My manuscript is nearing its finish and now is the time to fill the remainder of the designated vacant white squares with photographs. Debbie and I drive up to the home of my friends and long time students, Travis and Sheri Rath. Both of them have been practicing Bagua for a time (They have poles in their yard!) with backgrounds in Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and more.  The light is perfect; just overcast enough to let us work outside.

Martial photography is a special skill in which Debbie is expert. Decisions abound:  what is left in the frame or out? is the lighting good? what’s the best angle to show the most information? There’s also the problem that fidgety martial artists love to MOVE. Instead, when being photographed, we all must practice standing, remaining perfectly still as the photographer checks details.

The idea is to capture Bagua style through the fighting moves. My partner Travis can sense the torque through my hands, but how to show that in the flat book? Though present, It can be as elusive as a ghost.

Watch and decide.  Sheri is a fine kicker and a skilled artist. When she kicks her husband she smiles a little. Later, reviewing the batch,  I find the photo so good I think I’ll keep it.

Decision point: When Travis and I walk the circle we crank to exaggerate the turn of the torso. How much exaggeration? We want to show what the camera might be too lazy to pick up but not to go overboard; that’s the trick.

There are all sorts of little questions in each filming session. Is it good for the book if I let Travis beat me up? I mean fair is fair. But I’m the author! truly, a stupid internal argument. How much do we grimace? You can either act as an unflinching mannekin, or you can do some method acting and pose like the crazed villain in a movie ad for a StreetFighter sequel.

Then there are the slips and slides. I catch Travis with a cutting palm in the ribs. He grunts, eyes turned downward. Now here’s the sick martial part: should we try to duplicate that reaction, just with another shot? But it’s got to be unexpected for the full effect and how do you manufacture that?. Sometimes it comes from the other end of the camera like the old DeMille gag (1.). We finish a complex shot use using poles and switching, then reversing, and all that entails. When we’re done, having just put it all together, Debbie realizes that from her angle—two decks above—we look like battling badgers due to the foreshortening.

But for all that we’re lucky. The light’s perfect, everyone caught on to that break dance type movement when you pose, move, pose for the shots. Two hours of this and three hundred plus pictures later we are ready for Sushi and Sake.

At home I use Photoshop to cull through the 300+ photos. Here is our attempt to capture a style, the instant of conflict, the cooperation in an exercise, the line of a body kicking, the sequence of a technique. I hold my thumb down as the elevator crawls through the pictures and suddenly its like a dozen flipbooks strobing through their movements all at once. No one will ever see them this way but me and it will be my job through careful picking and discarding to bring this motion into a book.

1. Cecil B. DeMille is filming the biggest scene of its kind for his masterpiece Intolerance. It is a  one shot with thousands of extras, horses, armies clashing that they can never duplicate. It comes off perfect but when DeMille goes to his first camera he learns the lighting is bad. Shaking his head he asks the second assistant only to hear that some sections were probably out of focus. It’s all up to the third camera man to have caught something or the shot is ruined. When he gets to number 3, before he can even open his mouth, the third man turns to him and says, “Ready when you are, Mr. DeMille.”