Commack High School Varsity Wrestling vs Sachem North - Senior Night
Senior night at wrestling is always a lot of fun. The wrestling booster club does a great job putting it all together. It also helps if the team wins, which they did.
Photographing wrestling can be both easy and challenging. On the one hand, it’s not like field sports or even basketball where the players are running all over the place; there’s only so far the wrestlers can move around on the mat, so they’re kind of a captive audience. There are a few challenges, however. First, the wrestlers are frequently facing down and you don’t get a lot of light reflecting off the mat, especially the black part. Second, some of the matches are over very quickly so, in those cases, you’re not going to get a lot of photos, if any. That’s why I try to shoot the handshake at the beginning of the match and get as many shots as possible right away.
In our gym the only lights on are over the mat. This gives a nice effect that darkens the stands and puts some high contrast light on the wrestlers. The temptation would be to lighten the shadows in post processing, which I do, but not all of them. Lightening the shadows on the crowd will only distract from the wrestlers. For this reason, rather than pull up the overall shadow slider I’ll use a shadow recovery brush to lighten only certain shadows on the wrestlers. I’ll also use a brush to recover highlights on the top of the wrestlers, especially their bright uniforms.
The wrestling shots were all taken with a Sony a1 camera with a 135mm prime lens. Exposure was 1/1000 sec. @ f/2, auto-ISO.
