Shooting Stars
Photographer Ryan Hill Loves to Capture Sports Action and the Night Sky
Story by Bonnie Schiedel, Photos by Ryan Hill
Years of playing and watching sports have given Ryan Hill of PICme Photography a bit of an edge when it comes to sport photography. “When I see somebody move their shoulder a certain way in hockey, I can predict what they’re going to do. If I see a kid moving his foot on a baseball field, I know he’s going to take a swing or a step,” he explains. “One thing I love about sports photography is trying to catch emotion and action at a high rate of speed. It’s really fun and really challenging to get the shot of somebody smiling after they score a goal or take a slap shot.”
Hill got started in photography nearly six years ago, when a friend passed along a DSLR camera that had belonged to her dad. For the most part, he is self-taught, and credits a fellow photographer, Kay Lee, for sharing his knowledge. “He has been absolutely instrumental in teaching me about lighting. He is my harshest critic, and one of my best friends. And I truly think without having somebody that can unbiasedly critique your work, you can’t improve as a photographer.”
In addition to sports photography, Hill does a mixture of wedding, family, video, and corporate shoots, but he’s also into astrophotography: “Taking pictures of the Milky Way, taking pictures of the northern lights, and more recently taking pictures of deep space objects like nebulas and galaxies and stuff like that. That’s one of my favourite things to shoot because as much as it is the actual photography, [it’s also] the post-processing in Photoshop and the different softwares to clean up the images,” he says. “It’s like photography slash digital art. So that’s one thing I absolutely love to capture. And there’s something very peaceful about being out in the middle of nowhere at two o’clock in the morning when it’s pitch black. It’s just kind of quiet, and it helps regenerate my soul.”
Looking ahead, he’d love to capture some elite hockey action. “I have a nephew who’s very entrenched in the hockey world,” he says, referring to Nicholas Holomego, a recent OHL draft pick. “I would love to follow him as he goes up through the ranks; I would love an opportunity to shoot at that level, just once…I’ve been taking pictures of him since he was seven years old on the hockey rink, and he’s getting into these upper echelons of hockey [so] I think it would be cool to be following that.”
To see more of Ryan Hill’s work, visit picmephotographytbay.com or on Instagram @picmephotographytbay.
Box: Tech Specs
Nikon Z6II and Z6
Nikon 35 F1.8, 50 F1.8, 105 F1.4, 70-200 F2.8
Nikon 24-70 F4