Karen Strunks Professional Birmingham-based Freelance Photographer

Peter Buckley v Matin Mohammed.

Dubbed the worse boxer in Britain, Peter Buckley won his final fight at Aston Leisure Centre, Birmingham on 31st October.

I jumped at the chance to go with another Birmingham Mail photographer to snap the fight.

I had never been to a boxing match before, so to be able to go to a championship fight, shown live to the nation on Sky tv, was too good an opportunity to turn down. The ‘headline’ fight of the night was Matthew Macklin v Geard Ajetovic – pics to follow when I have gone through them.

I took my place with about four other photographers right at the ringside. I couldn’t have gotten any closer too the action! Actually I was a little too close at times. When the boxers flew against the ropes, I instinctivley took a step back, mind you, so did the other photographers so I didn’t feel too bad about that! Several times I had to wipe the sweat from the boxers off my lens.

I was rooting for the underdog and found myself shouting encouragement to Buckley from time to time and was really pleased he won his last fight. Bless him.

I tried to keep the ISO around 600 to avoid noise. The shutter speeds was 0.0025 of a second. F.stop 4.2, no flash. I took A LOT of photos, not wanting to miss any of the action, and the action was FAST. Click a millisecond too late and you miss a vital punch.

Launch of the MG TFLE 500

A few months ago I attended Longbridge for the Birmingham Post and Mail.

The launch of the first models of the MG TFLE 500 made at the Birmingham Plant. Apart from the engine. Various pictures of the car made by NAC (Chinese).

I went a little ‘zoom’ crazy.

An experiment with off camera flash.

I had the chance to visit Kinver Edge, near Stourbridge, a few weeks ago and thought it would be a good opportunity to try out something new.

I got the idea from browsing around the net some time ago. I can’t remember where I saw it, but the idea stuck with me and Kinver Edge was the perfect place to try it out. I also had the use of the fisheye lens from the Birmingham Post & Mail for the weekend.

Off camera flash. I put my SB800 onto commander mode and hid the flash unit in the hollow of the tree. The built in flash on the camera went off at the same time. Here are some of the results.

I am fairly pleased with my first attempt, however there are a few things I will try differently next time….

I will turn down the brightness (I am sure there is a more technical word!) of the built in flash a lot, and reduce the SB800 a little as well.

I’d like to try another time of day, later afternoon just when it’s getting darker, and then play around with the flash setting then.

And if I ever have TWO SB800’s, try it using them both. But that will have to wait for now.