World Champs Pick of the Pix - Special Delivery

Canon EOS 7D, 85mm prime lens, 1/160s, f/2.5 ISO: 800

Not that great an image but a really nice head kick delivery by Carl Van Roon in his lead up to the heavyweight final. Even at 1/160th of a second the foot and target (head) are moving!

Here's an image taken [ages] 13 seconds earlier... showing Carl's accuracy with those long legs of his...

Canon EOS 7D, 85mm prime lens, 1/250s, f/2.5 ISO: 800

I feel a headache coming on :-)

World Champs Pick of the Pix - Mark Silhouette

Canon EOS 7D, 85mm prime lens, 1/4000s, f/1.8 ISO: 800

Soon after trying for ages to get a good Silhouette image of Carolina (see previous post), I asked Mark Trotter if he'd like to do a posed shot in the "corridor of light" at the World Champs Venue in Mar Del Plata. He was happy to do this and our only problem was a security guard who would walk across the background every now and then. After a while I think he got the gist of what we were trying to do and disappeared for a couple of minutes which gave us the opportunity to get this unobstructed image.

World Champs Pick of the Pix - Golden Silhouette

Canon EOS 7D, 85mm prime lens, 1/800s, f/1.8 ISO: 800

The day before the 2009 World Champs tournament got underway we had an opportunity to explore the venue and get familiar with it. New Zealand team members did a little light training alongside competitors from Germany, Canada and a few other countries.

There wasn't much light in the venue... a problem that lasted the whole tournament and was a challenge for the photography. There was an entrance corridor that was open for shipping in equipment which allowed a shaft of light into the venue and offered a back-lighting opportunity.

Carolina was practicing her patterns as she had done literally hundreds of times before. I’ve many good images of her in various patterns stances, from almost every direction and angle. This image took me ages to capture as she was naturally moving around a lot during her patterns and the corridor was small, requiring me to move even more than her to get her framed with the light source in the background.

I like this image for a few reasons. The reflective stance is meditative, the image looks like it was taken in black and white and it mostly is monochromatic with just a touch of red and blue colour coming in from outside the venue doors. Carolina’s face is slightly visible with a touch of one of her eyes showing plus her tell-tale multi-tied pony tail able to be made out. This image is straight out of the camera with no further enhancement.

Carolina went on to win Gold in Senior Female 1st Degree Patterns!

2009 World Champs NZ Medal Count

Complete list for the 2009 World Champs NZ Team

Official top country rankings - Overall

• Argentina 17G 6S 13B
• New Zealand 13G 10S 9B
• Poland 8G 13S 10B
• Germany 5G 3S 13B
• Finland 3G 2S 3B

New Zealand Country Ranking
• Overall - 2nd
• Seniors - 2nd
• Juniors - 2nd

Best Overall (2)

• Carl Van Roon - Best Overall Senior Male
• Best Overall Junior Female Team

Unofficial Best Overall Tied (2)

• From our analysis of the official website placings
• Carolina Dillen, NZ and Maria Virginia Dionisi, Belgium - best overall senior females
  
• Jeremy Hanna, NZ and Julio Carlos, USA - best overall junior males

Gold (13) / Senior (6) Junior (7)

• Carl Van Roon - Senior Male Special Technique
• Carolina Dillen - Senior Female 1st Dan Patterns
• Chris Broughton - Senior Male 1st Dan Patterns
• Luke Thompson - Senior Male Power
• Senior Male Team Special Technique
• Senior Female Team Special Technique

• Aramai Tahau - Junior Male Special Technique
• Jeremy Hanna - Junior Male 3rd Dan Patterns
• Stuart Madden - Junior Male Power
• Junior Male Team Power
• Junior Female Team Patterns
• Junior Female Team Power
• Junior Female Team Special Technique

Silver (10) / Senior (6) Junior (4)

• Carl Van Roon - Senior Male Heavyweight Sparring
• Mark Trotter - Senior Male 4th Dan Patterns
• Mark Trotter & Luke Thompson - Senior Pre-arranged Sparring
• Matt Davey - Senior Male 2nd Dan Patterns
• Senior Male Team Power
• Senior Female Team Power

• Jeremy Hanna - Junior Male Heavyweight Sparring
• Kara Timmer - Junior Female Micro Weight
• Kristy Leong - Junior Female Power
• Shane Black - Junior Male Special Technique

Bronze (9) / Senior (4) Junior (5)

• Amanda Cleland - Senior Female Power
• Carolina Dillen - Senior Female Light Weight Sparring
• Mark Trotter - Senior Male Microweight Sparring
• Richard Lavin - Senior Male 3rd Dan Patterns

• Anna Yates - Female Junior Power
• Courtney Meleisea - Junior Female Heavy Weight Sparring
• Melissa Timperley - Junior Female Special Technique
• Phillipa Henry - Junior Female 1st Dan Patterns
• Junior Male Team Special Technique

World Champs Pick of the Pix #3 Daiana Turnes

Daiana Turnes of Argentina has just beaten Kristine Fjeseth of Norway in the final for Junior Female Hyperweight sparring and is very excited and emotional.

Daiana is a good friend of several people in the NZ team so we were also excited to see her win gold.

Here are a few more images...






Left to right: Phillipa Henry, Courtney Meleisea, Daiana, Amy Reeder (who sparred Daiana in round 1).

And a favourite of mine... Daiana with Mark

2006-2009 Nationals, World Cup and World Champs Photobook

[11/01/2010 Updated images of the photo book pages after corrections and tweaks]

There's nothing like having Christmas for a deadline. I've now completed the 2006-2009 NZ Taekwon-Do Photobook as well as the one focusing solely on the 2009 World Champs and will just be adding a few finishing touches over the next week before ordering the first test samples and beginning work on producing custom versions for all those that have ordered them with extra photos of family members. I've uploaded a screen shot of each double page spread for you to take a look at them.

Because we did so well at the Argentina World Champs the books are a lot larger than expected. I budgeted on 60 pages of world champs coverage but have ended up with 2 pages per medal won (32 medals x 2 = 64 pages) plus pages covering the build up training in Mar Del Plata, opening ceremonies, medal ceremonies etc adds a heap more pages. Versions of the book covering 2006-2009 with extra personalised pages are approaching 300 pages in size! All good stuff though.

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