Keeping it Simple

So I've put some images up on my site  from a shoot I shot last month of current IKF world champion Thai boxer Alexis Rufus and former world champion Mati Parks (here's Mati in action, quite scary, but a lovely bloke) and I thought I'd post some rough early versions of the same shots to show what I was originally going to do with them.

They were shot in the studio with the intention of cutting them out so they could be placed on fresh backgrounds. The gym (who Mati and Alexis teach for) wanted to use them on plain white for their website/promo ads etc, and I fancied comping them into some location shots I'd done in Majorca. In the end I decided that while they looked quite nice, they didn't really work on these backgrounds, it was all a bit too busy and overwhelming. I guess I was so pleased with the dynamic images of Mati and Alexis, I kind of wanted to pump everything up to 12. I became Michael Bay for a little bit. So instead, thankfully, I decided to tone everything down, and focus just on the athletes. You can see the difference below....