I was lucky enough to get to Lemesia 2005 Boxing championship in time. And not only that - I also had a pass into a VIP area and all around the stadium, thanks to a certain someone.
Not that it helped me much in my photography quest though. While I could enjoy the fights from a really close range, photographing those still was a challange. The biggest issue was, as usual with this type of events - light. There was simply not enough of it. Few lamps made it possible to watch the matches, but making pictures of fast moving subjects could have been possible only with a good flash unit, which I don’t have. Yet.
The second obstacle was - ropes. There were four thick ropes going around the ring. While that was something you could filter out with your mind, taking those out of the pictures weren’t possible. In fact, the close I went to the ring, the bigger problem those ropes were. Finally, I moved away and up into the audience to be slightly above those ropes. For that I used my 75-300 IS USM lens, which is not as fast as the 50mm/1.8. ISO 1600 added lots of grain and on-camera flash unit resulted in a lot of red eyes.
But I did my best. I shot plenty of images and later had a lot to choose from. Enjoy!
Now, the boxing. As it was the first day of the competition, there were some good fights and there were some bad ones. Few fights were very boring with opponents investigating each other for three or four rounds without any actions. Other fights were exciting because of all the action. Few knockdowns, a couple of broken noses, few dislocated thumbs - the usual mix.
Overall I had a lot of fun watching the fights, talking with a few people I knew, and photographing this whole thing. If you didn’t go - you missed a lot. Especially considering that the entrance was free for everyone.
Album location: /photos/2005/2005-10-14_Lemesia_Boxing
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