I originally provided the advice below to the Rhee Tae Kwon-Do Perth Region Photography Group in 2008, and perhaps it might be of some help to publish it here (slightly edited).
Technique
To be a successful RTKD photographer, you have to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills and the right equipment. Miss any one of these key elements and you won’t be able to take the take the ‘best’ picture possible. To some extent, a strength in one of these elements might make up for a weakness in another—for example, you might not be able to get to the best place for a picture, but appropriate equipment might be able to make up for this somewhat.
Right Place
If you are trying to take a picture of someone’s face, the best position is not when you are behind him/her. There are some ways around this (e.g., by using a mirror), but the most obvious thing to do is move yourself to a place where you can see his/her face. The same goes for being too far away from your subject (the person or thing you are taking a picture of). If you want to take the best picture possible, you need to make sure that you are in the right place. This means you have to recognise whether you are the best place, move if you are not there yet, and move quickly so that you don’t miss the opportunity.
Life doesn’t stand still, and if you miss an opportunity for a good picture then it might never come back. A good example of this is wedding photography—weddings are a ‘once in a lifetime’ event, so any serious wedding photographer is working under immense pressure. In RTKD terms, pictures of a successful candidate’s promotion is a similar example. You are simply not going to get good pictures if you are standing 20 m away, unless you really know what you are doing.
Right Time
Being a skilled photographer means that you have to recognise where you have to be, and then make sure that you get there in time. It doesn’t help if you get to the right place … three seconds too late. As a photographer, you have to be observant and predict what is going to happen. This applies whether you are shooting portraits or action. The slower the action, the easier it is to predict and get to the right place ahead of time, but the same principle applies.
If you’ve been to any large events where photographers are not restricted to certain areas, you will probably have noticed that photographers are ‘pushy’ or ‘no nonsense’ about getting around the location. This isn’t necessarily because they’re trying to be rude or insensitive, but they recognise that they have to be in the right place at the right time, and are doing whatever it takes to get there.
Right Skills
Photography involves both artistic skills and technical skills. You could have an artistic photograph that is very poor, technically, and you could also have a technically superior photograph that is very poor, artistically. For example:
- Good artistic skill, bad technical skill = a well-composed, visually interesting picture that is badly underexposed (too dark).
- Good technical skill, bad artistic skill = a well-exposed photograph of someone in front of a tree … where the tree appears to be growing out of the subject’s head.
What I said above about being in the right place at the right time certainly counts as photographic skill, but here I am talking about the skills involved after you make sure that time and place are sorted out. These skills would include visual composition and shooting technique (how you stand, how you hold the camera, etc.).
Right Equipment
Photography is one of those things that does depend, to a significant extent, on your equipment. Unfortunately, with the increasing affordability of photography with the digital era, a lot of people seem to have put too much emphasis on their equipment. A poor photographer with an expensive camera is still a poor photographer! Better equipment can make up for some things, but usually only if you know what you are doing. In most cases, the skill of the photographer will make much more difference to the quality of the pictures than the camera being used.
In digital photography, there are essentially two types of cameras that most people use, divided by the size of the imaging sensor (which replaces the film in traditional photography and is, essentially, unlimited in use). Most small digital cameras—point-and-shoot (P&S)—have a relatively small imaging sensor. Digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras have a sensor that is usually around two-thirds the size of a frame of 35 mm film. While P&S cameras tend to be self-contained (including both camera body and lens), DSLRs feature inter-changeable lenses. This might sound like a drawback to some, but the point of this is that different lenses are ‘best’ in different situations. Keeping the lens and camera body as discrete components thus makes for a much more flexible photographic tool.
Larger sensors are more expensive to make than smaller sensors, and usually gives much better image quality. Larger sensors are also able to work with much lower light levels than smaller sensors. This is important for us, in particular, since most of the places we shoot will have low light levels. Camera manufacturers also use better supplementary systems (e.g., much faster autofocus) in their DSLR models than in their P&S models. Put all of this together, and it is clear that DSLRs are much, much better for action photography and anything in low light (e.g., shooting in gymnasiums, church halls, etc.) than P&S cameras.
Of course, camera manufacturers make a whole range of models to try to capture the entire market; this is why you have some P&S cameras that are just as expensive as the low-end DSLR cameras (currently around $600–$800). In general, a low-end DSLR camera is going to be a much better photographic tool than an expensive P&S camera.
As far as RTKD photography is concerned, realistically speaking, if you have a P&S then it would mainly be good for portrait, pattern, and some breaking photographs. For sparring and other fast action, you need a DSLR if you want to do the job properly. With time and experience, I think you’ll come to see why I make such a strong statement on this.
If you are serious about photography or about RTKD action photography in particular, I highly recommend that you do not buy a P&S but instead save your money for a DSLR. If you already have a P&S, no loss. The P&S can be kept as a backup or for other situations, such as when you travel (where a small and light camera will be more useful than a large and heavy camera).