The Pro Interview
With his on-going project Portrait of a Wrestler, James Musselwhite has discovered the glamour behind the brawn of the ringside. Keith Wilson tested his moves with a few sporting questions…
Pro wrestling photographer James Musselwhite enters the ring for a chat
When I speak to James Musselwhite, he is in the middle of a picture edit, but the subject is completely different to what I was expecting. “I’m just ploughing through some nursery images,” he says. “We photographed a children’s nursery recently, took some photos of some toddlers and now I’m photoshopping snot and dribble. How glamorous,” he
laughs. Working from his home in Portsmouth, James has found plenty of glamour in the world of professional wrestling. Here, theatrical and costumed posturing meets rehearsed thuggery by six-packed personas for whom the ring is the stage. With names like Jimmy Havoc, Chuck Mambo, Toni Storm and Flash Morgan Webster, this world is as far removed from children’s nurseries as it’s possible to find. Then again, maybe the temper tantrums are comparable…
Photographing children’s nurseries must be quite a contrast to the wrestlers?
That’s constantly been a problem. Because the wrestling is exciting and I get lots of travel and cool things with it, but
ultimately the stuff that pays the bills is very different. People who know me as a children’s photographer have seen the success of the Portrait of a Wrestler project and think, ‘Obviously, you’re not going to shoot my baby, or our family portrait now,’ and I go, ‘No! Definitely I will.’
Do you think they find the subject matter off-putting?
No, I think they just see the success with all the publicity and awards and think, ‘We can’t possibly afford him anymore…’ Nothing could be further from the truth.
How did your interest in photography and wrestling come together?
The project came about because I wanted a fellowship qualification with one of the professional bodies and I ended up getting two fellowships for the project. When I went self-employed in 2010, I’d seen all the successful photographers had these fellowships. I remember saying to my wife that I could never achieve that because I’m not as good as them. She told me that I could and we got to the point where I had to do something different, something that stood out. It couldn’t just be your 20 best images over the last five years, it had to have a theme and a narrative.
But why wrestling?
I’ve always been fascinated by wrestling. Wrestling is the greatest improvised art form going. It’s just two people telling a story in the ring
How scripted is the ring?
The thing that’s often thrown around is that it’s fake, that they rehearse everything during the week and perform on a Saturday. And it’s true! Ultimately, the guys go out there knowing who’s going to win, just like James Bond knows he’s going out to film the scene where he kills Scaramanga. But they react to the audience depending on how the audience reacts to them, so they know nothing about what they’re going to do for the 15 to 20 minutes between the start and the end. They have to react to the audience.
What sort of characters did you photograph in the beginning?
Within three months of starting I shot a woman who got into the ring dressed as an angel; a man dressed as a jester; big guys; little guys; genuine little people; all manner of shapes and sizes and people who I would never have met if not for this project. I managed to bring an element of professionalism to the photographic side of things – that helped me gain their trust, so I’d get recommendations and that’s how it still works to this day.
Where are you positioned when you’re ringside and what camera setup are you using?
Good question. Ringside, I’ll be shooting on a 24-105mm. You need a camera that can handle low light because, typically, a lot of these shows don’t have great lighting. When you shoot the bigger shows, like I did one in Chicago in an arena with 15,000 people – I was able to take lots of lenses and move around the whole arena and shoot from halfway up. Then I get ringside and do some shots backstage and wide-angle stuff. But if you’re in your typical British wrestling arena then you need a camera that can handle low light. The last show I shot I was shooting at ISO100,000 at f/4.
Is that right?
Yes, because you can’t compromise on a
Wrestling is the greatest improvised art form going. It’s just two people telling a story in the ring
slow shutter speed, everything is moving so quick. Luckily, the Canon can handle it. And if you’re shooting Raw with your exposures, shooting on high ISO is okay, providing that you’re not more than a third of a stop either way. I can still shoot at 1/400 sec because your wide-angle will help to reduce camera shake, and you’re not shooting above 50mm when you’re shooting the big action stuff. But you need the end of the zoom at 105mm to get the expressions. I do a bunch of videos on my Youtube channel where I attach a Gopro to the top of my camera and video while I’m shooting – you can see what position I get in and when I’m zooming.
What sort of picture are you looking for during a bout?
Often the moves aren’t what we’re trying to get, what we’re after is the reaction after the moves. Either the frustration of one competitor, or the self-congratulation and cheering of the other.
Which camera bodies do you use?
The EOS 5D Mark III. I tried the 5D Mark IV and that was a really cool body with a very different quality of images coming through. It was that next level up, so I’m looking to upgrade this year.
What’s your backup body?
My backup is a 7D. The benefit of the 7D is that it’s not a full-frame sensor, so if I’m shooting in an arena a long way away I can put a 300mm lens on and it suddenly becomes a 480mm. So I can zoom in a little bit closer without changing my lenses, or getting any adapters to zoom in any closer. I’m quite attached to my 7D to say the very least.
Have you used the EOS R yet?
No, but I think it’s the way photography is headed. I’d love to get my hands on it because I’ve experimented with them before and I wasn’t 100 per cent happy, mainly because I’d used Canons for so long that I’m used to the functionality of them, in terms of where the buttons are. As soon as you pick up anything else it feels like I’m working left-handed.
For studio work are you attracted to particular faces or poses?
Yeah, I get so used to being around these
guys that I forget that when people see my images for the first time they see people wearing face paint, or masks, and looking aggressive; and people who have huge hairy backs and big hairy chests. I’ve got so used to seeing scantily clad men and women on my hard drive that I don’t think anything of it anymore!
I imagine most wrestlers want to convey a look to the audience, so they look to you for guidance?
Yeah, absolutely. I worked with some trainees last week who have been in wrestling schools for the last six months and are ready for their first show. So I’m guiding them through the process of how to look like a bad guy and how to look like a good guy – literally telling them how to pose. Sometimes you see these projects through to fruition. With the help of both photos and videos, I’ve taken guys who were struggling to make a name on the independent scene, who are now wrestling for big companies in America because we have increased their social media presence through promotional video packages. Really, it’s the fans you’re trying to impress, because if you’re popular with the fans then the big companies will want you.
Do you have a typical lighting setup for your studio portraits?
When I had my first studio job in 2003, I was working for a Venture Studio – I was young and naïve and thought after six months I had completed photography just because I’d had some big orders come in. We had these monthly critiques where the head photographer for the region would come down and critique our work. I shot an image of a couple with 12 lights because there were 12 lights in the studio. I brought it to critique in front of 25 other photographers and he tore it to pieces on everything and ended by saying, “Why are you trying to use 12 lights when you don’t even understand how to use one?”
That’s a harsh lesson…
And I’ve been trying to use one ever since. My go-to home studio here is a two-light setup, but I’ll typically try to use one light if I can. Because the studio is white the light bounces around, so it’s not really a problem, but sometimes I’ll have
a fill-in light just to kill some shadows and make things look a bit flatter, rather than having too many deep shadows.
What lights do you take for wrestling shows?
I’ll take one light because there’s usually no space. You’re typically in a dressing room. The worst place I’ve shot, also the best place coincidentally, was at Eve Wrestling, an all-female promotion in London. It’s essentially an archway beneath a railway line. It’s like this little underground fight club and the dressing room is on a makeshift wooden balcony which is on top of scaffolding. There’s 20 female wrestlers, all make-up, hair, G-strings and pantyhose everywhere. I had a little Ice Light on a tripod and just a metre square corner in the changing room. I sat with my back to them and waited for them to come over!
So you’re flexible enough to respond to the surroundings?
One-hundred per cent. I’ve never thrown my toys out of the pram.
Small kids or professional wrestlers, which are better?
Oh, that’s not fair! I shot two days of nursery images last week and it’s me and
Photographs tell you one of two things, they tell you something about the subject or something about the photographer
my wife – it’s hard. But we photographed everything from babies to toddlers. We shot everything. We didn’t fail once. It was 140 kids and we didn’t fail to get purchasable images out of any of them.
It’s very different to wrestling…
You have to leave your ego at the door when photographing children. I can go to a show with all the lights, glitz, glamour and big moments, but that’s easy because it’s all on a plate for me. But to get a smile out of a kid who didn’t know you two minutes ago and a genuine laugh and reaction for the parents – that’s the skill of a photographer. Working with children and getting them onside is a difficult thing to accomplish and I’m always grateful when I do it.
Speaking of kids, how old were you when you knew you wanted to be a photographer?
I knew I wanted to be a photographer before I was 10. I had a darkroom in the shed at home and I learnt it at school, but I could never find a way into it as a vocation. I always loved looking at photos in books and I was attracted to the art form. I know it sounds pretentious from the point of view of a child, but it felt like it was the only thing I was good at.
Was there a type of photography that you were drawn to?
I was always interested in people photography. When I left school I did an adult evening class. I was 19 and I didn’t realize that everyone at an adult evening class would be middle aged or close to retirement, so I was the youngest one there by about 40 years! I had a tutor called Paul Penrose and… I’ve never said this to anyone, but I’ll tell you… I was 19, I’d just got kicked out of university and I was working in a bar. I did this evening class and this guy, Paul Penrose, was going through a sex change, and I learnt so much from him, not just about photography, but just about life and people. He introduced me to the work of Diane Arbus, and it just blew my mind. She shot these portraits of people in New York and they were people that she just met. I remember him forcing me to admire this image of the kid holding the hand grenade in Central Park.
Ah, yes!
He said, ‘No, look at it again’ and he kept pushing me to tell him about that image and what the photographer was trying to convey and what emotions it was making me feel. He was challenging me to see more in a picture. That worked with Diane, you just scratch the surface and you see this world of people and there’s
such a variety, such a bizarre extent that you realise that bizarre is the norm.
Why did he choose that picture?
I still don’t know to this day, but he was saying to me something that I now say when I mentor people: photographs tell you one of two things, they tell you something about the subject or something about the photographer. Normally, it’s a bit of both. You can look at that photo and just see the child’s bizarre expression and the juxtaposition of someone so young holding something so destructive.
Or you could say, ‘Oh, this is a narrative to the Vietnam War.’ But look at it even deeper and maybe it’s a struggle the photographer is having with herself at that time. It’s a reflection of that – why has she chosen to shoot it and why has she chosen to show it? As soon as you start answering those questions you begin to understand what portrait photography is about. You can never stop challenging those feelings because they constantly evolve and change.
So, as a mentor what is your best piece of advice?
Never stop learning. Like I said, I thought I had completed photography it in 2003 but you can’t complete it, not ever. There’s always a different way to look at things. We are quite fortunate as photographers that you earn your money from doing something that is genuinely enjoyable, but to retain your position within the market you have to keep learning and not be afraid of change. Change is inevitable, progress is optional.