Photo shooting with Jiu-Jitsu World-Champion Penny Thomas, Hawaii, 12/2008

The sand-white tiled-up floor of the Haiku mall which reminds me more on a crematory (sorry for that, guys) leads my path past the North Shore indoor (!) chapel right to the entrance door of the Maui Jiu-Jitsu training hall.
The school and training ground is lead by well-known Luis 'Limao' Heredia.
My friend and Sebastian’s (Steudtner) tow-in partner at Pe’ahi, Daniel Goldberg, introduced me to him and Penny Thomas, the female world champion in Jiu-Jitsu, born and raised in Durban/South Africa, now based in California and Maui.
I’ve never been to a Jiu-Jitsu sparring session before and was pretty nervous about what was going to happen. I thoroughly prepared my photo equipment (remote flashes, different lenses et cetera) and positioned myself in a safe distance to the fighters.
After half an hour of warming up with rolling, stretching on the ground it went serious. Or more the way I saw the action that went down. Penny Thomas was in clinch with Daniel Goldberg and they tried different grips and holds. Sweat pearls were spilled all over the blue matresses and I gave up my safe place off the ring to snatch a closer look with my wide angle lens. I threw myself on the ground, straightened out, fired up by the action that’s been going on. Not even half a meter away from me both of the Jiu Jitsu athletes were noded in a tight up wrestle. Flash lights exploded while muscles contracted and veins looking like bursting out through the skin. You can literally feel the pure tension and concentration of the fighters anticipating and awaiting the opponents counterstrike.