Capturing a Wrestling Show: Shield Pro Wrestling

Once a month, my friend runs his own wrestling promotion called Shield Pro Wrestling. Whenever I get the chance off work from my daytime job, I usually offer my services for the promoter to use the images for their social media and promo work (i.e posters etc). Not exactly sure when I started helping every month, I know I’ve been doing images for them for at least year and half.

Now I won’t talk about any of the behind the scenes stuff, because all the magic happens in the ring. All the action and all the drama is what sets wrestling apart from other sports entertainment. Now Shield Pro over the last few years have started to grow steadily, gathering a bigger audience every month and reaching nearly past capacity every so often. It always has its own following of audiences who come every month, and also some new comes who just curious about the sports entertainment.

I usually have a partner in crime called Fallon who I work with every show, who I sorta class as a very friend and as a kinda student, because we both came from two very different backgrounds, me learning everything from scratch and while her she is still in University. With all my years of experience she likes to ask questions and get my opinion on things which could help her with her photography projects for Uni. When we do work together it's kind of a varying clash of styles, because of the environment we work in running around, the wrestling ring. Fallon usually uses a flash on top of her camera to catch the action and get clearer images, while I use the available lighting to my advantage, and get images which is what it appears if you were sitting right next to the ring. When the action starts we also work along two videographers, one being another good friend Gash. So with already a crowded ring, all four of us need to make sure to be mindful around each other. It has been said tho I’m usually the one running around the ring, capturing the right angles and getting the shots that can be easily missed if no one was their to capture it.

Selfie of me and my friend Fallon before the show started

Now to talk about the technical side of shooting a high action event. With me not using flash, it sorta creates harder situation for me than my friend Fallon. The way the lighting is set out on the entrance and ring means I have to constantly change between my ISO and shutter speeds. Recently since getting a little upgrade (speedbooster) to my little trusty canon mirrorless camera, I can gather more light in than standard camera setup. I used only shoot at a constant aperture of around f2 to let in as much as I can, but with the upgrade and combination of a Canon 50mm 1.4, I can now shoot at f1 which is insane. But as I said I still have to deal with the constant change of lighting depending where the participants are in and out of the ring. Usually inside the ring, its now issues since its the most highly illuminated area, but when the wrestlers start heading towards the turnbuckle and ropes, things start to become a little hard, and that’s when I have to make a quick decision of what shutter to slow down to or should I just up my ISO. It gets even harder when the wrestlers starting combating outside the ring where it’s even darker. At this point I have to worry about motion blur and too much noise in the photos. One other aspect that can be a struggle is focusing. My camera has one of the best focusing systems around for a mirrorless camera, but even that struggles in a high action packed ring. I tend to only in single focus which basically means its focuses onec and you take the shot, but for this specific show I decided to try out continuous where the focusing tries to keep up with a moving object or person. Now the main reason while I never used this function in the past is that I found it slowed the function of the camera, and made me take less photos, also I found it can be unreliable focusing in the dark. But I thought I’ll take a chance try the function one more time and after a while I started to learn the limitations around the system and how to work around it likes, to make sure the wrestler was in focus I would make sure I would focus on the lightest part of the wrestler where there would be a light shining on them etc. This made its alot easier to focus for the rest of the matches, so now I'm starting to love the continuous focus.

Old photos of the ring we shoot around

The show itself is comprised of about six matches, which can vary depending on the promotions and match ups on that month. This month involved a couple of single matches, tag matches and even a barnyard match (which I’ll explain later lol.) The first match involved a Almost Pro Women's Champion belt between Little Miss Roxxy (Woman’s Champ) vs Angel Hayze.

The second was a tag team match for the Almost Pro Tag Team Championship between Kid Fite/Dean Ford(Champs) vs Tri-Bad.

The third match was the special one called the barnyard match between Yorkshire Dale vs Rabbit. An ongoing feud between the two which resulted in the creation of this match, where its was no-holds barred with extreme rules involving chairs, tables and even bays of hay.

The forth match, was a shorter match between Assassin(Contact Pro Wrestling) and Fracture(Shield Pro), both representing two highly respective promotions,

Fifth match was a Six man elimination tag team match. This was another cross-promotion between Contact Pro Wrestling and Shield Pro, but this time it was personal feud between the wrestling schools (CPW School and Almost Pro school) that train the younger generation of wrestlers. Now these kind of matches can be really hard to capture because multiple people can be in/out of ring at the sometime so me a and Fallon do find it struggle on what action to capture.

The last and final match was an open challenge against the raining Almost Pro champion Victor Von Valtz. Challenger was chosen by random roulette, and the newest member of Shield Pro was chosen The Showman.

Chances are I will continue helping Shield Pro in the future, whenever I’m free. I think the reason I do it is because of the challenge of capturing those great action moments, the actions, the wins and the loses. Being such a tough environment to shoot in its definitely gives me a problem to work around and helps me focus on whats needs to be captured.

If people like to check out the show please visit the Shield Pro Facebook page for updates and times.

Also check out Fallon's Facebook page to see her work

Well thank you again guys for reading. Don’t think I’ve much on this week, but I’ll see what I’ll write about next week :-)

Kevin Ho