The 23nd Annual Chicago Polar Plunge happened March 5 at North Avenue Beach on Lake Michigan, Chicago. The Polar Plunge benefits the thousands of local athletes in the Special Olympics Chicago / Special Children’s Charities program.

Polar Plunge 2023 by Paul Sager, on Flickr


The Shannon Rovers lead off the annual St Patrick's Day parade. They also lead the city's participants into Lake Michigan for the annual Polar Plunge.

Polar Plunge 2023


The main idea of the 'plunge' is to rush into the icy cold lake and then jump right out of it smiling. There is no need to take the full plunge. You can just go ankle high or knee deep and you're done for the day.

Polar Plunge 2023


The Chicago Polar Plunge attracts people of all ages, demographics, and abilities, just like the athletes of Special Olympics Chicago. Corporations, longtime supporters, family members, friends, and public figures “Take the Plunge” each year in support of Special Olympics.

Polar Plunge 2023


Plungers of all ages participate, with the majority of people between ages 25-34.

Polar Plunge 2023


Participants were encouraged to register in groups and to compete for individual and team awards for costumes.

Polar Plunge 2023


Personally, I hadn't thought about people and groups repeating, not just in annual participation, but also the same outfits. In reviewing images from 2023, I realized many people from 2022 were here again in 2023.

Polar Plunge 2023


Air temps were in the upper 30s, with wonderful sunshine and not much wind. Smiles, cheering and the cause kept participants going.

Polar Plunge 2023


Chicago's Special Olympic athletes compete and train in 17 sports throughout the year in Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Park District locations in the city.

Polar Plunge 2023

Finally! Barring any playoff match-up, yesterday was the last time I see the Roanoke hockey club in Fayetteville. In this 2022-2023 season of the 7 games I've photographed, the opponent has been Roanoke. It was a special promo night, trying to sell out the arena. They didn't quite make it, but had a really good crowd! A few images from the night.

Shot with a Z9, 70-200 f2.8, ISO in the 3200-5000 range. Shutter at 1/1250. Only exceptions were fan shots. Those I used a Z6 fit with a 24-70 f2.8. Frankly I got lazy, put the camera in "P" mode and capped auto ISO at 6400.

I was bemoaning my lack of decent shots when it dawned on me the home team was very outplayed. While the final was only 3-2 it really wasn't that close. I shoot the goal they attack in period 1. The second period I focus my attention on the goalie and the final period the one they attack again. This night, up until they pulled their goalie with 1 minute to go, they managed just TWO shots. I decided it was a bit difficult to get a good image when the team was playing defense nearly the entire period!!!

DelRae,

I thought I would chime in here (I don't do it very much lately). Everyone here has given you great advice, which I follow to the T in my own sports photography! The best advice I could emphasize is shooting "tight", like very tight when action is right at your doorstep or using a long prime (i.e. 300mm for basketball). Most of my examples here are shot with a 70-200mm mk3 lens (using Canon R6 body) and a 300mm mk2 lens. Shutter is 1/1000s @ f2.8. With the crappy lighting of gymnasium I shot at for these examples, my 'auto' ISO (I dialed in a range from 100 to 12800) was always around 10000 to 12800 (mostly the later). I use in camera noise reduction shooting jpg. Post processing is lightroom (LR) and at times I send an image off to Topaz (from LR) to clean up the motion blur/noise or further sharpening. These examples are not perfect by any means, but they show high iso images can be salvaged by shooting very tight, with near 'zero' cropping! You can personally thank Jules for me adding the black and white, kind of old school!

Rick