I have been training in martial arts – specifically, kajukenbo – for nearly five years now, and for the last several years I’ve been taking photos during belt tests at my school, Seven Star Women’s Kung Fu. It has become a big part of my participation in the school, a reason for me not to skip out on anyone’s test, and a great way to develop my action photography eye. This year I was asked to act as an official photographer during the Pacific Association of Women Martial Artists‘ annual training camp. I accepted, of course! I feel it is a huge honor, and I’m very excited.

Camp is this weekend, so today I have been packing, and adding camera gear to the usual pile of athletic gear I take. I’ve also been looking through test photos. We had a black belt test last week, and I still had 2000 unsorted photos from a green belt test which happened just before my husband and I took off for our European bike tour this spring. Since the number of photos I take during camp will probably approach (or exceed!) 10K, it’s time to set aside my novel in progress and get through some of these pictures!

My process for sorting through the hundreds of photos that come out of a test is pretty simple. I take out all the blurry ones, and most photos were you can’t see a face. I also get rid of stupid faces. Occasionally my husband tags along as a second shooter and takes pictures of me, and then I remember exactly why I have this policy. I’m looking at a picture right now wherein my eyes are half closed and my mouth is hanging open. The knot of my belt has worked its way up under my sweatshirt, giving me an unkempt and possibly cancerous look. It’s not a Kodak moment. No one needs to see this photo of me, and no one needs to see the thousands of equally dopey looks I’ve managed to capture. My kwoon-mates have developed a certain trust that my photos will show their best side, and it’s a trust I value. I do occasionally snicker a little to myself, but I mark two thirds of the pictures as “rejected” for fuzziness, facelessness, or dopiness, and then I delete them.

Now I’ve whittled things down to the photos in which everyone looks sharp and badass, or at least competent. Unfortunately, as I’ve become a better photographer, I end up with more and more competent photos, and I’m not going to share 700 photos, so I look through the remainder again. This time I’m looking for the photos that make me go ‘wow!’ The ones where the subject appears to be holding a pose, except they are in the middle of a form. The street fighting shots where you can see that someone is about to lose an eye. The pretty pretty kicks caught in midair, showcasing the flexibility of the hips. The moment after the fist has hit, when the face deforms a little and the pony tail flies up.

This finally brings the number of photos I’m working with under a hundred, and these ones I spend some time developing. I crop out the fluorescent lights, bring the focus of the frame in on the subject, adjust the temperature and colors so they are consistent across the full set of photos. I add tags so that if Jane Smith ever asks me for all the pictures of her doing street fighting, I can find them. I upload a selection to the school’s Facebook page, and a larger set to the photography website my husband maintains.

I started taking photos at the tests nearly three years ago.  Now they’re in the school’s brochures, on the website, and even went into another project I did to redesign the logo. The first pictures I took don’t look so great now, considering what I’ve learned since, but it has been a fun journey, and a good counterpart to my training. It gives me an opportunity to look at my kwoon-mates, and our art, from a different angle, through a different lens. I’m looking forward to seeing PAWMA camp through that lens this year.