Pro Wrestling Ulster Shoot

Sunday night meant the chance to shoot with the amazing local talent that is the Pro Wrestling Ulster Crew. As father Ted would have said, they're a great bunch of lads. This was the "Proving Grounds" even which was a chance for newcomers from the organisation's training academy to experience their first public bouts in front of a paying audience. It was great to see new characters, and there was obviously a lot of work had gone into the preparation.

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Apart from the action stuff, there is always plenty of scope for other type of shot, particularly when it comes to grappling and submission holds. Which does tend to lend itself to a spot of black and white.

 JDP (the one in the air) is a big guy but very athletic. As in, I couldnt-do-that-in-a-million-years athletic.

The belly slap and ripple effect - this was the second time I caught this in a bout and it doesn't half look really weird. 

 The last event was a royal rumble-style free-for-all with all the wrestlers getting into the ring and the last one standing being the winner. This was a nightmare to shoot and I have no idea how to approach this if it comes up again in the future.

Wrestling in Black and White

I got to shoot my second bout of pro wrestling last Sunday night. You can see the whole shooting match (so to speak) on my Flickr stream here:

Pro Wrestling Ulster on Flickr

While working through these I took a wee bit of a shine to the monochrome shots I'd processed. As always, it seemed to be the high contrast shots with a wee bit of drama that worked best in black and white. Here's the selection.

2013 365-17

I haven't been well this week, and the medical opinion is divided, to say the least. It's either a real nasty infection or some weird muscle problem. The result is few photos, but here they are anyway. Shorter descriptions than usual (every cloud has a silver lining) due to a splitting headache.

22/04/13

It was great to see how well the new lighting set up worked. The two shots (above and below) show what I like about it. Nice exposures at really low ISO and good depth of field.

23/04/13

24/04/13

I was outside trying to play kerbsie with Sarah with one of those really cheap plastic balls when I noticed how well it glowed when the sun was behind it. Quick dash into the house for the camera and there you have it.

25/04/13

This is Lola the house rabbit, belongs to my eldest daughter Siobhan.

26/04/13

..and this is Siobhan with her lastest stuffed animal purchase from the auction rooms. I had to drive her home with an antelope head in the front seat and a stuffed fox in the back. I'm not making it up.

27/04/13

Second chance this weekend to shoot wrestling in Belfast. As much fun as the last time and my timing was a little better than before.

28/04/13

Pro Wrestling Ulster

I had my first chance to shoot some local wrestling bouts on Sunday night, courtesy of Pro Wrestling Ulster. The event was in the ballroom of the Balmoral Hotel, Belfast and there was reasonable crowd turned up. The crew at the event were really helpful, with lots of tips and suggestions for what/where to shoot. Technically, this was a difficult one due to the poor lighting in the venue, and my original idea of shooting using only ambient light went out the window very quickly. Using on-camera flash was also awkward, since I didn't want to blind someone while they were leaping off the top rope. The solution seemed to be to use bounce flash with the very low and white ceiling as the target. I ended up shooting at 1/500sec, somewhere between f3.5 and f5 and with the ISO set to auto (it seemed to range between 4000 and 6400.

As always with wrestling (or at least what I've seen on TV) there's a lot of theatricality and that definitely makes for good shots.

Catching the various wrestlers when they're not actually throwing each other around the ring was also pretty easy and yielded some nice shots.

But, of course, it all comes down to the action. Guys in mid-air, guys hitting each other, guys hitting the floor of the ring hard. As with any new sport, I had issues with my timing and angles. This meant I was spending a lot of time on the move trying to figure where and what to shoot. I ended up with a reasonable collection of shots by the end of the night, but also a fair number of "duds" for the trash basket. Some more experience might make this a bit less "hit and miss" if I get asked back.