So to stay healthy you have to eat healthy, get to bed early and drink water. Another thing to do before the games is make sure you have all of your schoolwork done. I am a student athlete, NOT an athlete student. So if my work's not done, then I can't play in the games. One last thing to do in prep before the tournament is to shoot pucks and stickhandle. Keeping up your game before going into an actual game is imperative; if you don't keep working on your skills, they won't be present in the games you play in. So all this week I'll be studying, stayin' healthy and keeping my skills up so I can succeed in the tournament! So after this tournament I'll let you guys know how I did! Any comments on how else to be prepared would be appreciated! Talk to you soon!

A sneak peak of the National's medals...
Creds to USA Hockey

Galaxy Shots!

What's up guys?! How was your weekend? I'm hoping you guys accomplished more than I did! I didn't do much at all other than read; thanks a lot Mr. Parker ;(. But anyways, so you guys remember my last post about star trails? Well, I've been researching even more astrophotography and have gotten really into galaxy photos! These photos are sooo sick, and I want to shoot some of these SO BAD. So far quite a few websites have aided in finding information necessary to shoot these photos. In this 'tutorial' I'll teach you how to shoot these incredible photos and show you the sites I used to find the information needed to take these. Just so you know, I have NOT taken any of these photos (yet), so I'm yet again basing this info off of other peoples' experiences, so if your photos go wrong, don't blame me...

A Milky Way Galaxy shot taken by UHD Wallpapers

Finding the right spot is key here. Similar to star trails, light pollution can't be a part of the photo, or else it won't turn out the way you want it to. The moon can't be out or else it'll be a source of light pollution. So after finding the right nights, you have to find the right spot. For this segment, I use the Dark Site Finder, which is a website showing how much light pollution occurs throughout the area in which you want to shoot in. This is actually very helpful and a good tool for astrophotography. Light pollution affects the photos quality greatly, so you want to make sure there's very little of it.

The next steps to taking these photos are to find the right settings and equipment. Finding a DSLR is crucial to take these photos, so all of you white girls trying to be artsy can't just use your iPhone. On that DSLR you need a lens as well, which preferably should be as wide-angle as possible. I've read that a great lens for galaxy photos is the Rokinon 14 mm Ultra Wide-Angle. This seems like a great lens, and I might consider investing in it. Another thing necessary is a tripod. The camera obviously needs to be stable to take a clear photo. Flashlights and other things similar to it would help as well, since you will be shooting in the middle of the night. To focus your camera, use the flashlight as a focal point a ways away. Now here are the settings (and these may vary for your lens, camera, lighting, etc.): ISO should be quite high (around 1600), but from what I've read, 6400 is too grainy. The f/stop should be around 1.4 with a fast lens, but with a slower lens go around f/2.8 (but you may need to raise the ISO with a slower lens as well). Now there's one other thing that I've learned about in galaxy photos: the 500 rule. This rule tells you how long your exposure should be. What you do is divide your focal length of the lens by 500-- this gets you to your optimal shutter speed. So the number you get is the highest amount of seconds your exposure should be. One last thing on settings: USE RAW, not JPEG. Astrophotography is just much better with RAW because of the white balance and other things similar to that. 

So, did that help? That has helped me a ton, and I can't wait to actually try it out this weekend! Tell me how your guys' photos turn out or send me a photo! Thanks for reading, hope to talk to you soon!

Another shot showing how amazing these photos are
Creds to Pix Good

Star Trails

Stars are just an incredible thing to witness. Just the majestic ambiance of these massive balls of fire are incredible. I've always been intrigued by these celestial objects and I've always wanted to capture the incredible essence that these things give off. So one of the only ways to do this is to shoot photos of them. There are many ways to shoot stars, from galaxy pictures to star trails. In this post, I'm going to provide some information on how to create star trails, which are as cool as they sound. Then on the next post, I'll tell you how to shoot some galaxy pictures. I've always had a liking for the galaxy and stars and stuff, and since I want to be an astrophysicist I guess that makes sense. It's so incredible on how diverse star formations can be. With star trails, you'll never look at the stars in the same way.

This is just awe-inspiring...
Creds to 4 Image Gallery

Okay so I have to confess before I start giving tips: I HAVE NOT yet done star trails, so this is mainly based off of other people's accounts of trying it. I'm hoping these people are trust-worthy, because I'm going to go off of their settings as well. So we'll try this together! Later on (once I take some photos) I'll share them with you guys! But for now I'll have to just give you the settings so you can take some pictures as well! 

Finding the right day (well, night actually):

So for this kind of shoot the night has to be absolutely perfect. The moon can't be seen at all, and if it is, then good luck getting a decent exposure. Also, any type of cloud cover will not be satisfactory. If any clouds are in the sky, then the pictures won't turn out well at all because the clouds will blur the photos and white them out. It also needs to be cold, or else the lens will have condensation on it after a while, making the shots blurry. One of the last things you need to do while getting set up is point your camera at the North Star. Since the Earth is spinning around the North Star, once you take the exposures the other stars will have seemed to be circling the N.S.. This is how star trails are created. So to sum it up: no moon, no clouds, no light pollution, must be cold, and you have to point the camera towards the North Star. To find when and what time to shoot these photos, I recommend Photographer's Empheris, an incredible app that's free for download that tells you when it's a good time to shoot these photos. 

The Settings:

So there are quite a few steps to getting the right photo here. First of all, you need to make sure you have all of the proper equipment. Obviously you need a tripod, similar to all long exposures. Another good thing to have is a leveler. This is helpful for obvious reasons. Acquiring the largest wide-angle lens would also help, just to get as much of the scenery in as you can. Now here are the actual settings that I got from Tony Northrup on Youtube. So you set your lens to manual focus to start. Now you must set your lens to the infinity symbol. DON'T go all the way over to the end (past infinity). Set your aperture to the lowest you can get (f/4 or lower) and put your exposure to 30 seconds. ISO needs to be around 1600. After setting this up, you pretty much have everything ready. Now you just go outside during the middle of the night and shoot for around two or three hours. This will take tons of photos (obviously) and afterward, you just use the imaging software known as StarStaxx to compile the pictures to create that circular effect. After that you're pretty much done!

I'll tell you guys how it goes after I try this myself!

Just Incredible...
Creds to Astro Pixels

Desert Cup AAA Invitational

Hey so I have some exciting news! It's another hockey post, and I'm super stoked about it! So recently I got some really cool news from my dad. So I was just sitting around the house after school, not really wanting to do homework, and then my dad suddenly called, "Hey, Alec!". I was confused, because he seemed really excited; it was only Tuesday, so I wasn't sure how he could possibly be happy. He asked me to come upstairs to look at the computer. I did as I was told, and went upstairs. Immediately I became happier than ever before. As I looked at the screen, I saw an email from some Canadian guy. But this wasn't any Canadian dude; this guy was the main tournament director of the Desert Cup AAA Invitational. This tournament is one that invites elite players from across the U.S. and parts of Canada. As soon as I read the words 'Desert Cup', I was so happy I couldn't help but smile and yelp in joy. This tournament would have tons of scouts, and all of the players going would be at the highest level. Here's a description of the tournament...


This tournament is being held in the middle of the desert in the heart of Las Vegas. Surprisingly, there are quite a few good tournaments that are played in LV. This one, the Desert Cup, is one of a few AAA tournaments played in the state. There are many cool aspects to this tournament, and I'm very excited to be able to play in it this year. This tournament runs from July 6-11, and it includes five teams: Team Ontario, Team Can-Am, Team Canada, Team USA and Team Toronto. These teams are created from kids from across the US and Canada. Another cool aspect is that the team stays in the same hotel, which happens to be the Luxor, one of the infamous hotels of Las Vegas. This would be a sick portion of the tournament while being away from the rink. Yet another cool aspect would be the player mentors, which obviously mentor each player and talk about how they can get better and stuff like that. Each and every coach and player mentor has a huge hockey background which is pretty cool as well. One of the last aspects that I enjoy is the gear we get... We all get jerseys, socks, shells, hats and tee shirts with the tournament logo on them. So there are a ton of cool things that will be going on at this tournament.

Team USA's (my teams') jerseys this year... Creds to Desert Cup Invitational

A few of my good friends/teammates went to this tournament last year, and it seemed like they enjoyed it a ton. They were all on the same team (Team USA), and each one of them said it was wayyyy fun. Their team was so good that they ended up winning the tournament, with one of my friends, Mason Mannek, scoring the game-winning-goal. Mason got the championship MVP award as well. So hopefully they'll come back to play in the tournament this year, because that'd be incredibly fun to win a tournament of this level. So basically, this is going to be a blast of a tournament; from the high level of playing, to the mentors, to the hotel and to the gear we get, this will be a ton of fun and I can't wait for July.

My teammates' team who won it last year.
Creds again to Desert Cup Invitational

Off To Nationals!

Hey guys so since I just posted a photography blog, it's time for a hockey topic! So we all know that hockey season is beginning to be pushed into the post season, and we all love that excitement that goes along with it. My team this past weekend went to the State Championships for Utah Tier II hockey. It consisted of four teams altogether: the Davis County Golden Eagles, the Park City Ice Miners, the Ogden Mustangs and my team, the Utah Jr. Grizzlies. This 'tournament' was double-elimination, and we had to play each team at least once. This tournament was all played in Park City, which was a ton of fun. So this post will be similar to my first L.A. post, where I describe each game we played.

Game #1: 

This game was played against the Park City Ice Miners (which included kids from my grade and eighth grade). So I knew all of their players and it was very fun to play against them. Since the last two games we played against them were close, the team and I were really nervous. I was personally worried our team wasn't going to show up and play at our top level that game, but I was wrong. We played really well, and we ended up winning 6-2. I had a great game, with two goals and an assist. So this game was sweet, and there were still games to come...

My goal vs. Park City>>>

Game #2: 

This game was against our nemesis, the Golden Eagles. This team has always gotten on my nerves, and are always a nuisance towards my team. This game was by far the most intense. The referees this game were absolutely horrendous, and by the end of the game, we ended up with 15 penalties. Over half of these were awful calls, and it was a very frustrating game. These awful calls were mainly because the head coach of the Eagles, Jim Mckenna, is the head of Utah's Referee Supervisor. So of course the refs wanted to call the ref towards their supervisor... Anyways, the game went into overtime at the score of 1-1, and the score was the same after that. So then came the shootout. The Eagles missed all five of their shots, and we made one. The shooters for my team were Tmac, Woo, Ammon and me. Ammon was the only one who scored... I missed my shot by an inch; I was going for top cheddar, but the puck came off of my stick weird... Either way, that was an intense and stressful game.

Game #3:

This game was boring because the team was absolutely horrendous. We played the Ogden Jr. Mustangs and beat them 17-1... I had two goals and an assist so that was good... Our team had three goals in the first period, eleven in the second and three in the third. Not too much to talk about here....

Game #4: Since we won all of our games, we had made it as the first seed, and we were in the championship. Unfortunately, we had to play the Golden Eagles: again. This time my team came out much harder, and we absolutely controlled the game. In the first period we scored two goals. During the second, we scored another three goals. They were completely on their heels and it felt great. They scored one in the third, but it didn't matter much. When that last buzzer sounded, joy was felt throughout the whole team. We won 5-1! It was a great feeling winning State Championships twice in a row. It was a great experience and now we gotta get ready for Nationals! Nationals this year ends up being in Salt Lake City, which is good but also sort of a bummer. But Nationals is Nationals, right? I can't wait, and I'll keep you updated!

State Champs! Photo creds to Mr. Jensen....

A Dope Weekend: Part 2

Hey so this is my second part of 'A Dope Weekend'! Since the last section was on the hockey, this section is on the photography part! So I had been researching even MORE long exposure stuff, and came upon some beach long exposures. These looked crazyyyy but I didn't really know how to do them. So I ended up finding a solid description, and it ended up being a Nikon article (and you all know I dislike Nikon). So this article gave me a good description on long exposures with water as well as any type of long exposure. Another good article on the Nikon site is the article that's strictly on water exposures, which is what helped me the most with the shots I took. What I learned the most was about the ISO and the f stop. These two things did the most for me in my shots. So here's my account of taking beach pictures in SoCal.

Issues:

Well I thought I might as well tell you the issues I had first because well, there were a few. One of my main issues was pretty obvious. What's one thing that's all over the beach? Sand. Sand has always scared me with cameras for a few reasons. Sand always gets in the worst places; including the lens or the internal parts of the camera. Sand will ruin your camera and your lens pretty quickly, so you have to make sure to be super careful around any type of sand or dirt. Water was also an issue while I was trying to get some shots underneath the pier. Waves would spray up and I nervously tucked my back around my camera so it wouldn't get wet. By the end of the day I was pretty wet, but it was all worth it. One of the last issues I had was waiting for people to move out of the way to get the right shot. To be completely honest, people are OBNOXIOUS. Like if you see me with my eye up to the camera, you could at least quicken your pace so I don 't have to wait for three hours to take a single picture. And the worst part is that there is a CONSTANT flow of people walking by, so it's very frustrating. Other than having the issue of sand, water, and people, the beach trip was turned out to be very fun.

Achievements:

A lot of things went really well for me this weekend on the beach. For one, the long exposure shots came out pretty good, and there were a few that I really enjoyed. These came out well because of the websites I told you about earlier. If I had no previous knowledge on beach long exposures, then I would've failed miserably, because there were some settings I used that I wouldn't have guessed of using. These settings had to do with mainly the f stop, but also had to do with ISO and things similar to those. Even though I had some previous knowledge, I still had to experiment quite a bit with the exposures. I realized that you had to take the shots wayy later than one would have expected. In example photos these shots seemed to be taken right at sunset but in reality they were taken almost an hour after the sunset. So after all this talk, I'll show you how they turned out!

This looks like a water color painting to me....

The photo above was the second photo I took under the pier, and it turned out better than the first one I took.

This seems really edited but it's not...

I took this photo before I took the shots under the pier. Even though both of these photos look as though they were taken right at sunset, they were taken almost an hour after sunset. This was a fun shoot, so I hope you guys liked the photos as much as I do! My next blog post will most likely be on hockey so I'll talk to you soon!