Possibly Some Good Work

Today was a very good day, I felt more comfortable photographing the boxers and the people in the area of the training center. I arrived fairly early around 11am, it was raining softly with overcast light, but under the freeway in the gym area I was able to make some photographs of the gym area. I photographed mostly with a 75mm and was glad I brought it, the exposures were up to 2 minutes at F45. I did forget my watch, so had to use the second hand on a wall clock to time the exposures.

I then reloaded film and did some head and shoulders portraits of some boxers and and other locals, a young woman named Weaw (19) and a older woman named Gop (43) who runs a small store opposite the gym. These portraits were the first I have done here using the zone metering I worked on in Canada. I placed their faces on Zone 6 which might be a bit overexposed but I am not to worried about that. The exposures were a bit long between 1/4-1/2 at F11.5-16, hopefully there was minimul movement. The overcast soft light was beautiful, the expressions seemed so full of life, I want to continue to work this way this trip and into the future (a bit Fazal Sheikh like but with my own subjects). I would like to photograph both Cambodians and Thais this way in the hundreds.

I then reloaded film a second time and waited for the 3pm training session to begin. A bit bored I wandered out into a play area and photographed a young child named Doh (7) as she sat on a rope swing. Saving my film even thou I wanted to photograph more children, I went back to the gym to photograph the boxers training. They were wearing their Muay Thai shorts and all wet from water and the workout, I made a number of portraits of various young boxers putting on their hand wraps, jumping rope etc. Because the light was so low in the gym I had no choice but to use flash so all the exposures were at 1/60 and F11 with the 150mm Nikon. I hope these turn out, I do not have much experience shooting the 4x5 with direct flash.

After I ran out of film I stayed an extra hour or so chatting and watching the training, it was fascinationg. Some of the boxers would round house kick (wonder what the Thai name for that is) the trainers 15 times in under 30 seconds, with power!.

Overall a good day I think.