I experimented “pushing” a film to achieve a certain feel to my photos. The first set of pics were taken in the Affliction MMA (mixed martial arts) event at the Honda Center. Shooting a combative sport in BW is something that I’ve always wanted to do. I was able to shoot Long Beach Fight Night in BW, it was fun but the film was not pushed. Saturday night, I wanted to capture one of the best fighters of the sport in BW. His name is Fedor Emelianenko. He came to Anaheim, from Russia, to defend his belt against another top HW in the game. Watching Fedor fight is like seeing Michael Jordan play live in the NBA, or Tiger Woods play golf. So, I wanted my shots to feel “epic,” and that there was a sense of importance in this fight.

The Honda Center at night.

We bought nosebleed seats for $50, so our seats were near the roof. I thought it was cool how I can capture the whole arena from our vantage point. But, it was too far to capture the action, especially with the 28mm lens that I had.

Luckily, an hour and a half later, an usher offered us floor seatings because they didn’t want the arena to look empty on PPV. With our new seats, i was surprised at how close we were to the ring. Now, i was able to take pictures closer to the action.

The face-off.

Of course, Fedor won via brutal KO. I captured that moment seconds after his opponent dropped to the canvas, but I used my Digital SLR for that because I attached a 50-200 mm lens with it. As far as the 35mm camera goes, I should have switched to the 50mm lens that I had, but at the same time, I was worried that I might have issues with the depth of field later on. Oh well, you take what you can and roll with it.

Fedor emerges victorious. Shot with the XTi (50-200mm lens).

The rest of the Affliction album is here:
Affliction Set

After the event, I still had 15 shots left on my film. So, I decided to shoot portraits of my brother. I went for the dynamic angles in this session because I wanted the pictures to look lively. This was my first attempt at portrait photography, and it was fun.

Contemplating.

Stretching.

Big fan.

Here are the rest of pics from this album:
Portrait Set

Overall, the 3200 film pushed to 6400 is a bit too much. I like grains, but too much can make the images look fuzzy, especially the Affliction shots because it was far. My two passions in life are MMA and photography. Being able to do both in one night was an awesome experience. While the MMA pics came out fuzzy, the portraits came out fairly well because the subject was big enough not to break apart due to grains. It was a good experiment, and it can work for a photographer depending on the subject matter. For my next experiment, I’ve decided to push a Tmax 100 to 800. That’s a big push, we’ll see what happens once I get the film developed.

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