Earlier this week, I conducted a photography workshop for First Tae Kwon Do Western Australia. There are several photographers in the FTKD WA community who give generously of their time and energy to contribute pictures, many of which appear on FTKD WA’s Facebook site and FTKD WA’s Instagram site. This workshop was an opportunity to go over some basic principles and techniques for people who are new to martial art photography.
Amongst other things, we went through techniques for stabilising the camera and lens by using solid shooting stances, optimal positioning for photographing martial artists, and framing. Speaking of framing, one of the general rules of thumb that most new photographers probably want to follow is to frame their pictures more tightly—in other words, they shouldn’t leave too much ’empty space’ around their subjects.
There will, of course, be times when we might want to frame more loosely, such as in the group portrait below. In this case, the intent was to capture not just the four subjects, but the banner in the background and some of the environment (their training hall). Close-up portraits are good, but sometimes we want to show the surroundings to give context to the picture.
At other times, we really do want the subject to dominate the image, such as in the photograph below. Working with a vertically oriented frame can feel limiting at times; the usual 3:2 ratio can be ‘too tall’ for the subjects, with empty space at the top and bottom of the frame. One way to fill the frame with the subject is to have him/her execute a technique, and a side kick (shot from an appropriate angle) can be a good choice. The subject’s body forms a ‘Y’ shape, with the head, kicking foot, and stabilising foot forming visual points of interest in a balanced way across the frame. The limbs also naturally lead the viewer’s eye to the subject’s face, which will be the main point of interest.
One of the challenges of shooting a technique like this is that the subject’s belt can obscure the subject’s face at times. It’s easy enough to shoot several frames, and then choose the one that looks the best.