Wushu Collegiates

Written: February 21, 2004
Last Updated: February 22, 2004

Presenting photos from the annual Wushu Collegiates at Stanford University.

Stanford University hosted the 8th Annual Collegiate Wushu Championship Saturday in Burnham Pavilion.

If this was the 8th year of the tournament, how come I never heard of it when I was studying Tai-Chi as an undergrad? I was surprised by the relative lack of competitors at the tourney. It seemed like there were less than a dozen schools represented at collegiates! I also noticed that there were only a few competitors for the Yang Tai-Chi form. I joked to Rae that I should have jumped (ala Andy Lau in Running on Karma) onto the floor and competed!

The whole gamut of Rae's wushu colleagues -- Cal, Stanford, and Wushu Central -- were all at the competition. In less than 2 months, we'll see each other again at the 12th Annual Chinese Martial Arts Tournament in Berkeley. I missed last year's tournament because I was on tour with Vienna Teng. Her new album Warm Strangers is coming out in just two more days! I've had the privilege of listening to a pre-release version of the album for several months now, and I tell you, it's a keeper!

Photographing in Burnham Pavilion was challenging. In order to get a high enough shutter speed to freeze the action, I had set the camera to ISO 3200. Though I got reasonable exposures at that setting (f/2.8 at 1/250 second), I felt the need for an extra stop of sensor sensitivity or a 200/1.8 lens! Furthermore, the overall image quality is degraded at ISO 3200 but hey, it's better than nothing!

Here's Raffi's recap of collegiates. Due to a prior engagement in the evening, Rae and I had to leave before the Masters' Demo. That would have been nice to have seen and photographed. Still, I've got a bunch of photos from the 8th Annual Collegiate Wushu Championship at Stanford for you to enjoy. I'll work on the captions when I have some more time.


Staff	Phillip and Mei	Brandon gives out a 6.60
Sword	Steven tabulates the scores	Sword
Jumping	Splits and sword	More jumping
Luther White competes	At the edge	Close-up jump
Cat stance with sword	Steven Kam watches his clone	Splits sword once more
Vertical	Grace competes	Brandon demonstrates his Tai-Chi prowess
Lawrence flips	Lawrence poses for the judges	Ben waits his turn
Doris and George look on	Nancy competes	Nancy flies
Aya poses	Ben performs Tai Chi	Brenda Hatley jumps with a straightsword
Rae in the crowd	8th Annual Wushu Collegiates	Burnham Pavilion
Zoom shot	Yang-style Tai Chi	Me and Felicia
Tami photographs a sleeping George	Nancy performs Tai-Chi	Getting ready
Wilson Liu photographs his daughter	Stephanie competes with staff	Stephanie Liu
Twirling the staff	Spear #1	Spear #2
Spear #3	Lawrence and his spear	Lawrence poses with his spear
Jumping pre-slam	Spear slam	It is flexible
University of Maryland was well-represented	Outside Burnham Pavilion

Enter The Photo Gallery

Reader Comments

haha you havepicture of my ass! Why do you want that on your site? =)

--posted by Brenda Hatley @ Sunday, February 22 2004, 22:19 pm EST

Brenda - That's my artsy shot. BTW, I just added an action shot of you with the straightsword.

--posted by Adam @ Sunday, February 22 2004, 22:28 pm EST

damn, i wish I would of been there this year! your pictures are awesome.

--posted by addie @ Sunday, February 22 2004, 22:30 pm EST

these are awesome, adam. nice job. wow, i almost look official as a judge.

--posted by brandon @ Sunday, February 22 2004, 22:34 pm EST

whoa. how do you know my dad?

--posted by steph @ Sunday, February 22 2004, 23:08 pm EST

Steph - Your dad and I talked shop about cameras during the competition (we were sitting next to each other). Congrats on the tourney!

--posted by Adam @ Sunday, February 22 2004, 23:19 pm EST

Hi Adam,

We met at the Chinese Culture Center a couple of years ago. I just wanted to say that you took some really great pictures here, catching people in mid-air can't be easy!

--posted by John Kang @ Monday, February 23 2004, 5:01 am EST

Thanks for the pictures. They are really great. Glad you didn't post any of my crashes.

--posted by Alex @ Monday, February 23 2004, 13:39 pm EST

Adam, this is a great series of photos. The ones of ppl mid-air are très cool!

--posted by Aaron @ Monday, February 23 2004, 20:49 pm EST

Haha Brenda that pic is my new Desktop wallpaper hehe jk. I was wondering the same thing though interesting choice of angle. Adam I like a lot of your action shots they are nice.

--posted by Justice "Steve" Van-Cho @ Tuesday, February 24 2004, 3:25 am EST

Woohoo! Go Maryland :)

--posted by Bryan @ Tuesday, February 24 2004, 6:05 am EST

Eep. Ng told me he saw a picture of me here.

It's nice to see the website to go with the face and camera-clickiness and young man I met at David's wedding though! And the pictures are beautiful. Cheers!

--posted by Aya @ Tuesday, February 24 2004, 6:43 am EST

Heh! awesome pics of bee! thanks for saying umd was represented well...go terps!

--posted by Jessica Chu @ Tuesday, February 24 2004, 18:40 pm EST

Great pictures, Adam!

--posted by Nancy @ Tuesday, February 24 2004, 21:33 pm EST

whoa! you have two photos of my friend anthony ("at the edge" & "close-up jump")! i know that he went to the stanford wushu collegiates and when i saw the title of your entry i thought "he wouldn't happen to have a shot of ant would he?" haha.

--posted by jill @ Thursday, February 26 2004, 19:10 pm EST

BTW, i found out today that my earlier quote about my ass is now on a porn site. i found this out when a friend searched my name on google and it popped up. i thought that it was humerous.

--posted by Brenda @ Monday, March 1 2004, 0:28 am EST

and here\'s what you get when you search for \"Brenda Hatley ass\" on google:

SLAM THAT ASS INDEX
... Reader Comments. haha you havepicture my ass! Why do you want on your
site posted by Brenda Hatley Sunday, February pm EST. tow.com ...
slam-that-ass.wildpussy.org/ - 15k - Cached - Similar pages

--posted by Brandon @ Thursday, March 18 2004, 13:04 pm EST