Mike Lee Kanarek

Mike Lee Kanarek trained a large group of students at North Easton school of America's Best Defense. He is the master teacher of Haganah, an advanced form of Krav Maga. He reviewed several defenses and taught some extra tactics for when/if things go wrong. His teaching style is unique, with a humorous mix of stories, hard work and playful verbal abuse!
Pictures here soon...

America's Best Defense Black Belt Awards

Here is a five-minute edit of the black belt awards at the North Attleboro High School. This features stills and video, shot with the Canon 7D. Audio track is from the Zoom. The show was several hours long, so this is the result of quite a lot of editing. Thanks to Master Garcia for a moving and inspiring show. Some day soon, Alex and I will be on the stage, so I'll need a photographer...

This was a studio session at America's Best Defense in North Easton, MA. I shot pictures of three instructors and some of the advanced students in action. This is a mix of self-defense moves and karate jumps and kicks. Thanks for a fun photo shoot to all who were involved! Pictures are here.

A kick to the head...

This was another Krav Maga brown belt test. This class ranged in age from mid-twenties to over 60; all of them tough and well-trained students! The test involves a review of about 18 months of Krav Maga curriculum, including self-defense tactics, about 6 different combinations of kicks and punches and a couple of tests of endurance. You have to run a mile and complete 75 push-ups; 50 of them non-stop. After this, they sparred for about 30 minutes, changing partners every minute or so. You sleep well at night after a workout like this. More stills and video are here.

Sensei Tiano photo session

This is Sensei Tiano from America's Best Defense in North Easton, MA. This was a 10 minute session [including setting up the lights], so I was shooting as quickly as possible, in between classes. After we had the easy shots, I wanted some cool action pictures. I asked him for some kicks or jumps and he explained that he wasn't really warmed up and didn't want to damage any muscles. So this is not a full-action Axe kick? No, not very high at all. More here

Black belts

We watched a recent black belts award performance at North Attleboro high school. Students and instructors from America's Best Defense, a group of martial arts schools in Massachusetts. This is where we train in Krav Maga. Pictures here were taken with the new Canon 5D II, include stills and video. The lighting was fairly low, so the stills were almost all shot at ISO 6400. The lighting quality could have been better. There was virtually no front light on the faces of the people on stage.

Board Breakers

Video was shot with the Canon G9. This is a simple camera to operate in video and the auto-focus behaved surprisingly well. Video here