I had the privilege of creating a tournament poster for the Utah Taekwondo Association and their state championship tournament coming this spring. Since I was able to photograph a bunch at last year’s tournament, I used a handful of those photos for this year’s poster.
I even managed to use a photo of my youngest son. He’s the red belt on the right breaking a board with a tornado kick.
The fun challenge with these was color-correcting all of the reflected light on everyone’s white uniforms. It’s something most people don’t notice, but our white taekwondo uniforms reflect everything, and the mats at this tournament were bright blue along with very yellow fluorescent overhead lighting. Even when I look at the poster now, I see a few spots I wish I could go back and correct a little more.
Photographing these tournaments is a photography challenge all in itself with needing high speed in pretty low light.
Because I was on a roll when working on this, I went ahead and made versions that were social media-friendly for FB events, Instagram story, and more.
I’m really happy with how these turned out and I’m looking forward to being at this year’s tournament to take photos again. I am still deciding if I will compete again myself.
