Pick of the Pix Series, #4 Reflecting

This image was taken half an hour after #3. Ms Carolina Dillen was practicing her patterns in front of the mirror. I focused on her image in the mirror, leaving her back slightly out of focus. I knew the fans were there and liked the symmetry of the composition. Also, her position in preparing for her pattern shows concentration and focus. The top and bottom have been cropped to give a panorama styled shape to the image.

Specs: 1/800s 37.0mm f/2.8 ISO:800

Pick of the Pix Series, #3 Light Impact

This image was taken during the training lead up to the 2007 World Champs. We’re at Mr Mark Trotter’s Impact Club on New North Road in Kingsland. In this image Mr Trotter and Mr Luke Thompson are practicing their pre-arranged sparring routine. You’ll all probably know that they went on to win the event and become the world champions.

The gym has a low ceiling with north facing windows. It was 4.30pm in early May and the low sun was streaming through the windows creating a contrasty back-lit setting. It was near the end of the training an the others all sat down to watch them put in a final complete run-through of their routine. The image was cropped top and bottom to remove boring ceiling and floor and a little dodging and burning was used to focus the viewer on Mark and Luke.

Specs: 1/1600s 17.0mm f/4.0 ISO:800

I like the image for many reasons… possibly more personal memories than it being a really good image. Nevertheless it’s a firm favourite.

During the same training I managed to capture a few more favourites.

Pick of the Pix Series, #2 Houston Car Park

This image was taken during the lead up to the 2006 Junior World Champs. We were staying at a hotel in Houston for a few days, to get settled into the time zone, and as a base prior to flying into Honduras itself.

The temperature and especially humidity was high and one of the days the team trained outside, out of the sun, in the car park under the hotel.

For me this environment was stunning photographically. Grey concrete floor, walls and ceiling, bright lights and the sun shining into the car park in the distance. It was very contrasty, sweaty and hot.

The scene…

I got a few nice shots but whish I’d spent longer there and got some more “stunners”. I don’t think I’ve since experienced seeing training in an environment that was as photographically appealing (to me) as this.

I was on a roll and then it was over before I knew it. I asked a few to stay behind for some posed shots but they weren’t very good. My preference is to always work with what’s happening naturally – setting up shots doesn’t work for me yet – something maybe for the future.

However, while packing up and milling around at the end I took a few shots of Jeremy Hanna in his hoodie. He had been wearing it to help loose weight, was tired and dripping with sweat.
Once I got back to my computer and looked through them I realised I had what to me was a great image… in fact my all time favourite. It helps that he’s my son too of course!

It was featured on the front of the next issue of Taekwon-do Talk.

Specs: 1/640s 50.0mm f/1.8 ISO:1600

At the end of the session I also took what I reckon was a great shot of Mr Richard Burr. It’s had a bit of dodging and burning to add contrast, but I like it. Mr Burr didn’t!

Specs: 1/800s 50.0mm f/1.8 ISO:1600

Pick of the Pix Series, #1 Team High Five

I'm at home crook but can't help do some "playing" on-line.  I've got quite a few all time favourite Taekwon-do photos that I've collected since I got into photographing Taekwon-do during the 2006 Junior World Champs build-up.  If you've been following my blog over the years you'll have seen them all before but there's a story behind each one and I thought it would be nice to feature one every day or two over the next few months along with the story behind it.  It would be great to get your coments, memories and feedack on any of them - the more the merrier!

And just to keep you on your toes, there's no particular order to them - we may be jumping around a bit :-)

So, here we go, number one...

The day before the 2007 World Champs started in Quebec City, the team assembled for what would be the last pre-tournament training session.  It was in the huge multi-room event centre at the university where the event was being held and there were other national teams training around us.  Mark Trotter got the team fired up coming up with some ways to cheer together and to make as much noise as possible in practice for supporting each other during the event.  At the end of this they came together to join hands in a 1-2-3-new-zealand cheer (it's hard to describe this but you can probably see what I mean by the photo).

I ran up to them and held my camera up as high as I could reach, wound out the lens to maximum wide angle (18 mm) and pointed the camera almost straight down taking several shots.  The camera was set to a slow shutter speed, 1/30th of a second, which captured the movement as they all came up with their hands and bodies to yell the cheer.  Remarkably, Candice Millar's face didn't move much and remains pretty sharp - mid roar - and contrasts the movement of the others.  It adds a focal point to the image and really makes it work.

I particularly like this image because it captured something spectacular that happened only once, and it was over in just a few seconds.  I was very lucky to capture it and it was pure luck that I'd set my shutter speed so low which captured the movement and excitement.  The whole image is a fluke that would be hard to replicate.

I've got a print of this image on my wall at work and several of our designers have asked if I photoshopped in the movement.  The answer to that is a very simple "no".  The only adjustments I have so far made to my images in general include cropping, straightening crooked horizons, adjusting contrast and brightness and conversion to black and white.  I've once or twice tried dodging and burning but my overall preference is to always get the image as good as possible "in the camera". I don't have time to mess around with them.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts/memories.... especially if you were one of those in the photo!

Specs: 1/30s 17.0mm f/5.0 ISO:1600

Black belt grading

I went to the public part of today's Auckland black belt grading and took a few photos. Here they are...

Favourites from the World Champs buildup trainings so far

Here are my picks of the pix from this years world champs training sessions so far...

More Saturday World Champs buidup training at Mt Wellington

I spent a couple of hours playing around with improvements to this blog site. It's powered by Google's Blogger.com which gives it some pretty powerful features.  I've added a few new ones including 

• my new Twitter feed - that will be handy for posting txt updates from the world cup event later in the year.
  
• Making the page width resizeable - I'll try posting larger sized images and see how that goes
• Added a poll - so you can give me feedback
• Added subscribe links - get my blog posts direct to your RSS reader, such as your igoogle.com home page.

Enough tech talk - here's a few of the better photos from today....