The beginning of my Martial Arts photography in 2010.

This image from 2010 would have been sharper if I’d been better with my flash technique, and used a smaller f/stop. But hey, I was learning.

2014 - Better composition and feel, but flash would have helped.

While I was pretty happy with the composition showing the upper cut and feel of this image, it would have been better if I’d used flash instead of upping the ISO which resulted in a lot of grain in the shot. Lastly, if I did this shot over, I would have taken the plug out of the background, but this was an action shot in a class not a studio portrait.

2015 - A big step up in my lighting from a few years ago.

John "The Bull" Marsh demonstrating an arm bar. I was pretty happy with the way this image was lit and composed. At this point in my lighting journey, I know I can light the shot well, and I can work on the composition of the image.

2015 - Getting there, flash made this image sharper.

This is one of the first images I took at Triton where I turned off all the overhead lights and controlled the light pretty well with flash and modifiers. The light on the back wall was a little hot for me, but I was moving in the right direction with this shot.

2016 - A portable strobe and power pack helped keep this image clean and sharp even at 1/6400th of a second and f/2.8.

This image was shot with a 600 watt strobe at 1/6400th of a second and f/2.8. The image is super clean with little if any noise. The color and mood are what I wanted it to be, and it’s a great example of powerful front kick. Ironically, the shutter speed is so fast, this almost looks like a posed shot instead of the dyanmic kick that it was. When you have a powerful flash you can use high speed sync a shallow depth of field and still get crisp photographs with little noise. Canon 7D MK II | Tamron 15-30 | Xplor 600 w/softbox. Martial Artists: John Marsh and Aaron Swenson.