{"id":3486,"date":"2023-10-23T05:00:04","date_gmt":"2023-10-22T21:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/?p=3486"},"modified":"2025-02-23T19:58:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T11:58:32","slug":"july-to-september-2023-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/2023\/10\/23\/july-to-september-2023-action\/","title":{"rendered":"July to September 2023 action"},"content":{"rendered":"

After many years of shooting almost exclusively with an 85 mm prime lens, I picked up my 70\u2013200 mm telephoto zoom lens again, so visual perspective may look different in these photographs. (I will include some technical observations at the end of this post.)<\/p>\n

First Tae Kwon Do students have continued training through the winter, and black belt candidates went through preliminary assessments in July 2023. Despite the cold weather, we had excellent attendance and the candidates underwent a rigorous testing of their physical fitness, technical skill, and determination over the course of two hours.<\/p>\n

\"First
FTKD spinning heel kick break, July 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD knife-hand strike break, July 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD free sparring, July 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Only a couple of the candidates made it through to their black belt grading examinations in September 2023, along with the hundreds of coloured belt members undertaking their gradings.<\/p>\n

\"First
FTKD one-step sparring, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD side kick, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD front snap kick, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD self-defence, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD one-step sparring, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD self-defence, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD spinning heel kick break, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD elbow strike break, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD free sparring, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD two-on-one free sparring, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both candidates were successful, and duly received their black belt ranking and their black belts personally from Master Vernon Low, the master instructor and examiner of First Tae Kwon Do. They then received their black belt certificates from Western Australian Chief Instructor Dane Meade.<\/p>\n

\"First
FTKD black belt promotion, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD black belt promotion, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD black belt certificate presentation, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD black belt certificate presentation, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD Master Vernon Low, Chief Instructors, and newly promoted black belts, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While the black belt gradings were certainly the highlight of the day, most of the time was allotted to the coloured belt gradings, along with demonstrations by black belt members and instructors.<\/p>\n

\"First
FTKD pattern, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD side kick break, September 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Congratulations to all members who were promoted by Master Low in September. As always, any promotion in First Tae Kwon Do is the result of passing a test administered by an appointed examiner.<\/p>\n

In terms of photographic technical points, I had to readjust to having zoom functionality available. While most people would use a zoom lens for general photography, I have used a prime lens almost exclusively for many years now. I do only a relatively small amount of photography these days, owing to workload on a few different fronts.<\/p>\n

One thing I immediately noticed during post-processing was the geometric distortion (barrel or pincushion) in the images. To the casual eye, geometric distortion is probably not too offensive (and perhaps not even noticeable). Prime lenses are far simpler to optimise than zoom lenses, and distortion is normally something not seen except in the wide-angle focal lengths. Having stayed with prime lenses for so long, I was not surprised that the distortion of the 70\u2013200 mm lens was as clear as day.<\/p>\n

As I have shot more with this lens over the weeks, one thing I do appreciate about it is being able to reach out to a 200 mm focal length with ease, and with a relatively large f\/2.8 aperture. This would be one of the classic portrait settings; I can only imagine how much better things would look when shot with Nikon’s highly regarded 200 mm f\/2 lens<\/a> … which carries a five figure price tag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After many years of shooting almost exclusively with an 85 mm prime lens, I picked up my 70\u2013200 mm telephoto zoom lens again, so visual perspective may look different in these photographs. (I will include some technical observations at the end of this post.) First Tae Kwon Do students have continued training through the winter,… Continue reading July to September 2023 action<\/span> →<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[27,318,278,70,359,58,160,24,260,277],"class_list":["post-3486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-martial-arts","tag-breaking-action","tag-dane-meade","tag-ftkd","tag-martial-arts","tag-nikkor-afs-200-2-vr-ii","tag-nikkor-afs-70-200-2-8-vr-ii","tag-patterns-action","tag-sparring-action","tag-tkd","tag-vernon-low"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3486"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4099,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486\/revisions\/4099"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}