Photo Blog | Dick Butkus Fight Night

I was looking back at some old pictures and stumbled across an event I shot last October; The Dick Butkus Charity Fight Night.  In addition to photographing the event attendees, and Chicago sports celebrities having a good time, I also had a chance to shoot the boxing matches being held throughout the night.  Personally, this was the most entertaining part for me!

This was my first time shooting a boxing match so I was experimenting…a lot.  I ended up using the Nikkor 50 1.4 to shoot the below images.  The ring as lit with an array of LED lights which produced some interesting color effects  on the boxers themselves  (more on that later) and made setting a white balance a challenge.  The “color ” effects I’m talking about is most apparent in shots #2 & #11.

(later) LED bulbs actually flickr rapidly to prolong their life.  This effect is almost imperceptible to the human eye, but a camera can catch the moment a light is on or off if the shutter speed is high enough.  My best guess for the vivid colors in some of the images is that the frequencies which the LED’s flicker made some colors appear more “on” or more “off” at the particular moment the images were captured.  My eye didn’t see the vibrant greens, reds, and yellows as some of the images illustrate but I was happy, albeit surprised, with how the images came out.