Yesterday, a friend of mine tested for second degree black belt in aikido. As long as I was there, I took photos of the two belt tests.
It was a very challenging venue to photograph, as sunlight from the two skylights hit the wall, and some of the mat behind the action. There was one spot, where I could shoot from the side, and avoid the patches of light, but then I wasn't sitting with the other students, and I was worried the sensei wouldn't call on me to participate in my friend's test. As it turns out, the sensei was so focused on the test, he forgot that I was there and only called members of the dojo. In any event, I did my best to work around shooting into the light, as well as trying various exposures, whether it was way underexposing on the people so as to reduce overexposure in the hot spots, or just exposing for the people, bright background be damned. In retrospect, when I processed the photos, I practiced the principles of aikido and rather than trying to fight the hot spots, I went with them, often using the dodge tool to white out large expanses of the background to meld with the blown out sections. In one case I went for extreme contrast, blowing out everything light, or in the background, and bringing the people full dark. Just out of a sense of perversity, I did my best to maintain the blue of the mat, so that the only color in the photo, is something that's almost irrelevant to the action. The result of my thrash to deal with the horrid lighting was the sensei posting this comment to my facebook post of the link to the pictures: "Your work is amazing! I love your photos of the test, including the effects that emerged when you shot into the sunlight on the wall. These are some of my favorite aikido photos ever, and I'm really looking forward to posting some of them on the website." So, it's funny how you can make the best of a bad situation, and if you don't mention that it wasn't what you meant to do all along, rather than being complimented for making the results not suck too bad, someone can be really impressed and think that you're a creative genius. I wasn't going to post the set, because with all of the technical difficulties I had, I wasn't really please with any of the shots, but since I was so amused by Nick's reaction.... http://www.flickriver.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157626831857291/ -- Larry Colen l...@red4est.com sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
