Photo of the Week #123

My favorite photo from this past week was taken at Friday’s Muay Thai kickboxing event in The Theatre at Madison Square Garden. The night marked kickboxing’s debut at MSG, surprising given the rich history of traditional boxing in the 44-year old building.

For this overhead image, I made my way up to the catwalk above the ring and shot a few fights looking straight down over the railing. I took 150+ photos from this angle and only a few of them really said “kickboxing” the way this one does. Of those, most had large logos on the mat under the kickboxers’ feet, distracting from simple graphic nature of their body language. Like with Photo of the Week #113, I had to use Photoshop to get the final image I envisioned. I used the clone stamp tool to remove a logo from the bottom right corner, leaving behind a blank white canvas.

Photo tech specs: Canon 1Ds Mark II camera, 70-200mm f2.8 II lens @ 75mm, f2.8, 1/1000th, ISO 1600.

March 16, 2012: Rudy Felix (left) defeats Cornel Ward in a Muay Thai kickboxing bout at Madison Square Garden. — ©MSG

To view a full-screen version of this photo, visit AviGerver.com.