There are a number of ways you can take martial arts photography in a way that makes it feel more like art. This isn’t a tutorial on how to take good martial arts photography, but rather how to make a few simple tweaks to your own work that will make it feel more like art.
One tip is to work with multiple lights. If you’re photographing something with your camera pointed straight at the subject, the light will be diffuse and hard to hit. This will make the subject look more like a silhouette. You may want to try moving your camera to the side of the subject, allowing the light to hit the subject from a slightly different angle.
Another tip is to work with multiple shutter speeds. This will make the subject pop more. You may want to try using a slower shutter speed if you’re photographing something that is hard to keep still.
This time the subject has been caught and is being brutally punished. The trick is to be able to make out the character in the picture. This is more difficult than usual, as the subject’s head is not visible by using a flash, but a dark enough background will make it easier.
I like to use a shutter speed of 1/60sec. This makes the subject pop and can be used to make out the person’s face. This is more time consuming, but the subject’s face will pop more. This is useful as you can often get more detail in your portraits than the background itself. This is especially helpful if you’re looking at action figures.
I’ve seen a lot of people make fun of myself for being a photographer, and I get it. I really do, and I know that I am a good photographer, but I’m just not good enough. I’m not going to deny that I get a lot of stuff right, and I try to do it better than anybody else. But I’m not there yet.
You must admit that you have the best of all possible cameras in your hands. You have a 35mm SLR, with a wide viewfinder, that lets you see more of the subject in the picture, letting you capture the action more clearly than your smartphone camera would. This lets you take action shots of your subjects that are super crisp with lots of detail.
And you have a lens that lets you capture the action the camera couldn’t. The 35mm fisheye lens is the same lens that the human eye uses to see color. But the human eye is a special camera with an optically correct sensor size. When you have a lens that lets you capture the action more clearly, you can capture the subject from a different angle, and the subject can appear bigger on the screen.
You can achieve this with a wide-angle lens, but then you lose the depth and realism of the video you’re shooting. And you can achieve it with a telephoto lens by switching the camera to a more manual mode. And of course, you can do both simultaneously.
Thanks to an app called “HuffPo Eye,” a photographer can use a camera like this with a telephoto lens to take amazing macro shots. The difference between the results are so subtle that a professional can tell the difference from a macro shot to a normal photograph. You can get a real close-up photo of someone’s eye with this app.
