Cuban Hope_3
This is the third in a series of posts on my first visit to Cuba. Click these links for parts one and two.
One of the very first places we visited in Cuba was a short walk from our hotel through Old Havana to the Rafael Trejo Boxing Gym or the Rafael Trejo Gimnasio al Aire Libre. The gym, like many places in Cuba was named in memory of a revolutionary figure, this time after Rafael Trejo who was a Cuban law student, killed in 1930 during protests against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado.
Rafael Trejo Boxing Gym
The gym, like many places in the crumbling streets of Havana is easy to miss from the street and marked by a single, small sign. Walking through the door you enter perhaps the oldest boxing club in Havana, an open air arena nestled in the center of a courtyard with seating on two sides, nestled in-between a couple of three level apartment buildings with windows open to the training area. Like just about everything in Cuba, the training equipment is well worn with the exception of a brand new heavy (70-80lb) punching bag. Despite its well worn and neglected appearance, it is one of the more famous boxing arenas with a number of Olympic champions having trained here.
I was pretty excited to see this place as this is about as fundamental and raw as boxing gets. However, we arrived late morning and the light inside the gym was atrocious with all sorts of harsh highlights coupled with shadows underneath the awning. Keeping exposures under control was a nightmare as people moved from light to shadow, but I figured some of that could be an advantage, especially with RAW files that give you a little bit of extra dynamic range. The gym was also a relatively small place and having even a few photographers moving around along with boxing students and others made it a pretty tough environment to shoot in. But when was I going to get back here? Might as well suck it up and make it work…