ronbeaubien

<p>I live in Tokyo and photograph martial arts on a regular basis. As martial arts uniforms often come in a variety of extreme colors (white for karate or judo and a deep indigo for kendo), I almost always shoot in manual mode when indoors. Outside or where the lighting is more variable, I'll usually shoot in aperture priority mode but increase or decrease the exposure to keep from blowing out the highlights or to avoid getting an image that is too dark.</p>

<p>I use a lot of fast prime lenses, especially Canon's 200mm F1.8 L and 135mm F2 L when indoors. Outdoors I often work with a 200mm F2.8 L zoom lens with the image stabilization turned on. I use auto focus all of the time, but there is a constant need to adjust the focus point to be on the competitor's eyes as I'm often working with such a limited depth of field. Still, the results can be amazing:</p>

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<p>In addition to the above, I always shoot in RAW mode in order to get the highest quality digital file possible. Indoor lighting conditions can be tricky, but with a RAW file I always have a second chance to make adjustments to the white balance later.</p>

Hello,

I enjoy photographing a variety of traditional Japanese martial arts, including kendo. I recently added a kendo photograph to my gallery which may be of interest to you. I also included my camera settings in the "details" section as well.

http://www.photo.net/photo/6219520

Any critiques, ratings, thoughts, or recommendations on the photo would be greatly appreciated.

In addition, more specific information and my thoughts on the photograph can be found here:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/11/prweb481202.htm

I have also found photographing kendo to be quite difficult. The venues are so dark with mixed lighting and the movement erratic and fast. It makes it very difficult to get a decent picture.

I think I can shed some light on this subject.

Last year I won the grand prize in the All Japan Kendo Federation's 10 Kendo Photo Contest. This is the same contest that is mentioned above.

I uploaded the winning image to Photo.net's gallery for your viewing pleasure here:

http://www.photo.net/photo/6219520

The official results in Japanese and the other prize-winning photos can be found here:

http://www.kendo.or.jp/picture/index.html#02

The English language press release is here:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/11/prweb481202.htm

Apparently the rules of the contest have changed since the original question was posted. When I submitted my photograph last year, I was not required to surrender copyright as described above.

Instead, photographers were allowed to retain copyright of their photographs. However, the All Japan Kendo Federation reserved the right to publish the prize-winning images first in their own publications. That seems quite fair.

Actually, the All Japan Kendo Federation even went so far as to pass on a publication request from Japan Airlines, so that even after winning the contest, I was still able to successfully license the usage of the same photograph in other publications.