Photo Tutorial: Kaden McGregor (Peterborough Petes)

Kaden McGregor (61 - Peterborough Petes) exits the dressing room during an Ontario Hockey League game between the Peterborough Petes and the Kingston Frontenacs at the Peterborough Memorial Centre on November 22, 2025 in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

Gear - I used my Canon R6M2 and Canon RF 15-35mm f/2.8 with the Canon 600EX II-RT speedlite.

Set-up - I am standing only a few feet away from Kaden in this photo as he exits the dressing room area through the red curtains. I intentionally used a wide angle lens here (shooting at 15mm) in order to get his entire body in frame. I pointed my speedlite straight up in order to bounce the light off of the ceiling, creating a wide, even light.

I wanted the players to walk through the same spot in the curtains so I could get the pop of red against the black jerseys. I left a gap in the curtains to act as a visual guide for them to walk through and I  have found that when the curtains are open the players will walk through the entirety of the opening, often not where I want them to. I have found, however, that by only showing a small opening in the curtain, they are more likely to go where I want them to and as such I can be more consistent with my shots. 

Settings - In camera I shot this photo at 1/200, f/2.8 and 100 ISO. I want all dark areas of this photo to be quite dark and I don't really want any ambient lighting impacting my photo. I used TTL on these shots but I made sure to adjust the exposure so nothing was blown out. 

Editing - First set as always was to crop. There are distractions on both sides of Kaden in this shot and I wanted to eliminate those so there would only be one thing drawing the viewer's eye. I dropped the exposure slightly to a spot that I was happy with, increased my contrast, highlights and dehaze and dropped my shadows. By making those changes, I am able to draw the viewer’s eye to the red in the curtains and the white in the name plate while still retaining detail in the rest of the frame. I didn’t touch the saturation or hues of the colours or much with the tone curve. Keeping it simple allowed me to get the look I was after. 

I have been successful using this shot selection for things like walk-outs/walk-ins and have for the most part, gone away from using a direct on-camera flash during the full duration of a game, especially before a period, as it could be fairly distracting to the players. 

Let me know if this was helpful and if you were able to get a shot like this!