Ninja Warrior on the beach

The female ninja or kunoichi concept is one that I've been trying to develop for a while.  Whenever I find a model that is interested in this, I break out the ninja suit and props and experiment. Recently, I had the chance to shoot this idea with model Rosanna Picardi, whom I worked with while she visited  Kauai late last year.

I had originally planned to photograph her on some lava rocks near a beach house restaurant.  Unfortunately, we were unable to get permission from the restaurant to do the shoot there as it was too close to their property. I guess a sword wielding ninja does kind of distract from the family atmosphere of a restaurant. ;-)

We ended up shooting on the tiny crowded beach nearby.  The sun was going down quickly and we also had a swimsuit look that we needed to complete before our flight back that evening.

Ideally, this would have been shot with a greenscreen in a studio.  Since we had neither at the time, I had the model pose on a rock outcropping high enough that I could position myself slightly below her eye level. This put the clear sky behind her, (nature's version of a chromakey background) which made it much easier to remove in post.  I couldn't get the sky completely behind her as you can see, but I was able to get it behind her hair which is most important.  Hair is really difficult to mask out in Photoshop.

The other elements of the shot I had in mind I took while traveling in Japan this past December.  The roof she is standing on is from a temple that I found while walking through the back streets of Akihabara, the high tech electronics district in Tokyo.  Shot it with a Canon 40D.

Had to walk around the temple grounds a bit before I found the right section of roof that would work.

The mountain in the background is Mount Fuji, which I took from a moving bus while we were going to an onsen in Izu.  This was shot with a Canon Powershot G9.  I try to always keep a camera with me as I never know when I'll come across something I can use for a background or element in Photoshop.

The moon and smoke elements are from stock images I already had on file.  To get the nighttime look, I used a Lightroom preset called PH Bedtime with some minor tweaks.

Sometimes it takes a while

I shot this image a few years ago but wasn't able to finish it 'til today.

Originally we shot this against a greenscreen using an ABR800 Ringlight. I also used 2 SB-26 flashes with CTO gels behind the model to help her blend into the fire that I was planning to add later in post.

Joanne was the model, with makeup done by Jessica Waite and hair done by Karli Benedict. My friend Jennifer was our assistant - she stood in for the skeleton and held his sword.

There were two things that made it take this long for me to finish the image: the greenscreen and the skeleton.

First, getting a good matte from the greenscreen turned out to be harder than I had planned. The greenscreen wasn't evenly lit ( I didn't have enough lights and it was also one of my first attempts at greenscreen work). Thanks to my friend Chaz at After6Media, I found out about a Photoshop plugin called Primatte, which is really effective at cutting out subjects shot against a greenscreen. It helped that the way Karli styled Joanne's hair made it so there were no tiny stray hairs to mess around with. Using the Primatte plugin, it took about 3-4 mouse clicks to get the matte about 90% of the way I wanted it.

Second problem was finding the right adversary for our ninja. Since our assistant wasn't willing to be hacked to pieces by our ninja, I thought about adding a samurai warrior in post to battle her. Unfortunately, samurai battle gear is a little hard to come by on Maui.

Went through different ideas - ninjas, zombies, nothing was sparking a good idea. I added the fire and background screen and left it at that for a while.

What got be back into working on this image was a tutorial from Videocopilot.net - a website dedicated to showing how to make all sorts of crazy cool effects in Adobe After Effects. One of the tutorials was how to disintegrate a person, like the effect seen in the movie "Blade".

I went thru the tutorial and happened to be watching CSI at the same time. That's when I got the idea for the skeleton - sort of a homage to the old stop motion Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies.

I used a CG skeleton, added the disintegration effect from After Effects, and the result can be seen above.

"Do it again, but better"

Poor Joanne. When were doing the ninja part of our action figure shoot a few months ago, I had her jumping up and down in front of a greenscreen over and over again in order to get the pose I was looking for. This shot is one of the results.

We were a little pressed for time, because she and her fiancee had an appointment to get to that evening. But she was a real trooper and kept going until we got some great action shots.
You can see more of our shoot at www.mizomi.com.

In case you’re reading this Joanne, thank you again for being so patient with me during that shoot. I could not have done this shot without you.

Chase Jarvis Videos on iTunes

One of the photographers whose works I admire a lot is Chase Jarvis, a commercial photographer in Seattle, Washington.
I first learned about him through Strobist, and this video was what initially hooked me into his work:



What I like most about him is that he and his staff have produced several behind the scenes videos, which help photographers like myself learn more about the process of producing quality shots. To see more videos of this amazing photographer, go to the Apple iTunes store and do a search for Chase Jarvis - you can subscribe to his free video podcast there. Very inspirational work!