Andy has been out to the AIS with his camera and sent in a lengthy set of photos with this note:
Yesterday I went out to take some photos of the women boxers at the AIS.
In the lead up to the World Championships in a few weeks, some ladies from Brazil, New Zealand and of course Australia are sparring together in order to hone their skills. Oddly enough, the World Championships form part of the qualifying for the London Olympics.
I went to take photos of part time Canberra resident Bianca “Bam Bam” Elmir who has just returned from intensive training in Ireland. Currently the Australian Flyweight champion and also the Oceania Boxing Bantamweight Champion, Bianca is close to attaining her goal of Olympic Qualification. While I was principally there only to take photos of Bianca, I was quite impressed with the attitudes of the other young ladies in training. Thus it became a brief visual exploration of womens boxing.
Some may look more suited to ballet than boxing, but it’s not hard to recognise that they’re a group of athletes with fighting spirit. While I had some expectations of what was to happen in the ring, I was also quite interested to see that the referee was very involved and had things under firm control.
Boxing would have to rate as the most difficult to photograph sporting activities I have yet tried. I think it might be slightly easier than group photos of two week old Burmese kittens in a dark room, but not by much.