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Cool and Collected

Collecting pop culture toys, comics, and collectibles collections

September 20, 2012 By 11 Comments

Action Figure Photography — Square Enix Play Arts Kai Halo Master Chief

Last week, Poe Ghostal put out a call for photographers to help him out with some action figure reviews he was developing. One of the figures that he listed is a figure that I have been wanting to photograph for a long time, so this was all the incentive I needed to dust off my camera.

Square Enix’s Play Arts Kai Master Chief from the Halo video game series is an incredible figure that perfectly captures Master Chief in all his glory. I’ll let others critique its articulation and paint job–I just wanted to take some photos!

Action Figure photography - Play Arts Kai Halo Master Chief

Here’s a straight up product shot which gives you an idea of the level of detail in this figure.

Action Figure photography - Play Arts Kai Halo Master Chief

I didn’t really move the figure around much for these photos–I mainly moved the camera and adjusted the lighting to get different effects.

Action Figure photography - Play Arts Kai Halo Master Chief

Swapping in a red light bulb from the left and shining a bright LED flashlight from the right is one of my favorite tricks.

Action Figure photography - Play Arts Kai Halo Master Chief

A simple prop can add a ton of depth to a photo. Here I set a plastic mesh plant tray from the nursery on the right side of the composition. This is probably my favorite shot.

Action Figure photography - Play Arts Kai Halo Master Chief

Maybe I went a little too crazy with the lights on this one, but it looks kind of cool.

Play Arts Kai Master Chief

Through the magic of Photoshop I could drop this figure onto any background. Yes, that’s a “toy” folks!

This was a fun figure to photograph, and I will be sure to torture you with more in the future. Oh, and if there are any companies out there who’d like me to photograph their action figures, I would seriously consider working for toys. Really.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. kngfu says

    September 20, 2012 at 3:47 pm

    Great shots.

    Reply
    • Brian says

      September 20, 2012 at 6:35 pm

      Thanks Mike!

      Reply
  2. roadsidewonders says

    September 20, 2012 at 5:03 pm

    I am always amazed at what a great toy photo stylist you are 🙂

    Reply
    • Brian says

      September 20, 2012 at 6:36 pm

      Thanks Wendy! I don’t think I’ve ever been called a stylist before. 😉

      Reply
      • roadsidewonders says

        September 20, 2012 at 6:46 pm

        Well, toy picture-take-er-er doesn’t sound very impressive 🙂

        Reply
  3. yelinna says

    September 21, 2012 at 2:07 pm

    I wish I had Brian’s photographic and photoshop skills, these photos are awesome! (I love the last one)

    Reply
    • Brian says

      September 21, 2012 at 2:31 pm

      Thanks Yelinna!

      Reply
  4. GeekChunks says

    September 24, 2012 at 8:39 pm

    Great shots as usual, Brian! Now that I have a decent camera I’ve been going through some of your other toy photography posts to help guide me for my own setup.

    Can’t wait to break out the toys!

    Reply
    • Brian says

      September 24, 2012 at 8:49 pm

      Excellent! I saw that slow-motion test you put up last week. Very cool!

      Reply
      • GeekChunks says

        September 25, 2012 at 8:55 am

        Thanks!

        The only problem I’m having now is that all the cool toys I want to photograph are still in the boxes. :/

        I really, really, really want to break this out for some shots. http://www.sideshowtoy.com/?page_id=4489&sku=9013901

        Reply
        • Brian says

          September 25, 2012 at 9:18 am

          Nice! There are some guys on Flickr that photograph Hot Toys and Sideshow figures and you usually can’t even tell that they’re toys. Those figures are so lifelike, I’m not sure I could have them in my house (well, maybe the Catwoman figure).

          Reply

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