If you’ll excuse the pun it seemed like a good way to kick-start the New Year. When a friend invited me to her kickboxing class to indulge in some photography while she trained I accepted. Alpha Whiskey needs constant stimulation to get his juices flowing and photography is no exception. Frankly, I’m surprised it took me so long to photograph this subject; having reached 1st Dan in Taekwondo in my youth, I was always enamoured with the flexibility and physical expression these types of sports had to offer, enjoying less the pugilism and more the forms, aerial movement and speed. The various moves were always visually interesting and demonstrative of how capable human anatomy could be.
Purists would argue that kickboxing is more of a martial sport than a martial art, and perhaps they are right. But these guys certainly made it look artistic and to me any kind of expressive movement is an art form regardless of where the blow lands. And when captured in a photograph it summons Yates’ assertion that the dancer is the dance.
While taking these photos I cast my memory back to graphic novels and old martial arts movies, when camera positions and framing were just as important to the visual experience of the audience as the exponent themselves. Indeed today camera angles and editing are what give the likes of Liam Neeson his particular set of skills, enhancing the visceral impact through clever choreography and positioning.
I would shoot from ground level to lend more height to the kicks, sometimes tilting the camera to bring greater dynamism to the movements (a typical technique used in graphic novels). Combined with wide-angle lenses shooting from low enhanced the scope and impact of some of the movements. I even used the good ol’ fish-eye to deliberately exaggerate some of the kicks.
Any student of graphic narrative art will know that the best way to give a sense of motion from a still image would to be to depict the very beginning or the very end of an action, i.e. the intention or the impact. So while I reeled off a few clicks with high speed continuous shooting I tended to select images at the extremes to edit.
When I had finished picking my teeth up off the floor I switched over to longer focal lengths to capture more intimate portraits.
Alas there were no rays of sunlight lancing through overhead skylights and penetrating a fine mist as backlit silhouettes performed reverse roundhouse kicks on a wooden crate. As you can see the lighting in the gym wasn’t ideal, although there was plenty of it, and it occasionally confused the white balance (a good reason to shoot RAW). And the background had plenty of distractions and objects that cluttered the scene, despite using fast lenses. I didn’t want to use a disruptive flash being in such close proximity to the trainees. Thus in processing these images I opted to apply a slightly gritty, urban look, which I felt seemed appropriate to the subject. May or may not have succeeded. And having shot these at a fairly high ISO (to get high enough shutter speeds) I chose to reduce the noise a little bit. I didn’t want shutter speeds that were too fast all the time because I wanted some blur to convey the speed of the movements.
Anyway, maybe in future I’ll have the opportunity to shoot some competitive contests for a little more rush but I had a lot of fun shooting this training session and hopefully I have captured some of the energy in the action. I hope it encourages you to go out and shoot some images of your own (or take up kickboxing). I wish to thank Chloe (featured in most of these shots) and her instructor George, a former world champion kickboxer, at the GTC Studio for their invitation and hospitality.
As usual this has been reproduced from my blog.
Nice to see a review on this subject, I also have the opportunity to do a gym shot (boxing), so I’m glad to see this pas by.
Thx for sharing
Dimi
I read this article hoping for some technical tips. Pictures are great but how you made them is my main interest (AF-C or AF-S, aperture, shutter speed, lighting, etc. I like that the body and leg are in sharp focus, with the blurred foot to indicate motion.
Sharif, thank you for bringing us into this world with your photos, which I enjoyed. I loved the action and your selection of angles. Well done! : )
Interesting article. It’s good to shoot outside of what we normally shoot once in awhile.
The two comments that come to me: 1) I would have expected more motion blur for some of the shots, shot from slower shutter speeds, better reflecting the motion of what was going on. A challenging balance I realize (stop the action for clarity of subject versus show the action). 2) IMHO, a number of these shots would be far better shot vertically. I don’t like seeing legs cut-off, or clutter on the sides if they aren’t key to the story of the image. Since many of these involved standing people and the action was mostly within a narrowly confined space, I think some of these images would have been better shot vertically.
Just comments reflecting how I would have wanted to shoot this subject.
Nasim, a plea.
Please stop posting work from this guy. The photography is awful. I don’t even know where to begin. Look at the most recent articles here from other photographers and compare their images to this trite. It is diminishing the quality of your site.
Please stop posting any more content from Alpha Whiskey and let him stick to his own bloghole. We will all be better off.
Thank you.
Yes, well, of course, that’s just the sort of blinkered philistine pig-ignorance I’ve come to expect from you non-creative garbage. [Monty Python, Architect Sketch]
We all like — and dislike — some styles of photography. I like AlphaWhiskey’s style but acknowledge that it’s not for everybody.
I think it improves the quality of the site — various photographers with different styles.
Alpha Whiskey,
I thank you and Nasim very much for this article and these submissions. I photograph my granddaughter and other young girls performing artistic roller skating in poor lighted rinks. The jumps, spins and moves are the same which you see in ice skating.
Would you please consider giving me a response and outlining the technical data for some of the photos. You are lucky that you can get so close to the action. I can not. Most all skating shots are around 50 feet or more. No tripod. No flash. 1/500th of second minimum shutter speed. At F/2.8, you are shooting at ISO 6,000 minimum. You really need 10000 IS0 to be able to stop the action at 1/640 to 1/1000.
After having made thousands of photos in indoor roller rinks, I find little fault in your photos. It is very difficult to stop the action and have a decent background and sharp focus. Great sports photos are accomplished outdoors and in daylight or strong artificial lighting. Indoor shots in well-illuminated basketball courts and gyms.
Regards,
peter
Dear Peter,
Apologies for the tardiness in my reply. These were mostly shot at between 1/160s and 1/800s, at between F/1.8 (for the closer portrait shots) and F/2.8 for the action shots. ISOs between 1250 and 4000, mostly at the latter (which I suppose is not a particularly high ISO these days :))
Being so close to the participants it was difficult to maintain a steady, even frame around them while they were in motion. I could have stepped back and cropped later, I suppose, but I wanted to stay closer to them. I also wanted a tight frame to exclude the multitude of background distractions (which, in that setting, was nigh on impossible);
Getting close with a much longer focal length at a fast aperture could also have helped defocus the background more (subject separation) but in such a limited space it would have made tracking and keeping the subject(s) within the frame more tricky.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
AW
Beautiful compositions, thanks for sharing.
Good opportunity to try something new while they are training. Some of the close shoots would be difficult to pull off during a competition, at least not without picking your teeth up from the floor as you rightly said. It is quite difficult to get good photos from a sport, especially on first try, so better off be during the training than on the big day.
I really like the last one, there is a motion and a tension from the kick so near from the bag, suggesting the shock to the spirit of the viewer. I also like the shooting style. Feels like being back in the New York of the 80s movies, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull indeed!
I apologise, I have to admit I am not a fan of the images either. I have enjoyed Alpha Whiskey’s posts in the past. Then again, I know nothing about kick boxing.
The “frozen in time” shots here do nothing for me, as a result. The ones with an attempt to blur some of the action by using a slightly slower shutter, don’t really work for me either. There just isn’t enough blur to convey the speed, skill and strength of the boxer. If I knew more about he sport, I might see it, but surely the point of any sports photography is to communicate the action and power involved to anyone, especially to those who know nothing about the sport.
Bravo alphawhiskey.slickpic.com/photoblog! Close to perfection compositions!
Nice shots, nice angles. I just hope you had managed to stay out of her range while shooting these series…
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