This was an assignment that was different from anything I had done before and I enjoyed it thoroughly, I seriously enjoyed it so much. I have always been a fan of Thai boxing and Mixed Martial Arts and when I got this assignment, it was liked I scored a goal in a football game.
I was to shoot the official portraits of the fighters and the ring girls and cover the fights on fight day. This was not work!! This was just pure fun for me !!
I had never spoken or interacted with any MMA fighter before so I didn’t know what to expect when I went to the Grand Hyatt hotel at City of Dreams Macau that morning for the official portrait session. I was wondering if there was going to be any arrogance or cockiness that we always see when these guys entered the ring.
Then the photo session started and the fighters came one by one to have their pictures done, much to my pleasant surprise these guys are really nice and humble people. I shot nine fighters that morning and none of them had any airs or arrogance at all.
I would have been happy if they were not arrogant or cocky but they were just downright nice people!! Just awesome!!
One of the fighters I got to know that morning was Rob Lisita, a MMA Fighter from Australia. An intimidating looking fighter but an absolutely nice guy.
We chatted abit and he told me about how he loved fighting and how he loved his two kids. I became his fan that morning and I took a picture with him and posted it on facebook
These were the official portraits and there were standard poses to follow but I put in abit of my own variations after the “official” poses were done. Really happy with the results
I went one step further and did a few ”Low Key” pictures with some of the fighters when we had the time. Here are fighters Choi Teong Gwang, Jo Nam Jin and Wu ChengJie
This has got to be one of my most enjoyable shoots in my career and after this shoot , I had the task of shooting the ring girls on fight dayanother challenge altogether as I had to shoot four girls in a creative way in less than 30 mins. I will talk about that in my next post so stay tuned !!
by Jerome