About
Jason Richard
Top Shelf Sports is run by Jason Richard, a photographer based in the Toronto area who spends most of his winter in arenas. The work started the way it usually does, shooting a kid’s team and realizing nobody else was getting the frames that mattered.
Hockey moves faster than almost anything else you can point a camera at, in worse light. Reading the play is most of the job. Knowing where the puck is going, where the goaltender will end up, and which corner of the ice will hold the celebration is what separates a usable frame from a blurred one.
We shoot Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area. House league to competitive rep, single games to full-season partnerships. Today that includes a league-wide portrait contract, hundreds of players across a full slate of teams, shot and delivered on a schedule that works around hockey rather than interrupting it.
How we work
- Canon R6 Mark II with fast glass, built for low arena light. No flash on the ice
- Shutter speeds that freeze a slap shot, not smear it
- Pro lighting for portraits and picture day, the same three-point setup every time
- Colour and exposure matched across a full season so a team's set looks like one set
- Picture day run at league scale without eating anyone's ice time