This was taken last weekend at the Cheongdo Bull Fights and I sort of like the “300″ look to it. I did this same treatment the last time that I was out there a few years ago and stuck with it for the updated shots.

Why: I wanted to portray a “Gladiator” or “300″ feel to these shots and I love the mood of those movies and I think that it goes well here. Also, when I looked at my shots, I wanted to make something that stood out and was a little more on the dramatic side. Also, I found when I corrected the levels, the photos were a little flat and cold.

How: First, lets look at the basic set up at the time of the shot. I was using my trusty 70-200 canon lens set at f2.8 and iso bumped up to around 400 to make sure that I could freeze the action. I also brought my monopod along to further steady the camera and lens. This is my basic sports set up.

Next, I normally shoot in raw and here is no exception. Typically shooting in raw for sports is a concern because you want to have the speed without having to wait for the buffering to finish. When you shoot in bursts in raw, older cameras like mine with have a lag while processing the images. However here, I didn’t feel that it was much of a concern. With the photos taken, I opened them up in Camera Raw, but Aperture or Light Room would be suffice.

If you use the Auto settings, you are going to get a really flat picture. What I did for this shot was I desaturated the image until it is almost black and white but there is still colour in it. I also went back up to the top and warmed up the image using the temperature slider.

If you are using CS5 which has the lasted version of camera raw, you’ll see a new “fx” tab, I went there and added a post-crop vignette to draw more focus to the action in the center of the frame. Once that was done I opened the image up in photoshop. In the older version it will be found under the tab that kind of looks like this “((()))”

Once inside photoshop I did my usual size and sharpening adjustments.  I went into levels and dropped the mid-tones down a bit to really make this a bit more gritty. Then I added a warming filter and increased the percentage to something close to that “300″ look.

That was how I achieved this shot. it sounds like a lot and to be honest this is more than what I would normally do for a regular shot, that it also why I find it so interesting.