My Favourite Photographs: William Burkhardt from BJJPix.com

Long time readers of this blog may know that I publish a regular series call My Favourite Photographs. It's a look at some of the photography pros who work the BJJ scene offering powerful visuals for all of us to enjoy.

William Burkhardt is a French photographer living and working in Brazil. His work via BJJPix.com has been lighting up print and web BJJ media for a while now with his stunning imagery.

You can find out more about William in an interview he did for Pulling Guard Zine. He also has a regularly updated Facebook page here.

I love William's strong sense of drama. In many of his images, he makes daring post processing techniques in Photoshop. I say daring because William places a ton of contrast, high pass, vignetting etc in his images, framing each image and adding to the sense of action. It's a bold technique but he pulls it off with aplomb, blurring the lines between photo reportage and artistry.

Here are William's favourite BJJ images he has taken and a little commentary from him about each one. Enjoy!

"On this photo, Rodolfo Vieira was comemorating his absolute title at Worlds 2011. This photo featured in Tatame magazine in a full page."

This is a picture I took at the Abu-Dhabi Trial in Gramado, my first big tournament. I asked Dudu, the journalist at Tatame to get me a credential and he was nice enough to get me one. I didn't have the appropriate gear, I was missing a zoom lens but I managed to get some good shot. I got them up side down and those are the kind of shots I'm waiting for when I shoot. Those are the shots that satisify me.

I took that shot at an event called High Fight Rock, that took place in Goiânia, where I spent my first two years in Brazil.

This photo is from Brasileiro 2012, in Rio de Janeiro. I talked to the girl on the right before her fight and she told me she had entered the heavy weight division even though she is light feather weight. I managed to take that shot where it looks like she actually is throwing down her heavier opponent. She managed to score 3 points from pass but ended up losing her fight on points.

I got this shot at my first MMA event, Shooto 18 in Brasília. I got many good shots like this one. It really got me pumped.

That's a photo of Sérgio Moraes throwing down Nivaldo Oliveira during the final of the Brasileiro 2011. I had this photo framed poster sized at my appartement.

This is another cool photo I took at Jungle Fight recently.

Good luck to William in his BJJ and photographic career.


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