Event Photography
Last weekend I spent a full day shooting a national Karate Tournament. The Event was in a School Gym and I had quite a few "problems" to overcome to get the photo's I was looking for.
As soon as I knew the event was coming up I set about making sure I would be as ready as possible for the day. I made sure I had all the necessary equipment and that it was all working and that batteries were charged ready for the day.
I had around 6 weeks notice that the event was coming up and the biggest asset would be the fastest possible lens of a suitable focal length to capture the action - I posted about the Proposed lens a few weeks back under Fast Glass.
I managed to buy the 30mm F1.4 lens (the same As I had on loan) a few days before the event. The other thing I got hold of was a light meter.
The day before the actual event was the very first time I was able to see the venue and I was able to do some preperation. For my preperation, I walked all around the venue with my light meter and took readings of the expected conditions.
I was proven to have made the right choice in the lens as even though the hall was not dark, it certainly was not brilliant for taking photos!
The light consisted of 4 factors - the sunlight coming in thru open doors, sunlight thru opaque windows, sunlight bouncing off the varnished wooden floors and the Halogen lights within the building. Not only was there several light sources, they were all different temperatures so white balance would be a nightmare as well - especially as nearly everyone would be wearing white!
Now, I knew that the miniman acceptable speed to shoot at would be around 1/100sec, so I had to basically adjust everything to acheive this speed. I ended up shooting at F1.6, ISO 200 and varied between 1/80sec and 1/125sec as the light changed during the day.
Being the officail photographer of the event meant that we (I had someone else shooting some of what I could not cover) had access to any area we needed. This made it very easy for us to wanter around and select the best spot to photograph the action and the overall event as well.
The event went from around 9am till about 4:30pm and I shot just over 600 photos. I culled them to around 300.
Well, I have a few favourites from the day
The above photo is my pick from the day - It captures not only the competitor standing up ready, but the other competitors waiting to compete in the same event and more competitors lined up next to the 2nd ring
The above photo was of some demonstrations - all of the competitors were sitting and watching on 1 ring, the demonstation was on the other ring and the spectators were also looking on.
Finally, a shot of one of the team Kata events. I think this particular team came 2nd in the event.
The setup was pretty good - I had a dedicated spot to have my Camera gear set up so I could easily grab what I needed, charge batteries, copy Flash Cards to my PSD and a laptop etc.
The best compliment I got was a thanks from the Organiser of the event once they saw the Gallery of photos I had put together of the event. Now, I just hope I can manage to sell a few prints to make it all (financially) worthwhile.
