MMA Training Session

 
I was lucky enough to be in the gym one day when a number of our MMA fighters had come in to train. I asked if I could photograph them while they worked out and they agreed. I was still getting used to my camera and had no clue what I was doing, but remarkably a few of the shots came out. Most of the shots were taken close up, but at one point I walked all the way to the far corner of the gym for a different perspective and took this shot. The lighting was poor so I compensated by going black & white. I also used Picasa's soft focus feature to blur the edges and get a softer feel.


 
I love this photo of Len. His body seems to be made for motion but here he is at rest. I used a 135 mm from the same corner of the gym as the first picture which helped to isolate him as a subject. I tried to enhance this effect by softening the edges a bit.

 
One of the problems I had during the whole shoot was a lack a light. To compensate, I had to use a slower shutter speed which resulted in a lot of blurry images. I had to throw out a lot of them. By luck, Brian happened to be standing still in this one while Reshad rushed him. As a result, he is *relatively* in focus while Reshad is a blur (I say relatively because nothing in this shot is perfectly in focus- a fact that becomes painfully obvious if you click on the thumbnail and view the full-size shot). I tried to duplicate this effect later on but none of the shots were as good as this first lucky one.


After the workout, Reshad let me shoot him while he did some bagwork. Once again, low light, slow shutter speed, and Reshad's super-quick hands made it difficult to get any good shots. It was frustrating. I tried using the flash a couple of times but that just resulted in un-natural washed-out pictures. Finally I got this one after moving myself behind the bag slightly.

See the rest at LunchtimeWorkout