Muay Thai Kick Boxing, Patpong, Bangkok

Muay Thai is a martial art from Thailand that uses stand-up striking along with various clinching techniques. It is similar to other Indochinese styles of kickboxing, namely pradal serey from Cambodia, tomoi from Malaysia, lethwei from Myanmar and Muay Lao from Laos. Descended from muay boran, Muay Thai is Thailand’s national sport and there is no better place to see it up close and personal than at the Pink Panther Bar in Patpong.

As part of my annual Southeast Asia Photo Tour, I take everyone to experience and photograph Muay Thai; it’s an exciting, high energy experience that shouldn’t be missed.

The word muay derives from the Sanskrit mavya and Thai comes from the word Tai. Muay Thai is referred to as the “Art of Eight Limbs” or the “Science Of Eight Limbs” because it makes use of punches, kicks, elbows and knee strikes, thus using eight “points of contact”, as opposed to “two points” (fists) in Western boxing and “four points” (hands and feet) used in sport-oriented martial arts.[5] A practitioner of Muay Thai is known as a nak muay. Western practitioners are sometimes called nak muay farang meaning foreign boxer

Various forms of kickboxing have long been practiced throughout mainland Southeast Asia.[7] In Thailand, Muay Thai evolved from muay boran (ancient boxing), an unarmed combat method which would probably have been used by Siamese soldiers after losing their weapons in battle. Some believe that the ancient Siamese military created Muay Boran from the weapon-based art of krabi krabong but others contend that the two were merely developed alongside each other. Krabi krabong nevertheless was an important influence on Muay Boran and so Muay Thai can be seen in several kicks, holds and the movements in the wai khru which have their origins in armed combat.

Muay Boran, and therefore Muay Thai, was originally called toi muay or simply muay. As well as being a practical fighting technique for use in actual warfare, muay became a sport in which the opponents fought in front of spectators who went to watch for entertainment. These muay contests gradually became an integral part of local festivals and celebrations, especially those held at temples.

Years ago I shot sports for the local newspaper in San Diego (mostly football and basketball) and I really enjoyed it. Now-a-days I don’t get too many opportunities to shoot sports; but many of the skills I learned back then, help me make half way decent pictures when shooting Thai Kick Boxing, which is even more challenging in many ways.

Photographing Muay Thai at the Pink Panther Bar is quite difficult because it’s a fast moving sport which takes place in an extremely dark venue, but with today’s high-ISO capable digital SLRs, a decent auto-focus system and some good fast glass, it’s a lot easier than it used to be.

Here’s the formula I give to all my photo tour participants before we arrive ringside.

Bring your widest lens (16-20mm is best), set your ISO to the max, set drive mode to the maximum, set AF to AI-Servo, if shooting raw switch to Jpeg, set white balance to Auto, Set camera mode to Aperture priority and open up (2.8 if you have it), set metering to Matrix or Evaluative, set exposure compensation to minus 1/3 or 2/3, place camera below or through the ropes pointing upward and when the action starts, shoot until you run up against your buffer, and repeat until either the bout has ended, or you run out of memory cards!

I shot about 400 images to get 40 good ones, of which I am showing 6 here in the blog. It’s all about “machine gunning it”, there’s really no way to predict what or where the action is going to be, it just happens so fast that you blast away hoping to capture the peak action.

It’s such a blast to shoot Muay Thai, it’s one of the highlights of my year. I mean what’s more fun than doing some photography with friends, having a few beers and watching two guys trying to beat the crap out of each other using their hands, feet and knees. It’s a testosterone rich, visceral experience that you can’t find anywhere else !

A technical note: all these kick boxing images are straight out of the camera, with no tweaking or Photoshop enhancement, furthermore, none were made with me looking through the viewfinder, I just put the camera near the ground and shot; estimating the framing and composition from my experience with the 17mm f 2.8’s field of view. It’s too dangerous to have the camera at your face (and your face down near the floor) as often times the boxers fall against or through the ropes. These image were shot with the camera at, or even inside the ropes!