very exotic music...I download the songs and I listened to it a million times,...I had these songs for breakfast, lunch and dinner...I almost became the song!
the "miss bikini" fashion show at the video above had a lot of exotic jewellery, the necklaces and earrings were indeed very exotic!
EXOTIC became the key word for the shooting!
EXOTIC is a word that I relate to the jungles of Asia and South America,
it's a word that I relate to the indian tribes of North America and Africa,
EXOTIC is TRIBAL,
TRIBAL relates me to AFRICAN WARRIORS,...relates me to AMAZON WOMEN,
and here we are...now all I have to do is find a model who has a very exotic look and who can pose like an african warrior,...Miss Universe Japan 2008 HIROKO MIMA was the name!!
I google "african warrior" and I noticed they always have a "stick" in their hand...the stick is their weapon,...it's a spear!!
I noticed they paint their faces and wear many different kind of accessories around their body,...even on their heads!
I knew GISHUR jewellery from sometime ago when I had a chance to work with them,
they have a very exotic line of accessories which they kindly lent it to me specially for Hiroko's shooting,
I went to get some bamboo stick to be used like a weapon on the shoot,
I asked Izumi (the make-up artist) to do a very strong make-up specially around the eyes,...black and smoky eye shadow,
I google "amazon women" and I noticed most of the women in the tribes of South America have their hair fringed,
so I asked Sunao (the hair stylist) to make a fringe on Hiroko,
as on the video above I thought it would be a good idea to wear bikinis...but what kind of shoes should we have??
Ines (Miss Universe Japan director) had the great idea of Hiroko wearing boots!!...and the boots were just perfect!!
now we have an exotic looking model with all the accessories, spear, bikini, boots, hair&make-up...all we need now is an exotic looking backdrop!
once again back to google (before internet I would spend hours and hours in a library doing research) and search for tribal houses and see what kind of material they use when buiding their huts,...they use a lot of wood,..bamboo,...mud...fortunatly I had some "sudare" at my studio,..."sudare" is a japanese "bamboo screen" widely used in the country side, "sudare" was just perfect as a backdrop, it's texture and color couldn't be better!
but only "sudare" wouldn't make it,...I needed more colors,...more green...so I went on a foliage hunting mission around my neighborhood and managed to get many kind of leaves!!
but using ONLY "sudare" for 6 diferent photos would look a bit boring, so Africa is not only tribalism, Africa is also wild life..and luckily I had a piece of leopard skin fabric big enough to be used as a backdrop...so 6 photos...3 with "sudare"...3 with "leopard skin"!...perfect!
I made a playlist of african music on my iTunes so we could play it loud during the shooting, as I said above, MUSIC was my primary inspiration for the shooting...so...we HAD to have good african music playing LOUD so it would get into our blood cells and spark our brains with the TRIBAL feeling we needed for the shooting!!
all SET...I am ready for the shooting day!

the shooting went great and fast,...we finished in just a couple of hours!
now it's time for photoshop retouching,...looking at the photographs taken I realized Hiroko was a bit too "white",...I need her to be more "black",..."white" is not exotic...right??
on the photoshop I had a very hard time selecting only her skin area which took almost a full day in front of the computer, and after a bit of research I learned how to make her skin look much darker!
the "sudare" was a bit too "pale", so I had to select only the "sudare" area and make it a bit darker on a graduation from above,...getting darker and darker at the bottom,
even the bamboo stick (the weapon) was too pale,...I made it much darker too!!
the green of the foliage could be more striking, so I selected only the foliage and used a few photoshop plugins to give it more texture and volume so it would pop out more!

2 hours to do the shooting...and 3 days to do the photoshop retouching!!

the photos were taken in my very small studio...I mean SMALL..not bigger than a 6 tatami room!!....I guess tribal people don't have electricity at their villages and probably use fire as a source of light, so I tried to imitate "candle light" as a light source for the photos having the area around Hiroko a bit darker than the center, so I used only one 500w spot lamp to do the job!!...sometimes simple is best!!

and here is the "making of" video...hope you like it!