Shooting at the 2010 Maui Matsuri

Was asked once again by my friends at JN Productions to photograph Kikaida and friends at the 2010 Maui Matsuri.  I really enjoy doing this every year, as it is a lot of fun to see childhood heroes come to life on the stage.  They had two performances, so I videotaped the first one and photographed the second.

It's interesting to watch the actors plan and rehearse their fight choreography beforehand.  There's a lot of thought that goes into planning, as they try to stay true to each character as far as how certain characters would react in every situation.

Watching the rehearsal also helps to plan and anticipate certain shots.  During the rehearsal,  the actors worked out how the V3 character would be introduced - by doing a flying kick to one of the bad guys.

When it came time during the performance for V3's introduction, I moved up closer to the stage and got down lower,  This helped exaggerate the height of the actor's kick and led to one of our favorite shots of that day. 

 Canon 7D, 24-70 f2.8L lens and 580EX flash.

Don't know if they have posted the images yet, but you can learn more about Kikaida, Kamen Rider V3 and see photographs from past Maui Matsuri events at the Generation Kikaida website.

Pinup shoot with Honey and Kat

A few weeks after the Oahu shoot, I had the chance to work with makeup artist Kahulani once again, this time doing a pinup shoot with one of her friends, Honey.

Honey does the vintage Hollywood look really well.  For this first one all we used was an AB800  with a beauty dish.  The sepia tone and vignette was a preset look in Adobe Lightroom.  Also tried a few in black and white.

I used pretty much the same bedroom set as Uilani's boudoir shoot, minus the tulle hanging from the poles.  We were working without an assistant that day, so I didn't want to risk having the pole falling and whacking someone on the head.  Lighting is 3 AB800s, the main in a 5' Octodome and two behind the folding closet doors in the background.

One of the things I learned on this shoot is that the edge of an air mattress is really hard to hold a pose on.  Will have to think about some way of adding more support underneath the sheets to make it easier next time.

Black Lagoon Anime Concept slideshow video

A big Mahalo to photographer Chase Jarvis who inspired this idea with his Hasselblad Masters FRAMES video.

This is a compilation video of the 300+ images we took on that shoot at the Naval Air Museum, mixed in with some behind the scenes images and finished images.  Everything was assembled in Final Cut Pro.  Music is from the alternative Stacktraxx collection available at DigitalJuice.com.


Black Lagoon Anime Concept Photoshoot from Todd Mizomi on Vimeo.