Saturday, 26 October 2013

Shoot for Dekho Japan Festival based on "47 Ronin"

Pi Studio recently collaborated with Mannaal e Fizza to shoot a cross cultural friendship shoot between Pakistan and Japan organized by Metal Seinen. The shoot was for the event titled "Dekho Japan" being held at Peral Continental Hotel in Khi on Saturday October 26 2013 and Sunday October 27 2013.
The shoot was based on the famous japanese event of the "Revenge of the 47 Ronin". The following are the details:
"The revenge of the Forty-seven Ronin (四十七士 Shi-jū-shichi-shi) took place in Japan at the start of the 18th century. One noted Japanese scholar described the tale, the most famous example of the samurai code of honor, bushidō, as the country's "national legend."
The story tells of a group of samurai who were left leaderless (becoming ronin) after their daimyo (feudal lord) Asano Naganori was compelled to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) for assaulting a court official named Kira Yoshinaka, whose title was Kōzuke no suke. The ronin avenged their master's honor by killing Kira, after waiting and planning for almost two years. In turn, the ronin were themselves obliged to commit seppuku for committing the crime of murder."
 
 
Thus, Pi Studio juxtaposed this concept with the Pakistani importance to the number 47 (it was Pakistan's year of independence). Moreover, Ronin means becoming leaderless and that is precisely the scenario we have in Pakistan since its independence and our nation has felt this leadership vacuum at many critical times in our history. We used the following japanese painting as our inspiration which portrayed the Seppuku (ritual Suicide) by wife of Onodera Junai, who was one of the 47 Ronin.  In the painting it is worht noting that the legs are tied together, which is a female feature of seppuku (ritual suicide) to ensure a "decent" posture in death (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-seven_Ronin).
 
 
The technical details of the shoot were pretty simple. The image was shot in RAW format on the Nikon D300 with the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM lens. For studio lighting we used our trusty Simpex 600D Strobes with softbox on one light and bounce umbrella on the other as our modifiers. The shoot was done on a white seamless paper backdrop. The final post processed shot turned out to be like this:
 

This image is displayed at the Dekho Japan event mentioned earlier along with another shot for the write-up and our travel shots of Pakistan.
 
To view the pictures on facebook please click here.

To visit Metal Seinen's facebook page please click here.

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