ONE Fighting Championship - Warrior Spirit

About a week ago I had the chance of shooting for a major MMA event --- the ONE Fighting Championship - Warrior Spirit held at Stadium Putra Bukit Jalil. I felt privileged to have been given access to a photography area in the arena quite close to the ring which gave me better photographic opportunities compared to even the VIP seats. Also my cousin Ashraf was kind enough to lend me his D7000 and Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8, a combination of which gave me the ability to shoot zoom in lowlight conditions where flash photography is not allowed. I used quite a high ISO, generally 3200 and above for all these shots, but the Nikon D7000 handled it perfectly well without too much noise.

Behold, some of the shots I managed to take of the bouts.

WELTERWEIGHT CLASS

Steven Durr of the USA grappling Samir Mrabet of Belgium...

... but in the end, Samir Mrabet managed to convince all the judges that the match was in his favor.

FLYWEIGHT CLASS

Malaysia's Saiful Merican (black shorts) tries to take down Tok Sophon of Cambodia.

Saiful dominates most of the match with Tok Sophon.

With a bleeding cut above his left eye, Tok Sophon lost the match to Saiful Merican by judges' unanimous decision.

Malaysians: Gianni Suba vs Chen Yun Ting

Gianni Suba won the match by TKO.

FEATHERWEIGHT CLASS

A.J. Lias Mansor vs Melvin Yeoh, both from Malaysia.

Lias won the match by judges' unanimous decision.

MAD RESPECT FOR THIS MAN --- he announces that he will donate all his winning prize money towards helping the victims of the recent typhoon disaster in the Philippines. Article here.

 LIGHTWEIGHT CLASS

Malaysia's Peter Davis vs. Egypt's Alaa Mazloum

Peter Davis managed to win the match through submission by rear naked choke

HEAVYWEIGHT CLASS

Americans Chris Lokteff and Tony Johnson's fight got bloody really quickly

In the end, Lokteff scraped the win by judges' split decision

MIDDLEWEIGHT CLASS

Brayan Rafiq (France) sizes up Leandro Ataides (Brazil) at the beginning of their match

Rafiq manages to deflect a kick from Ataides

The match ended with a win to Leandro Ataides when he managed to punch Brayan Rafiq to KO.

CATCHWEIGHT CLASS

A lot of punches and takedowns during the match between Yusup Saadulaev (USA) and Adriano Moraes (Brazil)

It was quite a gripping match between the two MMA fighters

The match was too close to call, but in the end the judges gave the match to Saadulaev by split decision

I also managed to spot some familiar faces in the arena and after the event.

Jason Lo, CEO of TuneTalk

Moots! of the Malaysian band Pop Shuvit

Moots! was cool enough when I asked to take a picture with him!

For more photos from the event, you can visit my FB page at Ihsankhairir Photography. Please support me by Liking the page as well!

Cheers!

-ihsankhairir-

Happy Merdeka, Malaysia!

Last night was Merdeka Eve for us Malaysians. Every year at midnight of 31st August, Malaysians celebrate the nation's Independence Day with family and friends, traditionally at locations of interest such as Merdeka Square and Putrajaya.

The Putrajaya International Fireworks Competition 2013 kicked off last night during Merdeka Eve with team Malaysia's brilliant display of lights and colors. I took this chance to further my photographic explorations with my first attempt at multiple exposure photography to capture the brilliant and vibrant fireworks display at night. I took a lot of photos, but for now let me share just one of them...

Click on the photo above for a bigger view!

I shall update this blog with more photos later with explanations of how I shot the fireworks photos and some of the post-production involved. Until then, Happy Merdeka, Malaysia!

P/S: Happy Independence Day, Trinidad and Tobago (this one is for my dear friend, Kristen!)

A Return to Event Photography --- A Malay Solemnization Ceremony

With the revival of my SB-600 speedlight comes my return to taking photos of events, the first of which was my cousin's solemnization ceremony at her home in Petaling Jaya.

The solemnization ceremony was held in her house with a relatively low white ceiling, so it was a really good environment for shooting with the speedlight aimed straight up to get some even, neutral bounced light from above. This way, the subjects were evenly lit and harsh shadows were almost undetectable, except in some photos.

The key event in solemnization is the akad nikah, where the wali, in most cases the father of the bride, gives away the bride to the groom in an exchange of ijabkabul (the acceptance of vows or agreement). As I was not the official photographer for this event, I did not position myself in the best location for capturing this event, therefore the above photo was the best one I could get of the akad nikah ceremony.

Also due to the overwhelming large number of people present and the layout of the house, my cousin the bride was only able to witness the akad nikah through a live video screening. I imagine her having mixed feelings of nervousness and joy as she watched her husband-to-be recite his 'qabul' in response of agreement to her father's 'ijab' on the screen. Once the recital of the ijab and qabul was over, the couple is considered ceremoniously married.

I know at once my cousin was glad the ceremony went on smoothly without a hitch.

After the traditional and religious ceremony was over, the relatively more modern/western influenced exchanging of the rings was done.

The exchanging of the rings were also accompanied by the 'official' kissing of the hand, the Malay version of 'you may now kiss'.

As Malay and Islamic traditions discourage public displays of affection, this kissing of the hand (and sometimes forehead) would be the first intimate moment between the couple that the family and friends may witness.

Close family members are usually dressed in some predetermined theme or color scheme for the occasion, and this rare consistency in outfits is always a good time for a quick and fun family photoshoot.

I know the sisters enjoyed the fun shooting sessions a lot, with all the funny props.

Also, since the bride was prettily prepped for the ceremony, she would take the chance of this rare occasion for some personal portrait shots, along with her husband.

As you can see, since I was not the official photographer, it was difficult for me to get eye contact from the subjects since it was not my photoshoot session, hence the off-camera look of the subjects.

Overall, I was quite happy with how the photos turned out, especially when I was able to work with the environment and the lighting really well. Of course, with any piece of artistic work feedback and comments would very much help in improving my future work, so I would really love to hear from you regarding the shots above, or any of my other photo works in the past.

I have some more events to shoot already lined up this month, so be prepared to see some updates on those!

-ihsankhairir-

Colorful Light Painting [Photography]

Another one of my many explorations in photography is light painting. It requires a camera that is able to capture long exposures --- shutter speeds that are slow enough that the exposure is more than a second up to a few hours, maybe even more.

There are many different types of light painting photos --- some incorporate the background or landscape it is set in, others include the person who does the light painting. The type that I experimented with involve a simple dark background, so that the one and only feature in the photo would be the light painting itself.

For the following photos, I used a simple toy with colorful blinking lights that changes color rapidly.

It's a 8-buck toy that I purchased at the Kg Kuantan Fireflies Complex

I prefocused my camera to a certain distance, and set the exposure to either 5, 10 or 20 seconds, depending on how elaborate I wanted my light painting to be. I used minimal ISO (either 100 or 200) so that I don't get noise in the photo due to an underexposed background. The aperture is set to be 3.5 or above so that I don't get any bokeh effects from the lights.

Room was set to almost total darkness, for safety purposes.

Below are some selected light painting photos from my quick experimentation:

If you look carefully you can see that some might contain some bokeh effects, others are a bit overexposed. Of course, I require a lot more practice and experimentation with this technique before I really get the hang of it.

What do you think of my light paintings here? Any comments and suggestions will be very much appreciated!

Shots Using a Crude DIY Mini White Studio

For nearly six months I have been going on without a proper working speedlight as mine was burnt out. Thankfully the speedlight has been fixed and two days ago I went to pick it up at the Nikon service centre, and my SB-600 came back working like new again.

Which means I can start exploring other types of photography, ones I haven't tried yet.

One of them is white studio.

Of course, I have not the resources to go and rent a white studio for photoshoots, so I constrained the scope into capturing small objects in closeup shots.

And for that purpose, I made myself a DIY mini white studio.

The results of the shots taken in the the mini white studio:

I realize I might need to work out more on how the objects are lit in order to get a consistent infinite white background. For my first ever few shots I think they turned out ok. What do you think?

As for the mini studio, this is how it looks like:

As I said, it is quite crudely made, but it served its purpose.

What do you think of the shots? Any suggestions for improvement are very much appreciated!