What Changed Last Year?

Last year I was invited to document my grandson’s karate completions. You know, in the role of the family photographer.

 I have been documenting their lives since all three of them were born. They have played baseball, football, and soccer, but never at the level they are now with karate. Besides that, these other sports demand a different type of photography: they are outdoor sports, and I relied more on zoom lenses. Karate is an indoor sport, and a 70–200mm lens works very well in this scenario. All of this was new to me, and I was not expecting to shoot more than 5,000 pictures at these events.

For somebody shooting mostly widlife, this is a huge change, believe me. In one hand you have the silence of nature and in the other hand you have the endless noise that you find in sport events. In one hand you have wildlife and in the other hand you have people moving fast and constantly. So I had to adjust to the new circunstances. 

Karate gave me the chance to shoot amazing pictures, especially portraits of the athletes during their process before and after the competition.

 Each of them is a different universe. They meditate a lot before competing. I have seen their smiles and their tears. I have seen their transformation from peace to fury.

Karate has given me the chance to explore the human mind, and even though I do not have access to their thoughts in those intriguing moments, I enjoy imagining what they might have been thinking.

 You don’t find this kind of joy by asking someone to pose for the camera. It comes from stealing the moment as it quietly reveals itself.