Boxed in…
…again. Isn’t it funny (funny strange, not funny ha ha) how things go in cycles?
Having just recently shot a portrait of a boxer, I had an assignment to shoot a weigh-in for a boxing contest about 3 days later. No sight nor sound of boxers or boxing for about 4 years, and then 2 in a week.
This was the weigh-in for the vacant All-Ireland Middleweight Title between Gary (Spike) O’Sullivan from Cork and Ciaran Healy from Belfast that was due to take place the next day. Actually, if you know anything about boxing, that’s a fairly obvious statement. If memory serves me correctly, under boxing regulations the weigh-in HAS to take place between 36 & 24 hours before the bout.
So, shot the usual. The standing on the scales shots, and the standing with the fist-up shot (Spike left, Ciaran right):
Then, in the time honoured tradition of boringly repeating the same shot that’s been done a million times before boxing press conferences, shot the head-to-head where they both look very tough and stare at each other, except that for once this one was a bit different, because they both got a fit of the giggles:
I then wanted to get a quick portrait of Spike. Although I was on assignment for a national newspaper, national in newspaper terms doesn’t extend to Belfast, so given that I would probably only have time to get a shot of one of them, it was going to be Spike.
Having asked him if it would be OK to get a quick shot and almost getting it before getting “bumped” by the actual weigh-in, I’d had to wait until afterwards. I literally had about 10 seconds to get the shot, as Spike was already under strict instructions from his manager to get dressed again to keep warm. His manager and trainer is Paschal Collins, a former boxer himself (and brother to the legendary former world champion Steve Collins) and I certainly didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him!
I had a hand-held strobe with a grid ready, just guessed at the power, shot 3 frames, and due to my fantastic ability more by luck than judgement nailed a pretty good image:
You might think that someone who goes into a ring and pummels another person as hard as they possibly can, would be nasty and aggressive outside of it too. Not the case. He came across to me as helpful, mannerly and unassuming. Don’t think I’m going to volunteer to be his sparring partner anytime soon though.
Seeing as how this post won’t be going out for about a week or so, I can tell you that Spike won the fight on a points decision, and I was assigned to the bout as well.
I might save a couple of images of the fight-night for another post, or I guess I could do it now. What do you think? Pardon? What was that at the back? You want me to do it now?? OK then.
The lighting in the stadium was the worst, shittiest lighting I’ve come across in quite a while. From my ring-side position, the contestants were completely top-light, so most of the time it was a case of shooting up into the shadows. I set up two 1D MkII N’s, one with a 28-70mm f2.8 and hot-shoe mounted flash, and the other with a 50mm f1.2. I spent quite a while testing out both while the under-card bouts were being fought, and really couldn’t make my mind up which worked the best. Actually that should be which worked least worse. Met up with friend and fellow pro Cillian just before the main bout started, and he was having the same issue, so it wasn’t just me then!
In the end I went with the f1.2 lens, shooting at f1.4, which only gives a depth of field of a thin piece of paper, but I preferred it to the other combo, where the distance between the ring ropes is perfectly sized so that when you shoot through the ropes, the flash head is right in line with the top rope of the gap you are shooting through.
The 28-70mm and flash combo came in handy straight after the end though, for the decision announcement:
I left that image as shot and didn’t crop in, as for me the image is made by the MC on the left. He was one of the “Layyyydeeees annnn Gennulmen” traditional MC’s and just added a nice touch to the image.
I think there must be a training school somewhere that you go to in order to become a boxing MC. It teaches you how to extend a single vowel or consonant to about 10 seconds.
TTFN
