Slough Open Fencing Tournament

On the 1st and 2nd of February I was given the opportunity to photograph the Slough Open Fencing Tournament. My only previous experience of sports photography was a single evening at the Paralympics athletics, so I intended to treat the whole thing as a learning exercise.  The tournament was staged in a large sports hall at a private girls school (in Rickmansworth, nowhere near Slough).  As many as 20 matches took place simultaneously in the early rounds, with only a metre or so between each piste (apparently that’s what the metallic carpets that fencers fight on are called).  I was told I could move freely around the hall, but was warned to be careful between the pistes or I might “get a sword up my arse".

The first photo, taken from the viewing gallery during an early round of the Épée competition on Day 2, shows the layout of the pistes and the lighting conditions.  Conditions in general could best be described as challenging.  There were lots of background distractions (including some horrible yellow buckets used as piste markers), and the shiny sports hall floor threw up some strong highlights and was covered in bright marker lines.  In a bid to limit the background distractions I mainly took photos ‘end-on’ to the pistes or from the viewing gallery above. I didn’t use a tripod on the first day for fear of being in the way.  I either hand held or used a bean bag.  However, on Day 2, after the melee of the initial rounds had passed, I was confident I could manoeuvre my Manfrotto around the hall without getting in anyone’s way.

I took over a thousand images during the course of the two days, trying to clearly capture the action and experimenting with different shutter speeds.  I have deleted more than 90%.  As I said, a learning experience.  I decided early in the process to convert the selected shots to monochrome, in order to remove the distracting colours.  I have also spent a fair amount of time in Photoshop removing background distractions, in particular the horrible sports hall lines, (‘content aware fill’ is my friend).

 

 I tried some long exposure shots, inspired by an Olympic fencing image of Marc Aspland's.  Sadly I didn't have a dark enough background to replicate the shot, but the results are still interesting.