1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I go by the name EXkurogane in the online community, while my real name is Kay Stevenson. I'm from Malaysia and I just graduated recently, in dentistry. Figure collecting and photography is one of my main hobbies. I've been collecting figures for about 6 years, but I only started photographing figures 3 years ago.

2. How did you get started with figure photography?

I was mainly inspired by other figure photographers. I visit figure review websites a lot, and when I saw the figure photos they came up with, it made me felt, "I want to take photos like these too".

I began reading some photography tutorials online, and there was a this website called wwwtentaclearmada.com which I loved how the author, Tier, did the lighting when he photographed his photos. I read some of his tutorials and began copying what he does in lighting techniques. Everything that i have done until today, are completely self taught. I learnt everything on my own, practice, and learn from mistakes.

Eventually as I understand more on how lighting works, I started to modify the techniques I use, depending on what's suitable for the occasion. My aim was to make use of the lighting techniques I learned from Tier, and take figure photography to the next level by giving every figure a matching background. It's all about combining ideal lighting techniques with an ideal background and composition whenever possible for scale figures.

3. What do you use to create your photos?

I only relied on my phone's camera back then which had limitations, and I finally bought my first DSLR camera 3 years ago, a Nikon D5200 with the standard 18-55mm kit lens, and about a year later I picked up a Sigma f1.4 50mm EX DG HSM prime lens, which until today is my main lens I use for figure photography.

As for the backgrounds, it varies, but I mainly use wood or ABS/PVC plastic plates, sticks, and rods, often supported by styrofoam as the core material for walls. I also use plaster of Paris, putty paste and wall-filling cement/putty, and anything suitable. It's all about being resourceful and creative, many items we see in a kitchen or home and in gift shops can be used in some way. For example, you can consider floor mats or PVC table cloth for the flooring; you can spray paint sand paper with grey color to create a road surface (be careful not to scratch the figure though); or you can use photo frames as window frames, and so on.

4. How do you pick what to take a photo of?

This is a good question. Due to budget issues, I no longer collect figma or nendoroids, I only collect scale figures because they are my favorite, and with excess budget allocated for building backdrops or dioramas. Another main reason is scale figures with fixed pose do not have joint lines on their arms or legs, hence they look "more human".

Even if figure companies sponsored me free figures it does not mean I'll shoot photos of it, because I am very selective with which figure I choose to shoot photos of. It is mainly related to the pose and the theme. Some figures are masterpieces and cost a lot of money, but their pose may be a bit unnatural for them to look good in photos, especially in a diorama setup. Meanwhile, there are figures which have a very simple pose but they look very natural, making them quite photogenic, and they are what i prefer to photograph. If you compare it with an example in real life, no matter how pretty a female fashion model is, if she can't pose well, you can't get good photos.

The theme can also be a challenge - you may have to deal with science fiction theme if you have a figure in a pilot suit, or a classroom setting (school uniform), beach or pool (swimwear), RPG or supernatural (elves, magician/mahou shoujo), and more. But these different themes are a good thing because you can produce a lot of variety.

5. Could you walk us through the process of how you create your composition?

To me, nowadays composition is almost like a subconscious thing - I can tell whether there is something wrong with my photo or arrangement of items in a diorama setup just by looking at the photos I took. But I do use several types of composition grids as a guide, such as the rule of thirds, the phi grid, and the golden ratio as well as the fibonacci curve.

It is important to remember that these grids are only guides, and not an absolute rule. There will be cases where you find it impossible to use a certain composition grid because it is not practical. These grids are important in a diorama setup where there are too many things inside a photo, and you need to arrange them accordingly, or your photo will end up like a mess with many distractions. Despite having many things going on in a single photo, the audience must not be distracted away from the main subject - the figure.

I do have a few links here which are articles that I wrote, which I do recommend reading. This first link below is a tutorial album from my facebook page on some of the composition grids i use, while the second and third link are related to lighting techniques.

Composition:
wwwfacebook.com/pg/EXkurogane.Blog/photos/?tab=album&album_id=484044081707660

Lighting:
wwwfacebook.com/pg/EXkurogane.Blog/photos/?tab=album&album_id=474051336040268

wwwfacebook.com/pg/EXkurogane.Blog/photos/?tab=album&album_id=921744284604302

As for the links below here, there are examples on how I use the golden ratio to guide myself on how to arrange items in a setup. Sometimes I do a render or sketch to give myself an idea how to arrange things. And it is not just about composition grid, color composition is also important. What colors should you paint for your diorama, they are important and can influence how a photo looks. Your photo will not be attractive if the colors don't match well with the figure.

myfigurecollection.net/blog/28784
myfigurecollection.net/blog/30031
myfigurecollection.net/blog/27316

6. What for you are the figures?

I got into the hobby of collecting figures initially simply because I admire their beauty, as a work of art. After collecting figures for a few years, and viewing photos by other photographers, I felt that these figures should be shared with as many people as possible, instead of keeping or locking them up in shelves or boxes. I want to make these figure shine and look good in photos. In my style of figure photography you will often see me picture these figures as if they are human. The photos look like a scene in an anime/movie/game, or a movie poster, or a product of street photography depicting the daily life of people. They don't look like objects, they look alive.

7. Do you have a favorite comic book, manga or anime?

I don't read much manga, but I do watch a lot of anime. Well, too much of it. Everyone has time issues, there are so many things you would love to do, but you can't do everything, since my style of photography requires time to plan and building and painting parts. I'm not very picky with anime - I watch lots of genres, but If i have to point out some anime that I liked a lot, the newer ones would be Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade works, Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata, Shirobako, No Game No Life, and To Aru Kagaku no Railgun.

Meanwhile, my childhood favorites include Digimon adventure, The Law of Ueki, and Vandread. My favorite Gundam series are Gundam Seed, Gundam 00, and Gundam Zeta, and my favorite fan service/ecchi anime series is To Love-ru. So, as you can see I'm open to many types and genres of anime.

8. What do you like to do when you’re not taking photos?

Besides watching lots of anime (i catch up weekly new episodes of about 15 anime series every season), I am a casual gamer. I love FPS games like Crysis and various Call of Duty titles, and open world games like Grand Theft Auto V. However I don't spend much time on games, so I don't own a console or a PSvita, so I rarely get to play Japanese games or visual novels. I only play my games on PC. I also love japanese music; I don't only listen to anime songs, but i also listen to J-pop and J-rock from artistes that are not involved in anime.

9. How do you keep the figures? If you have a collector's cabinet, could you show it?

Unfortunately, I do not have much space to display my figures, so I keep my figures in box often, and I only take them out of the box once in a while. My figures are displayed in my room with the figures in their boxes; I stack up my figures boxes by my work desk. If I keep the boxes and display the figures at the same time, i will need more space, and since I am from Malaysia, the weather here is hot and humid. I don't want to expose my figures to heat, in a warm room, for long hours on a daily basis. Room temperatures can sometimes reach 30C (86F) on a hot day. We Malaysians are used to this kind of weather though.

10. Anything else you’d like to tell everyone?

I wish that more figure collectors would consider photography of their figures. I do understand that it's a costly affair because camera and lenses are not cheap, but I still wish for the community to develop more. Dioramas also cost money to build, but that is not the only way to photograph a figure. Every photographer will eventually develop their own unique style. My hobbies are also intended to inspire other people to try toy photography if they are interested by what they are seeing. What's even better is I'm making lots of new friends and acquaintances over the globe from a hobby. If you wish to know more about photography techniques, sources of ideas or inspirations, or anything related, feel free to ask me questions and I will try my best to answer them. You can always reach me via my facebook page because that's where I'm the most active.
wwwfacebook.com/EXkurogane.Blog/

My favorite works:
1. Sawamura Spencer Eriri: myfigurecollection.net/picture/1555392
2. Master Artoria: myfigurecollection.net/picture/1611635
3. Frau Koujiro: myfigurecollection.net/picture/1107457
4. Sairenji Haruna: myfigurecollection.net/picture/1432586
5. Saber of Red + Asuka: myfigurecollection.net/picture/1328416