Sad to say, she’s easily the plainest of the 3 girl group. I have no idea why foobarbaz, some crazy Japanese figure reviewer, gave this a 5. Worksmanship alone is not sufficient for a max score review in my opinion! Well I’ll let you all judge for yourselves.
For pictures of the rest of the 3 girl group, here’s: Haruhi and Mikuru.
Hit the jump for more photos.
I got a bit more creative with the lighting. Please let me know what you think!
I really wasn’t planning on getting her, but three things happened and I ended up picking her up :P.
1. She was on sale, 30% off at LashinBang. The store has a blue logo.
2. I discovered the box was very blue and shiny :P. (In case, you haven’t figured it out, I am obsessed with blue :P)
3. I couldn’t find the Octavia figure from Tears to Tiara and didn’t want to go home empty handed. Still looking for that one btw.
Alright, let’s start off with the usual standard shots of the box.
The box is so BLUEEEEE.
Inside the Box!
The black wire you see curled up is really a copper wire covered with a plastic film. You have to plug it into the hole on the guitar and the hole on the pedal yourself. It takes quite a bit of work to straighten it out and get it to look right though.
Front
and Back...
After watching so much tennis, this picture, to me, looks like Yuki is doing a fist pump and cheering herself on. I wonder if fist pumps even exist in Japanese culture.
Fist Pump!
Close up!
I was using the sun + manipulating my blinds to get that effect, but the sun set on me. The rest of it will have to be done with fluorescent tubes :(.
Guitar... somehow it doesn't look quite as good as the Haruhi one.
Ooo.. shoes +pedal
I would like to point out, that she leans backwards at a really awkward angle
Alright now for the group pic. Again, I need to dust off my figures :(.
Not enough room on my desk. They'll have to perform on the Macbook Pro.
So there you have it. That’s Nagato Yuki Gekisou, and the set is complete! Any photography tips? I seem to be stuck in a rut and am not really improving at all.
A Foreigner's Tale in Japan 
I think you have the right idea by playing with your lighting. The shots labeled ‘Front’ and ‘Back’ have really interesting hard shadows, and the shuttered effect on ‘Front’ really gives it a ‘looking out from the wings’ or ‘opening curtain’ effect. To complete that sort of feel, shoot a silhouette from behind with a ‘spotlight’ (use any roundish light) partially-blocked by the guitar, hair, boot (anything. Be creative). Things to watch out for in a shot like that are what the background’s going to look like (since your subject will be dark, and the source of the light will be bright, the background will draw a lot of focus), so you may want to try staging it against the macbook with the ‘spotlight’ just overtop it. Or, get the other two figures in there as the ‘background’ and try playing with the depth-of-field (zoom to your highest focal length, switch to f-stop priority, and drop that f-stop as low as possible to get minimum DOF. Adjust zoom/aperture to elongate DOF so that it has everything in focus that you want in focus, but not anything else)
I don’t think you’re stuck. You’re just getting used to taking pictures, so the improvements are less jarring. Keep it up!
Hmm thanks for the comments! I really appreciate it. I will give your suggestion another shot.
I already figured out the maximum depth of field trick through trial and error. Actually, I only understand how to use a particular feature on the camera after figuring it out for myself, rather than reading the manual.
I really like how you used the sun and your blinds to get the lighting! Especially like the first picture
I think it’s so cool they have that wire for you to plug in. So realistic! (but not really…)
Ya, after looking at Mikuru and Haruhi, Yuki looks really plain. Still a good job on the guitar. I think if she were wearing some stockings, it would look better
Thanks for the comments. Fiddling around with my limited resources is surprisingly fun.
It’s true Mikuru’s ankle is in a really weird position… :(. She looks like she’s about to break her ankle or something.
The wire is a nice touch though.
I also just realized how awkward Mikuru’s pose is…
Nice looking Yuki, but the lifting of right leg is bothering me. As long as your utility is satisfied, I guess you’ll make other people around you jealous ^_^
Lifting of the right leg?
I love that reverse shot :p
Hehe I do too.