Shot a wrestling meet last Wednesday. When I walked in there was red everywhere. Red mats, red uniforms, red banners on the walls, redwood bleachers, and cycling lights. Thankfully, I was strobing the meet, but with all the red, to keep the skin tones halfway normal, I could not boost any vibrancy or saturation at all. All of these are 1DmkII and a 70-200 2.8 with 2 AB800's bounced off the ceiling.
Nice work! I don't think most people realize how challenging it is to shoot wrestling. In my neck of the woods, varsity is always under a single lamp, so flash/strobe is the only way to get DR that is manageable. Then the wrestlers never show their faces! Or if they do, it's facing the wrong direction.
WOW....that is a lot Carl. You did a good job managing it. They should make it mandatory to include a photographer on the design teams for lighting and color schemes for gyms.
Were you using AWB or flash for the white balance? I know that there is a lot of red caused by stuff in the gym in these pics but I've found that using "flash" for the white balance tends to put more red in the pics.
