World Cup of Judo - Birmingham

Photos : Ville Vuorinen / www.xit-images.com (for Finnish Judo Association)
Photos : Ville Vuorinen / www.xit-images.com (for Finnish Judo / Press)
Photos : Ville Vuorinen / www.xit-images.com (For Finnish Judo/Press)

World Cup of Judo 2009 - Birmingham

Still suffering big time from the back injury - but more able to walk now, so decided to have a go at trying to photograph at the World Cup of Judo at the NIA in Birmingham.

Got my wife to carry the camera gear to the venue - as my back isn't taking that yet. But standing/sitting down was OK for the couple of hours of Judo over the weekend.

Judo was one of the sports that I had never tried to photograph before, so it was a big learning curve to try and get anything useful out of the weekend.

To be honest - I gained a lot a respect for people who do Judo photography (and do it good) - there are so many obstacles to consider with this sport.

You have the referee walking around the mat, players are facing this and that way, lighting is quite poor... the list would go on and on if I wanted it to.

But - as a photographer you are supposed to find ways to overcome these issues, and when you put your mind to it - it is quite possible.

First positive aspect was the angle you photograph from - with the mats being raised from the floor. Even standing up you will be looking up to the fighters on the mats, giving you a nice perspective of the action.

The poor lighting also worked to photographers advantage, with the mat lit so well and rest of the arena quite dark. You get the fighters nicely isolated from the background - sometimes the dark hair gets a little too much blended into the background. But in general it gives some striking images.

I hope you do spare a moment or two to visit the gallery to view some of the images - as Judo is a sport that does not get much coverage in the main stream media.

Good example of this being the local media in Birmingham which had nothing of the event in Monday mornings papers - despite some of Europe's best judo players being in town.

But - the fifth tier of English football still manages to find plenty of coverage - despite these games only attracting few hundred spectators (where as the Judo had thousands). This is what you have to fight against sometimes as a sports reporter/photographer.

BBC on the other hand did have short reports from the World Cup - but the photos they used were not from the tournament. I am sure one of the eight or ten photographers at the event would have been happy to provide them with up-to-date images.

Now - it is back to trying to get my back functioning so that I am able to operate normally - and also give a hand to the better-half with some housework... She has been working too hard to keep me happy for the last weeks.

Luckily she can escape me for few days as she hits Dublin for a long weekend at the end of this week.