Taekopix Blog
Dutch Open Technical 2012
It has been some while since I last visited a technical teakwondo event. My Last photo shoot was during the Dutch national and Dutch open championship in 2009. During the 2010 edition I was denied access to the tournament because of “commercial pre-arrangements”. That was such a disappointment (an frankly spoken a bit shocking) that since then I did not touch a technical event.
Anyway … time passes on and heals the wounds. For the 2012 it struck me that the term Dutch Open is a fair overstatement considering that most of the contestants are of Dutch nationality! There were only a small number of Belgian people there (I don’t even know why I write this blog in English!!). With 136 people it’s a fairly small group too. It’s a shame because the location (Rotterdam topsport Center) is a big improvement over the location in Nijmegen. I think there is some work to do for the 2013 event!
My initial reason to visit this event was to test out a new piece of equipment. This does not mean however I did not enjoy it. I must say that I rediscovered the technical discipline. When searching for sportraits with “strong” posses technical is an excellent source. Look at the picture attached to this blog-item … I think is a beauty and there are many more like that.
Pictures of the Dutch Open Technical 2012:
http://www.pascal-franssen.com/index.php/tkd-dutch-open-technical-2012/
Belgium Open Taekwondo 2012
The Belgium Open Taekwondo is the last of the big tournaments in march. The setting in Gent is excellent. The sports hall is spacious and there is lots of daylight coming in. But even without daylight the area is perfectly lighted as my shutter speed did not go down when the day turned into night. The first day had a difficult start. Around 11:00 most fields had only run 9 matches. With such a big delay the demonstration of the Korean team (even though it was a very impressive one) meant even more delay in the schedule. Obviously the demonstration took some time but before it could start 4 competition areas had to be “broken down” and rebuild again afterwards. Possibilities of trying to minimize the delay were limited since only 4 area’s were equipped with video replay. Practically this meant that in the end the 4 competition area’s were “fully loaded” while the other 6 were empty. At the beginning of the evening most the volunteers disappeared … there was little yellow remaining. I went home around 22:15 (the matches continued unil 23:30) arriving home just after midnight. Uploading the pictures and get ready for day #2
Dutch Open 2012
For the 39th Dutch Open I was more involved than normally since I also designed and implemented the website for the event (tkddutchopen.com). For the event itself I can only say that it was one of the best arranged and timed Dutch Open’s I’ve visited. Normally passing the 22:00 mark on the saturday was no exception. This year however the final ended on a fairly early time.
Although the organisation was good there was a certain thing missing … I missed a certain “vibe”. From time to time shooting pictures of a match with almost no sound around … that feels a bit strange. Regarding the location were the event was held I must say it is starting to feel a bit “old”. The lighting is harsh and uses a type of lighting that results in an inconsistent color (greenish, yellow-ish and “normal”).
Pictures of the Dutch Open 2012:
Saturday: http://www.pascal-franssen.com/index.php/taekwondo-dutch-open-2012-saturday/
Sunday: http://www.pascal-franssen.com/index.php/taekwondo-dutch-open-2012-sunday/
German Open 2012
As the opener of “Crazy March” I visited the German Open 2012 which was held on the 3rd and 4th of March 2012. I say “Crazy March” because there are 4 major Taekwondo events held in this month. These are the German Open, Spanish open, Dutch open and to conclude the belgium open. I’m taking pictures at 3 of these 4 events.
As the previous years the tournament was held in Hamburg at the “Sporthalle Hamburg” at the krochmanstrasse. One of my favourite bits of this taekwondo event is the center raised podium. This podium is the best Taekwondo area I have seen so far. Raised center stages should be used a lot more often! It is great for spectators and it enables the use of the Big gun (300mm f2.8) with a clear line of sight from most positions.
Pictures of German Open 2012:
Saturday: http://www.pascal-franssen.com/index.php/tkd-german-open/
Sunday: http://www.pascal-franssen.com/index.php/tkd-german-open-2012-sunday/
ps
One thing I have learnt this year is that driving in the center of Hamburg with old digital navigation maps is not really recommandabel since the one-way-street situation has quite dramatically been altered over the years. It took quite some time to get back to my hotel on saturday evening :>
Taekwondo Open Zuid 2012
Op zaterdag 25 februari het Taekwondo toernooi “Open Zuid 2012″ georganiseerd door Taekwondo Vereniging Ertekin. Vanaf dit moment zijn de foto’s online op de Taekopix website.
Klik hier om direct naar het foto-album te gaan.
Dutch Open website 2012 powered by Taekopix!
Today the dutch open 2012 website is officially released and it is powered by Taekopix!
For 2012 I have developed (configuration, design and photography) the new website for the Taekwondo Bond Nederland regarding the Dutch Open 2012 in march!
Have a look at www.tkddutchopen.com
As ever … if you like to have pictures of your matches just let me know!
See you at the Dutch Open!
Pascal
Farewell... my trustfull photo archive
Up to now all my pictures were presented using an external Coppermine website. By using the gallery options of my new website I’m starting to migrate the images from Coppermine to
this website. However since I’ve quite a lot of material on-line I’m going to reduce the number of pictures of tournaments before 2011. Little by little the Coppermine gallery will
be emptied until it finally can be taken offline.
Update … on the 1st of january the coppermine gallery has been deleted
Brand new Taekopix
If you were familiar with my previous website you probably have noticed that the site has been changed a lot. My old website was based upon flash technology. This new website uses html / php techniques that can be viewed on most browsers (including mobile devices). Improvements are:
- Blog functionality
- Integrated slideshow options
- Improved browsing through the various tournaments and pictures
- Addition of useful links to other websites
For next year I will have a look at the possibility of integrating a web shop into my website. This will make the ordering of pictures more straightforward. However I won’t sell pictures directly from the web shop because I try and get the maximum out of each picture by editing every purchased image. More important however is the fact that payments can be done by using e.g. PayPal and/or credit card. This ends the (often crazy) banking costs of transferring money between different countries.