One Chance in the Blink of an Eye

Any constructive critiques would be greatly appreciated. Please take a

look at the full size photograph and technical details for more

information on the shooting conditions. Thank you.

This is what I think: It has good composition, great timing (stick just hitting to head), good, shallow dof, it would perhaps look better if it was less toned, but othervise BW work is good and it has enough contrast (at least for me). It would perhaps also work with different kind of focus; if the head where stick is hitting, was sharp... ...hmmm perhaps not as well as now. No ratings, a s l a

I think the timing and depth of field worked great in this. Good job in capturing the face through the helmet. Black and white works well.

Thank you for the thoughts on my photograph. I'll be sure to leave comments on your photos as well. I didn't intentionally tone the photograph, but instead relied on Power Retouche's Black & White Studio, an Adobe Photoshop plug-in, which did the work for me. Being a sports photograph, I was primarily interested in capturing the peak action close up and getting some emotion despite the face mask being in the way. I was quite happy that I was able to get a good image with the attacker's eyes clearly shown through the bars of the face mask. The action was quite hard to catch not only because of the speed at which they attacked, but also because they tried to avoid "telegraphing" their techniques. In other words, they tried to hide what techniques they were going to use in order to cleanly strike their opponent when their opponent's guard was momentarily down. That also made this kind of image much more difficult to capture. Thanks again.