First HS wrestling photo, C&C more than welcome

[mattjns93]

This was my first wrestling shoot. I didn't get through all my pictures yet but I liked this one the most so far. Shot it with my Xti and 85L in ambient lighting. Wish I would've known flash photography is allowed. Anyways, any C&C is welcome.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2731/4330815255_c70bb9050a.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mloiacono/4330815255/

[canons900]

Not a bad shot. What iso were you shooting at? I would crop it tighter at the bottom and get rid of that dead space.

How was the focus speed of the 85? Next time try the 100mm.

[mattjns93]

That was at ISO 800. I did have the 100mm macro with me but without and flash, even at 1600 iso, I couldn't get a shot free of motion blur. The 85 focus is manageable to me. It's no 85 1.8 or 70-200 but I've managed to shoot swimming and basketball with it. I left the bottom there because I wasn't sure if rule of thirds rule still applied to sports photo...

[canons900]

Wrestling you want to crop tight. Really tight. Cutting off limbs is also acceptable. You want faces. If you can get both in the frame even better. Take a look at my most recent wrestling post for examples and let me know what you think.

It also depends how close you can get to the mat. Shooting with a zoom makes life easier for me. But you still have to wait for the "shot".

Motion blur will happen from time to time.

My settings for wrestling are, iso 800, ss 1/250th, flash bounced straight up in the air. I use a 70-200mm sigma, 2.8. And I am on the mat watching the action. Helps being involved in the organization the way I am.

Take a look at cropping the leg off the wrestler and seeing if you can crop close enough on the head and get rid of the ref. See what it looks like.

Wrestling shows a lot of emotion and the looks on their faces is gold. You don't have image editting turned on or I would show you how I would crop it.

[MT]

As noted - crop tighter - how tight depends. If it were me, I'd crop just below the white circle and at the down wrestlers knee. As noted above, it acceptable to hack off limbs from wrestlers and crop tightly to just get emotion, but in your shot the official is a significant part of the story.

Personally, the light you have looks very nice. If you can achieve acceptable shutter speed, I would be real hesitant to add on camera flash.