It’s the middle of July, and 90 plus degrees outside. You’ve just gotten out of a string of long meetings, and the last thing you want to do is get right back to your endless pile of emails and phone messages. So you look at college hockey photos online. Ahhhh, the days of college hockey season, where you and your colleagues bolt out the door right at 5pm and to the arena (or the bar next to it); the days where it’s cold, but you don’t care; the days where pep band music fills the air….
Is this just me? Please tell me it’s not just me.
Okay, it’s just me. Well, just indulge me for a second.
My favorite repository for flipping through college hockey photos when I’m burnt out is in some dire straights. HockeyPhotography.com, run by well known college hockey photographer Melissa Wade, will have to be shut down in August because of the massive costs associated with maintaining the site.
The loss of this over 100,000 image archive would be a giant blow for those who love the game of college hockey and to the many journalists and schools who rely on Wade’s archives for their websites, media guides and the like. She covers Division I men’s and women’s hockey, Division III men’s hockey and World Junior teams. Name even the most obscure of college hockey players, and odds are that they have at least a shot or two on HockeyPhotography.com.
In an effort to save the site, HockeyPhotography now has its own Kickstarter page, which hopes to collect enough money in the next nine days to keep the site going for another year. The hosting fees are over $2,000.00 a year, and right now Wade is not even halfway there. Everyone who gives to the site will receive a reward of some sort, be it cards, prints or even View-Finder style reels.
If you’re able, I encourage you to give some money towards HockeyPhotography.com. If you love college hockey, it’s a very worthy cause.