Ginna Hoptman and Pavel Filchenkov during the senior pairs free dance of the 2013 U.S. Figure Skating Nationals at the CenturyLink Center in Omaha. A slow shutter speed of 1/10th of a second was used to create this ghostly image.

I’m not sure many other photographers raised outside cold weather climates could have successfully walked across fifty yards of glassy, slick ice without falling on their behinds. Heck, I’m not sure many would have even attempted it! Alas, there I was, on the wrong side of the rink at the 2013 U.S. Figure Skating Nationals in Omaha with only minutes to spare until the on-ice awards ceremony that I wanted to photograph began. With no time to walk back through the bowels of the arena to the correct (and carpeted) entrance onto the rink, I stepped over the wall and began my trepidatious walk towards the other photographers gathered near the center of the rink.

I’d later learn that my colleague Dave Weaver had his telephoto lens trained on me the entire time, ready to capture what could have been my embarrassingly swift collapse in front of several thousand fans. As I gingerly shuffled across the rink, I awkwardly held my cameras in front of me so that, if I did slip backwards, I wouldn’t fall on them and snap a lens in two. Yes, you’re correct