Master Vernon Low and Chief Instructor John O’Brien visited Perth recently for another round of advanced instruction. Master Low spent a considerable amount of time on breaking techniques needed for promotion into the black belt ranks. The photograph below shows him explaining some adjustments to a student’s side kick technique. The foreground blur is from the backs of other students who were watching and learning; in this particular case, I framed the scene this way to convey a sense of being in the midst of a group of spectators (it would have been easy enough to step forward a bit and focus solely on the main subject, if I’d wanted to).
The next two photographs show consecutive frames from an action sequence, though cropped slightly differently. The first frame is just before the peak moment of action, but I think it makes a decent picture in its own right. The second frame is very slightly after the peak moment of action, and would probably be the frame that made it to publication, if I were a news photographer.
The next picture has a different subject at a similar point in the kicking sequence as the first frame in the pair immediately above. Here, the subject is kicking with her left leg, whereas the previous subject was kicking with his right leg. I also managed to eke out a bit more exposure on this particular frame, while preserving the highlights; notice that it is slightly brighter overall than the two frames above, but without the brightest sections of the image becoming ‘burned out’ (pure white). Looser framing would provide more context for the action, including the height of the subjects off the ground—but at the cost of less visual detail in the subjects themselves.
Shooting action in low light is, very much, a balancing act. Timing (too early or too late are no good), exposure duration, and many other factors come into play. Thankfully, for breaking sequences like those above, the photographer can fix some parameters (e.g., framing, ISO) without too much difficulty, and then it becomes a question of optimising the settings or choices for the remaining parameters.
Incidentally, I was shooting at 5 fps above, and that was barely enough for the low light action on the occasion. I was relying more on experience than on raw shooting speed to try to capture the peak moments of action. Eight fps would have been possible, with the added weight and bulk of a battery pack for the camera (a Nikon D700). Newer prosumer and professional DSLR bodies would have no problems meeting or exceeding 8 fps without extra components.