The Other Sweet Science

Never show up to an event an hour and a half late and expect to catch a good spot to shoot photos, but that's exactly what I did Thursday night for the 686 Charity Boxing event. Considering the extreme amount of pain I was in, I couldn't push my way to the front of the crowd for fear of being trampled, but I did catch 100 photos. At first I tried keeping my iso low, to about 400, but I have never shot at a set iso as low as 200 so it was very difficult. Like a boxer under pressure I resorted to the what I know best, eventually turning up my iso to 1000, but I tried to remember the formula Ken Visio gave us and tried to shoot all these photos at 45mm, with a 1/40-1/60 SS on manual.

The photos are something like a young boxer feeling his first time out in the ring, ruff, raw and left a little blurry. Photography is a sweet science, sometimes you get thrown a left hook in the middle of the ring (environment) and your reaction shows more about who you are than anything, can you adapt? will you be able to recover from an unexpected blow?

So I kept adjusting my SS, with imaging getting clearer, but losing some of the light, maybe something a LED attached light could have helped with? I usually perform better under pressure, but in this instance considering my weak physical state, I decided to throw in the towel for the night and try my luck on another occasion. However I did see a correlation between my shutter speed and my proximity to the subjects I was shooting. I could have went in closer with my zoom to 55mm, but I wanted to crop with my legs, unfortunately with a packed house and me not showing up early, I was punched in the face with straight reality; show up early to get a good spot and prepare your light measurements before the action starts. Until next time, Ontoneyo.

P.S. Gross moment of the night, after the second match, a bloody towel was thrown into the crowd and a observer stuck it in his mouth and shook it like a dog with a bone. To the amusement and disgust of the "referee," who looked like he was going to puke until a square glasses wearing young hot hipster offered him some champagne, or as hipsters call it, PBR. Fun night considering all the elements and long day I had previous to. Moral of the story; Stay healthy and be prepared.