Master Vernon Low visited Perth recently and provided personal instruction to senior-ranked First Tae Kwon Do members preparing for their black belt gradings. Master Low spent considerable time examining each member’s kicking techniques, then teaching and adjusting them to strike with more precision, power, and balance.
On this occasion, I was shooting with my 70–200 mm f/2.8 lens. Even though the venue was fairly well lit, by school gymnasium standards, it would have been a struggle to capture any fast action. As it was, framing and timing—rather than high-speed continuous shooting—were the order of the day. Despite being only f/2.8, the telephoto nature of this lens helps separate the foreground and background to a good degree.
When we rescale images to smaller sizes, apparent depth of field increases, so more of the picture appears to be in focus. (Think of ‘thumbnail’ images on websites; detail is obviously missing, but the overall perception is of a scene that is mostly in focus.) I mention this because, even though the images above are relatively small (600 x 400 pixels), the foreground-background separation is still clearly visible. At larger sizes, the images would look even better.