photography lessons from Muay Thai

As a photographer I get inspired by many things. Other photographers, painters, athletes, self help guru’s and hip hop. I am in a constant search to get inspired and take my work to another level. And guess what, Muay Thai has been a huge inspiration.

When I first photographed Ghino, who is a Muay Thai fighter, I felt that there was more to it than just training hard and preparing for fights. Now after photographing Ghino for a while and photographing Muay Thai in Thailand from the country side to the biggest stages I started noticing that I, as a photographer, started changing as well. Little details, like how I approached a portrait session, the way I framed pictures or how I, more and more, started to work in series like mini documentaries. To give you a bit more structure and make clear what I mean below you will find some trades that inspire me as a photographer.

Creativity

Many professional athletes work very disciplined, structured and stoic towards their goal. In Muay Thai this is also the case, of course, because you want to achieve a goal. I also noticed is that there is a lot of playing, trying and experimenting with techniques, moves and styles. Being around Muay Thai fighters it inspired me to become more creative. To try more and do new things to see if it works. Yes, this resulted in many bad photo’s, but it also resulted in new experimental photo’s and different way’s of showing my work.

Having fun

Watching professional fighters I thought I would see focus, hard work, fierce training, ‘eyes on the price’, dedication. Having a laugh? Sure when training is done or when they would meet with their friends. What surprised me was that the fighters, during training, where also having a laugh, playing around, joking, teasing.
This was very enlightening to me. Especially because the past few years I was not having that much fun photographing. I had a goal, a mission. I was dedicated, disciplined and focused. Having fun to me was a bad thing. In my eyes, fun, was a lack of focus, a distraction.
I learned that having fun relaxes you. It opens the door to creativity and experimentation.

Discipline

People who know me always praise me about my discipline. Going to the gym everyday, working 7 days a week, working on my dreams consistently and also doing it on the days I don’t feel like it. Yes, I might work with a kind of plan but I don’t feel like I am disciplined. And after seeing Muay Thai fighters I definitely can be more disciplined. These guys and girls work so incredibly hard and do it 3 times a day for 6 days a week. On the 7th, a rest day, they don’t go out to party. Everything is in light of their dream. Becoming a champion. No days of, period.
It might be unfair to myself to compare myself with professional fighter, for one I am not a fighter. But we can learn a lot from looking at Muay Thai fighters and their persistence.

Hard work

Muay Thai fighters are, in my eyes, a different human being. I mean, I do workout hard. I can push my self to do things I didn’t know I could. Like running a trail marathon without training. But these fighters are next level. Let me take Ghino as an example.

Ghino is a professional fighter, actor and trainer. So you can imagine he is busy.
I woke up for my workout. Feeling tired from working, my body was sore from working out, I didn’t sleep enough and mentally I felt weak. So as any person in this day and age I told my self I needed a day of and opened my Instagram app to scroll, bed warm and comfortable. I see a new highlight from Ghino, clicked on it and jumped out of bed. HE WAS TRAINING WITH A BROKEN FOOT. Are you kidding me? And no he was not kicking and running. But he was training. All the self pitty was gone and I felt ashamed. Because I knew I could do more. So I have thought myself a new question. Everytime I feel I need a day of I think “what would ghino do?”