Each year I travel to watch and photograph the Great Britain Men’s Ice Hockey Team at the IIHF World Championship tournaments. I’ve been travelling to the tournaments since 2006, and have photographed the tournaments from 2010.

In 2019 the team took part at the top tier Pool A Tournament – the first time in 25 years that the team had made it to face the worlds Elite teams.

Usually at the tournaments GB attend, there are very few photographers and media, so we have the freedom to walk around and photograph whilst standing up from various vantage points. At the Pool A tournaments there are a lot more photographers and media, with a lot of agency photographers there. This year, in Kosice, Slovakia, we also had a more limited rinkside area to shoot from, and had to shoot whilst siting down – this meant we were restricted to the angle of the ice we covered.

Skoda, who are the major sponsor of the World Championships also run a photography contest for the media. Photographers are invited to enter 3 photos to the contest – the only rule is that Skoda must feature somewhere in the photo, either with their full, or a partial logo/representation. I was probably one of the most inexperienced photographers there – my camera didn’t cost the same as a 2 week holiday in the sun, and my main lens cost me sub £1k, but I thought i’d give the contest a go. I’m not expecting anything from my photos, but entering made me look more closely at my photos, and you never know, I may get something !

So, the gallery below is some of my favourite images from the 10k images I took over the length of the tournament. The first 10 images all feature Skoda, and my 3 entries were chosen from these. The remainder of the images are some of the Portraiture style images taken during the games.