Karate Portraits for LKD Dojo, South West London
Brand and Marketing Photography for Martial Arts Clubs
LKD Dojo in south west London came to me for photography for their website. They wanted something honest about who actually trains there: generations on the mat at the same time, women only classes, children finding their nerve. I had never photographed karate before and I went in not really knowing whether I was looking at a combat sport or at a dance. It is both, and the answer turned out to matter less than who was doing it.
The discipline and skill of a karate community
Karate is harder to photograph than it looks, because the moment that reads is not the moment of contact. A strike that has landed has already finished. What carries is the half second before it, where the weight has shifted and nothing has happened yet. So I work instinctively for that, watching a sequence through two or three times before I raise the camera at all, so that I am shooting to a pattern rather than reacting to one.
This sits with my other combat sport work: Pia Hagen at Fightzone London, ringside at fight night, and the AOP shortlisted boxing project. See commissions for how a brand shoot runs, or the wider sports photography portfolio.
If you run a club, a studio or a martial arts brand and you need pictures your members recognise themselves in, get in touch.