Locky's English Playground: 8 Apr 2013

Monday, 8 April 2013

Photography: Dragonball Z Kamekameha Photography (PS version)!!!

Sneak-preview photo on Locky's English Playground Facebook last week
Image from Locky's English Playground

After I have uploaded this photo onto the Facebook last week, I have got 353 photo views, that is almost like 10 times the usual views I get for any blog post updates on my Facebook (since I usually gets around 35 views, sad!), thus proving "a picture speaks more than 1000 words" and "a picture gets more than 10 times the views". And so as planned, I will let you know what that picture is...

What do you know? It's me
Image from Locky's English Playground

It's me, of course, with a Son Goku's Kamekameha pose Photoshopped into an image of fireball explosion. It all began as a fun photography honeymoon photography activity when my wife and I both got bored and decided to fight each other while taking pictures.

One of the many honeymoon photos
Image from Locky's English Playground

I did all those Bruce Li's flying kicks and she did the sidestep dodges. When I got exhausted, I decided to take a photo of me doing a Kamekameha pose, then that photo was kept in the computer hard drive, until last week...

Image from bubblews

Ever since the trailer release of the latest Dragonball Z -- Battle of Gods movie 2013, fans have gone wild and flooded the internet with their very own Kamekameha photos.

Image from neversaymedia

Image from izismile

First the school girls of Japan goes creative ...

Image from a.xx.fbcdn

then it spread to the western world. By now Kamekameha Photography should be an official photography move after levitation and planking.

It would be fun to try something exactly the same, especially if you have a group of silly friends and Dragonball fans around, it could make a whole-day activity during an outing, but like you have seen my honeymoon photo above, it wouldn't be too spectacular if there are only two people, so instead, I went to combine Kamekameha photography with my Photoshop skills.

Image from Locky's English Playground

Step 1:

Since Kamekameha かめかめ波, literally meaning "Turtle Turtle Wave", I will need to create waves or Ki-blast (in computer game term). I can make my own using Photoshop but for the simplicity of this, you can capture a photo from a Dragonball game like I did above, or download a photo from the internet first.

Image from Locky's English Playground

Step 2:

Take many photos of the "victim" in painful postures, try to look as agonized as possible. As for the Kamekameha performer, just perform the Kamekameha and take a couple of shots, it won't go too wrong.

Image from Locky's English Playground

Step 3:
Cut and shrink the same of the men to fit the size of the characters in the image, remove the original cartoon characters with Spot Healing Brush Tool with Content Aware, use layers so you can fine tune the Opacity and Set the blending mode for the layers. Don't forget to add the shadows back to the image and...

WA-LA!!! You have your Kamekameha photo to share with your friends! It doesn't take long if you are good with Photoshop.

Give it a go and have fun!

Vocabulary:
dodge -- (n)[C] [I or T] avoid being hit by something by moving quickly to one side:
levitation photography -- (n) A person photographed while bouncing may appear to be levitating

Levitation Photography
Image from yowayowa

planking -- (n) an activity consisting of lying face down —sometimes in an unusual or incongruous location. Both hands must touch the sides of the body.