Zerodog's Weekend of Violence!!

[zerodog]

I shot 2 MMA events in 1 weekend. Every once in a while things bunch up like this and stuff gets really busy. Between the 2 promotions there were 26 fights. Lots of excitement with knockouts, a broken arm, and a new Lightweight Champ. All in all it was awesome.

1. Somehow this dude got out of this rear naked choke and went on to win.

2. Unconventional but effective. Donkey Kong style double hammer fists!! Fight was quickly stopped for TKO.


3. This fight was won in the gym. This lady on top here is a Mom of 4? Started training at an MMA gym and eventually took this fight. She has lost a ton of weight and gained some serious skills. It was a proud moment for her and her coaches.


4. This is one of my training partners breaking a guys arm. Believe it or not he did this as gently as possible. He waited a long time before taking it this far, but this cowboy wouldn't tap. He looked to the ref and no stoppage, so he slowly pushed his hips forward until that arm suddenly bent completely the wrong way. Then the ref stepped in.


5. An awesome entrance.


On to Saturday night!!! In the past by a huge margin this show has had the best lighting of any of our events in Utah. Tonight this was not the case. ISO 10,000 was needed to get speeds of 1/800-1/1200. Power levels were inconsistent from fight to fight and had hot spots and dark spots all over the ring. A new evil technology was introduced to me that night. Some sort of tracking spotlight. It was supposed to stay on the fighters? It didn't work so well. To add to this effect the dark mat sucks up light like a black hole. But that is the hand dealt and that is what events are all about. Adapt and do your best!

6. Even Herb Dean is cringing at this KO!! This is one of my favorite shots of the year. Perfect timing, sharp focus and at the absolute peak of action. The ref looking intense, logos in place like I planned it and nice and tight. But there are a few things I do not like. Most of all the lack of separation on the punchers face. He is sort of blending with the fence pattern. Most likely due to the closeness of this. I think they are about 6 feet away from me here. I wish the angle was a little lower. But I was already hanging over the fence. And I wish the shutter speed could have been more.



7. Going down.


8. 15 seconds into the first round. The beginning of a TKO.



9. The main event. 5 rounds of back and forth battle to a split decision. This was the best fight I have seen in a long time. Maybe since the last time these guys met in the cage.


10.


11.

[Photo-John]

Great photos, as usual, Rob! I can't believe someone wouldn't tap and got their arm broken. That is insane to me!

Your image quality in these is amazing, by the way. Can you give us some technical details about your gear and exposure settings?

[Old Timer]

Beautifully done as usual, I agree with PJ give us a little insight in how you shot and processed these.

[armando_m]

the contrast of emotions on 11 is so evident

Really terrific job !

[zerodog]

Thank you guys!! I appreciate it!

Ok here are some details about these shots and my process for fights.

Night 1. All shots but the first one shot with a D700 at 4000iso f2.8 and 1/500 using a 70-200f2.8 White balance set using Kelvin and guessing on the setting until it looks right. It usually falls between 3000-4000.

Night 2 all of the shots I posted here were with the D3s at iso 8000 f3.5 1/1000-1/500 due to the horrible light variations. You learn the hot spots and dark spots and roll the dial as the fighters move into those zones.

I always shoot fights with 2 bodies. Sometimes 3 if I need something special. Usually a 24-70 and a 70-200 on a D3s and D700.

My processing for these is pretty simple. It is broken down into several steps using several programs. Everything is about speed. I need to have highlights from each fight ready for press releases and facebook immediately after the event. Sometimes at the event. To do this, I now have my wife with me. She loads images and sorts them during the event. We use PhotoMechanic for import and sort. There is nothing faster than PhotoMechanic for part. It renders images as fast as you can click the arrow keys. Something LR is very poor at. That 1 or 2 second rendering in LR adds up when you have 5000images to quickly scan through. After flagging and rating photos, everything then gets imported to Lightroom for editing and applying metadata such as keywords and captions. Lightroom reads the ratings applied in Photomechanic so you are ready to rock on import. I then batch edit applying general exposure adjustments and do some sharpening and noise reduction. After that, I export them to TIFF and then do a batch process in Photoshop. I am very fond of NIK software's software pack and use it as an extension of CS6 with almost all of my processing for anything now. I built an action for general fight photo processing using Dfine for more noise control and ColorFX for tonal contrast. Then I use the high pass filter and unsharp mask from CS6. I use the batch processing feature of CS6 to apply it and save images right back to my LR Cat.
After all that is done I populate the Facebook galleries from LR and apply watermarks and resize on export. That is it. Done!! Usually done at the event while it is being torn down or at a restaurant getting some grub. I use my iphone as a hotspot to load remotely.

[Photo-John]

Thanks for the details. Now post some Red Bull Rampage photos!

[Old Timer]

Thanks I appreciated your detailed answer concerning your workflow and processing.