Champps Demo

I just bought a brand new camera: A Pentax K10D. My Olympus C770 was getting old and slow and I felt it was time for an upgrade. These are some of my very first shots taken during an OSMA martial arts demonstration at Champps- a local sports bar that sponsors our gym. The lighting was low, the action was fast, and it was tough to get good shots but these are my favorites.

 
This first shot was tricky. Both subjects were moving fast, wearing black T-shirts in a darkened room, making it difficult to isolate them. I love the slight blur their speed creates but I didn't like the dull color of the shot so I chose to go B&W. I used Picasa's filtered black and white tool to find a color filter that helped darken the background while keeping them defined. It didn't work as well as I had hoped, but it helped a little.

 
This is the sort of shot I was hoping for: bodies flying through the air. I didn't get too many of them, but this one was a nice reward for watching the whole demo through my viewfinder.

 
I think this last shot is interesting because of the figure eight made by the legs and arms of the grapplers. I left it in color because I was able to crop out most of the distracting clutter and colors leaving just the blue and white of the uniforms.

See the rest of the shots at ChamppsDemo