The assignment was to shoot a portrait of a Miami teenager who had turned to judo to turn his life around. I looked at the exercise as another opportunity to problem solve. The problems were: lighting, a limited lens and noisy backgrounds.
I was shooting with a 50mm normal lens inside a gym under florescent lights. I moved forward and backward along the sidelines to frame the teen working with younger judo students or sparring with this classmates. With his dark skin, if I shot him in front of the blue padding that lined the gym’s walls, he tended to disappear. I had to keep moving to keep the background behind him light so that he stood out.
I looked for graphic elements and movements that captured the rigors of the judo practice. Keeping the background clean was a constant challenge -- if it wasn’t too dark, it was filled with gym equipment and cluttered doorways.
Once I established the limitations of the assignment -- the lighting, noisy backgrounds, the focal length of my lens, the speed of the action in front of me, etc. -- I found I was free to do whatever I wanted. Identifying and solving an assignment’s technical challenges up front means I can shoot however I want as I go. It’s easier to make adjustments while shooting than to try to fix problems later while processing the images.
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