A famous photographer that doesn’t specialize so much on body building but sport in general, he has photographed many a famous sports woman and man and achieved some stunning action shots full of emotion.
Below are a series of Bob’s photos they can define slightly different feelings and action shots from all types of angles.
As an award winning sports photographer Bob has capture some of the most influential photos of the 21st century. The first image of which i picked for is gloomy surrounding and eye catching symmetry, the photo itself has some great angles and the darkness that surrounds the athlete only frames the image even better. In this dark surrounding you don’t know whither this is a man or a woman and from this point it stops anyone passing judegement on the athlete, taking away all sexism into the photo. Lighting is very simplistic, and has very few issues, the light looks natural from the top of the pool, it seems to only be eliminating the athlete leaving the rest to the imagination.
A very powerful image that has a fantastic point of view. With the foreground being out of focus the athlete is placed in the middle of the frame in perfect focus, making them the centre of attention. This image itself has a wonderful double meaning, it shows the hurdles that they have to take to get the medal and from the position of the photo it can signify a mixture of things, the long process of getting to this stage and other things like tension and stress.
The image below is very raw, it surrounds all the aspects of rugby, its a grueling sport that requires tough attitudes and intimidating strategy, this is exactly what i get from this image. By studying this image i get the impression there isn’t just natural light, i believe some of it is artificial. The front of the play is lit very evenly which could signify the use of flash or a studio light running off of batteries with no need for mains power.
The next image is more of an action shot, with beautiful focus this image is less about what it signifies but more about the action that’s being taken at the immediate time. This sort of image is less controllable, you can’t change the lighting and anticipate what is going to happen. Overall this image is a head turning and holds all the perfect aspects of an action shot image.
Another action shot image is this famous one taken during a rugby match, it won many awards. It maybe an action shot image but is in a different league to that of the motor sport one. It doesn’t seem like its an action shot, the athletes are in the frame perfectly and with them in full focus it somehow seems like it has been posed for, the perfect image.
All these action shots tell and story of triumph and despair, and with such skill all them have been taken well, with very little control it is all about the positioning of you as a photographer to take them.
Concluding Bob Martins photos –
I decided to look at Bob’s images for a few reasons, he has a range of photos from action to studio scenes with artificial lighting. Each of which tell a story, looking at his photos even though a lot of them have been taking in natural light with very little connection to studio photography the concept of his photos is a strong influence. I want to extract his passion and story telling ability into my own work and with that of studio lighting bring feeling to the forefront of my images.
The techniques he uses to portray certain sports such as the first rugby shot and hurdles image is very clever, with specific points of view and change settings he is able to make an image pop, another reason studying his images is working positively in my work.
http://www.bobmartin.com/indexbobmartinsite.html
Mark Benoit. (2011). All about Bob Martin. Available: https://prezi.com/sbb-aiz27ah3/all-about-bob-martin/. Last accessed 19th Apr 2015.
Studio Photography 