Dream 8

For the first time in about 8 or so years a foreign photographer was granted ringside access by FEG! We’ve been working pretty closly with FEG over the past couple years and have developed a pretty good level of trust I think.

The production of Dream shows has always been amazing but the atmosphere at ringside is just incredible.

It was most likely due to the fact that we were in the Nippon Gaishi Hall down in Nagoya rather than Tokyo but it is awesome too see our efforts to get that trust pay off. I definitely appreciated the opportunity and hopefully we can get there again in the future.

Obviously, all eyes were on the main event with the two biggest stars of the welterweight tournament, Aoki and Sakurai - meeting in the first round.

It's actually hard to get the awesome screens in the background during the entrances as the catwalk is restricted to Dream photogs only.

Hopefully, those eyes didn’t blink. It was brutal, shocking and fast. I had a horrible angle but it was amazing. The awe and silence throughout the arena was just crazy. Kawajiri and Ishida were directly behind me and as I was diving over another photographer to try and get a better angle I caught a glimpse of them with their mouthes wide open and just staring at each other. Pretty funny stuff.

About the only 'action' that I managed to catch in this fight. The referee's ass was directly in my face and I was pinned by a camera man.

The aftermath.

Aoki recovering. I was really suprised how easily Mach swept him. Completely effortless.

Mach with some fan service. He was totally hillarious post fight. Really caught up in the moment and couldn't stop celebrating during everyone else's speeches.

Fight of the night was definitely Marius Zaromskis vs. Seichi Ikemoto. Not just fight of the night but one of the best fight’s I’ve ever shot. The photographers next to me were すごいぃ!ing the whole fight and the crowd was just mental. I’ve been shooting Ikemoto for years and he has really developed an exciting style. High kicks, stomps (although banned in Dream) and double fist punch KO’s are just amazing.

Marius Zaromskis gets major nerd points for the Akuma get up. His first kick was a jump spinning kick like in Street Fighter too. Brilliant.

Ikemoto started to fade in the second allowing Zaromskis to land some great punches.

Watch the nose...

... and there it goes!

Photographically, it wasn’t as good as I would have hoped. It would have been because of the venue but it was actually pretty dark ringside. Wasn’t able to get the ISO below 1250. Compare this to ISO 640 with the same settings in Saitama Super Arena. I didn’t get to edit these at all myself either. I would have liked to clean them up a bit more but I wasn’t able to.

Katsuhiko Nagata got dominated by Vitor Riberio and opened up with a nice knee.

Great to see Shaolin back. Still very popular. When shooting post fight, I try to position the spot lights behind the fighters. It gives them a cool halo effect and stops the light from washing out the image.

Kicks are really easy to time and look like a lava lamp when they hit. This was a great fight too, overshadowed by all the other stuff that went on though I guess.

I really love these kind of shots where I get under the ground and pount and try and frame it an any old angle the best I can. This one of Riki Fukuda isn't my best but it gives you a feeling of what it's like to be in there which is hard to get.

See the rest of the images at Sherdog.