DIY Photography

How I became a real fruit ninja (weekend project)

Jun 22, 2016

Udi Tirosh

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fruit-ninja-01

I know Adam Frimer is no ninja, so when I saw this photo pop on his profile, I had to ask for a short tutorial. Turns out it is quite a fun project that you can easily do with your kids on a rainy weekend (sans holding the knife).

Here is a pictorial outlining the process:

But just before we start, make sure you set your camera on a nice sturdy tripod

fruit-ninja-07 — 1. this is the background plate. we will arrange everything on this basic photo, In hindsight, I may have used a more leveled photo :) I am shooting at f/8, 1/200 @ ISO 800

fruit-ninja-05 — This is the fun part, getting a banana on a string. I actually think that I am going to start a band by this name. Anyway, I shot the banana on a string with a strobe on the bottom for some dramatic effect. THere is a muffler on the strobe as even at 1/128 it was too bright

fruit-ninja-06 — strings and hands removed by masking them out in photoshop. the background layer makes sure there are no “holes” in the photo.

fruit-ninja-04 — Here is a shot of my hand holding the knife. It looks still (it is…), are are going to take care of this in a few seconds.

fruit-ninja-03 — This is the same layer with added motion blur and moved slightly upwards. Then everything but my hand was masked out so only my hand will “move”

fruit-ninja-02 — This is the element I used for the swish – it’s a shape I drew with the pen tool with a deep bevel and an inner shadow. I lowered the opacity and added motion blur and some gaussian blur to give a swish effect. I then made the first iteration a little more evident and copy/pasted and lowered opacity down the row to give the impression of movement

fruit-ninja-01 — And here is the final composition again

P.S. then again, maybe it is just the banana you want to slice…

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Tutorials

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composite photography

Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

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2 responses to “How I became a real fruit ninja (weekend project)”

Vladimir Khudyakov

Jun 22, 2016

Fantastic!

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Aankhen

Jun 23, 2016

Cool technique, thanks for sharing.

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