Midwest Classic Wrestling Meet

A buddy of mine called me last week to see if I could help him cover the Midwest Classic wrestling meet at the University of Indianapolis on Saturday (1.6.07). It had been a while since I had photographed sports of any kind but I thought this would be a fun way to get back into it on a semi-professional level. My Canon 350D (XT) isn't what anyone would call a pro camera but I was excited to see what it could do in that setting. I made almost 500 photographs in the six hours we were there and everything worked beautifully. Since I only have two lenses for that camera so far (the 50mm f1.8 and the 17-85mm f4.0 USM IS), I borrowed my friend's Canon 70-200mm f2.8L. That was a fun lens to use! Beforehand, he rigged two Dynalite 1,000w/s strobes in the rafters that we each controlled using radio slaves attached to the hotshoes of our cameras. This worked out really well, except for us occasionally shooting at almost the same time. Whoever fired first got the light. The other guy got a really dark frame. Out of 500 shots, I think it only happened to me about five or six times. That's not bad since each of us were covering two mats that were in constant use.

I converted them to b&w because it reminds me of when I used to shoot sports on film... back in the day. Remember film? Black and white? Tri-X? TMAX3200? Anyone? Ah, yes, the stink of stopbath and fix on my hands. Those were the days...

Anyhoo, here are a few examples: