People at play

[thkn777]

These people demonstrated some juijitsu style fighting (am not an expert, sorry) and then showed some "real life"/street fight situations (self-defense theme). I especially like the facial expressions and motion blur elements.

Regards,
Th.

#1 - fighting with a staff

[thkn777]

#2 - self defense at a simulated "street fight/attack"

[calr]

I really don't care too much for either of these photos. In the first, it is obvious that martial arts is involved but difficult to tell exactly what is going on. In the second, it is also difficult to tell what is happening. It appears the girl is holding the man's leg but I can't really tell what kind of moves are taking place.

Note--I am not much of a fan of martial arts so that may be clouding my evaluation of these photos. I do like to see some good kick boxing once in awhile. (e.g. Walker!).

Cal

[JohnG]

Shot 1: I think some motion blur definitely works with a shot like this. But I think there's too much. As Cal pointed out, it would work a bit better if you could see it was a staff he were using. That's the type of shot I would try several different shutter speeds at. Also the WB is a bit off. But I DO like the idea of the shot.

shot 2: this one doesn't work well for me. First, there's a lot of noise in the shot. Second the framing is a bit odd - I think this would have worked better as a portrait orientation shot getting the legs in the shot. Presumably she is going to do a sweep or throw after having trapped his kick, so this is the less interesting part of the move. And, assuming that's a beer bottle in the background I'm guessing this is a home and not a dojo. If this IS an informal setting I would suggest using a flash so you could get better DOF, better stop action and a lot less noise.

Hopefully you take this advice in the spirit in which it is intended.

Thanks for sharing!

[thkn777]

Hey, thank you for the constructive comments.

I've got the feeling that I misinterpreted the challenge a bit after seeing other entries, but that's life... I was especially looking for scenes with people doing something *together* and where you see the peoples facial expressions, thus I came up with "dancing" and "fighting".

Some background. That was a demonstration of a local martial arts group, at first they showed some fights with bare hands, staffs and such, then they changed clothes and showed some "real life scenes". #2 started with the guy attacking the woman, then she grabbed his leg to finally thow him out of balance.

I'll add a sequence to show that scenery (middle image is #2). Unfortunately it's "2 threads / 2 pics" for the challenge so I couldn't show that.

@Calr
I appreciate your opinion - for me it is very clear, what is happening, since I was there and saw it happen... good to know that other people have problems with those images. It's part of the photographers job to choose those images and present them in a way, that the audience is actually able to see what he was trying to show. I seem to lack skills here - will work on it.

@JohnG
I had no chance of trying things also it was the first time I used my A 50/1.7 lens for such stuff, without flash and with MF... (no excuse for a blurred picture, just an explanation). My skills with using flash are very limited, my tries so far were... hm... not to my liking. It might have something to do with the fact, that I only use the in-camera flash or don't have the feeling for a good flash setup. I'd really like to improve here.

Regarding WB... the whole scenery was lit by some yellow-ish lights, also the wooden wall panels, the parquet flooringand the room decoration added to that lighting and I couldn't convince myself to "correct this away". To be honest I was expecting comments about WB, but to me it looks more natural (as in - it really looked that way).

As for the comments - I am ok with getting advises/hints, whatever. I think you really looked at the images, thought over it and then expressed your opinion. That's what everyone wants and has to expect when he/she publishes pictures here. Thanks for taking the time to do so.

Best regards and happy snapping,
Th.