Retaking a Picture

For a recent contest I decided to retake a picture I'd quite liked from the past, and I thought you all might like to see the changes that resulted from enhanced graphics and slightly different aesthetics. Some of the other details were changed as well - I'm using a new skin, though my skintone tends to remain fairly consistent; I am a pale girl. I chose a different, more dynamic hand for the second shot - looking at the simple curves I simply wanted more - and the advent of skin appliers for hands means that there isn't an obvious join between hand and arm. I had also upgraded to mesh wings since the first picture - the angle didn't work for flat image wings, but a dynamic, curving mesh wing worked beautifully. I'm on the fence about other dynamic changes - limiting the frame to just a house, for example, and not sowing as much of the background. While I managed almost the same angle, the framing is very different. I was trying for something more intimate and arresting, and I'm not sure whether I managed it. The biggest difference is the addition of shadows and the lighting choices - going for a cool, rather than neutral, palette.

I'd love peoples' opinions on the changes - what worked and what didn't. So often Second Life photography is thrown out into a vacuum of non-response or favorites without much nuance, and while I know I'm changing over time, I'm not sure if I'm improving as such.

Credits for Old Picture:
Skin: De la Soul, Aestali - Cream Rose
Credits for New Picture:
Skin: Izzie's, Irene
Wings: Deviance, Sidhe

Both:

Hands: SLink, Mesh Hands
Dress: Lassitude & Ennui, Naiad sundress
Boots: G Field, Long Cuff Boots "Will"
 
Pose: !bang, stand 223
Location: Hazardous
Water Settings: Glassy

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping, only

Windlight

Windlight makes amazing changes to what we see in Second Life.

Every now and then I play around with a single setting and a variety of effects - in this case I was particularly struck by a sculpture at the place I did my White Week photoshoot, and stuck around after I was done to play with windlight and record the effects.



I'm in each of these pictures, giving a sense of scale to the enormous Angel at Imagine Plus. All of the sculptures her are gigantic, lending a feeling of being dwarfed and made miniature - something which suits me, as a faerie!

Some of my favorites follow, but to be honest I think all of them are worth a look. Sadly, I didn't record the windlights as I went - call me lazy! - but they're all presets included with Phoenix and most, if not all, of them were made by Torley Linden.















( See more pictures here. )

Color Challenge: Week Twenty - Sky Blue

Ahhhh, Sky Blue, and I'm back in my comfort zone again.

For this week I decided to try to fish something out of my explosive "New" folder, which lurks at the bottom of my inventory like a chest of both glorious and terrifying things I've picked up across the grid. It's a little well in the depths of my inventory, full of the detritus of hunts, freebies, lucky chairs, random finds, and the occasional purchase.



The dress was a surprise, though. I have no idea when or how I picked it up from Wretched Dollies, but the tiered skirt in varying shades of blue, and the adorable ruffled sleeves are completely charming. It's shorter than a usual Wretched Dollies outfit, coming in mid-thigh with a pair of knee socks that set it off to perfection. I even love the stripes on the shirt and the peter pan style collar - childlike, but made more mature by the corset.

I ended up pairing it with a find from my dear friend Ro-chan, the Beth Hair from Zero Style. It's curling ringlets seemed like the perfect match to the dress, and after a brief pause for trying on a demo I discovered that, according to Zero Style at least, my head is medium. Does that mean I don't have as much room for brains?



Like my languishing dress from Wretched Dollies, the Florencio sim has left it's landmarky fingers in my inventory for a while, lurking in my notecard folder and popping up now and then when I cleared it out. I'd visited once, planned to take pictures, and gotten distracted. I decided today was the day for wrapping things up, bringing things together, and getting things done.

Built inside a textured dome, Florencio is artistic in design, with a checkerboard pattern on the ground thinned out here and there with water. It has a few stores in place, at least one more coming, and little spots of interest like a pile of dark blocks, or the telephone lines you can walk up like a path.



The sim also has what I'm beginning to really enjoy - a Windlight Setting you can load upon arrival. I do a lot of playing with Windlight, but sometimes seeing things with the settings that the maker meant them to have - to be able to truly walk into someone else's vision - is appealing all in its own right. I won't say I'll always go with that, but in this case I really enjoyed how the bright, simple light set off the textures across the sim.

I especially liked the playfulness of the little findable things - and part of me hopes that as more stores fill in, more little fun spots will pop up to enjoy. I like the feeling of being in a child's play area with some of the toys still left out by an exhausted parent.



( See more pictures here. )

Credits:

Skin: De La Soul, Charlie Nude
Cosmetics: De La Soul, Harrish Nights Makeup
Eyes: Tacky Star, Pride
Ears: Illusions, Mystic Ear - Fairy (sterling)
Hair: Zero Style, Beth - Blond
Wings: Fancy Fairy, Azarelle Wings - tinted blue
Dress and socks: Wretched Dollies, Mon Cherie Blue
Shoes: G Field, Bow Strap Shoes "Kate" - Blue

Poses: Striking Poses
1) Carrie Ann Inaba
2) Brigitte Bardot 2
3) Princess 10
4) Amy Lee Dollarbie

Location: Florencio
Light Settings: Sim Default

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping only

Leapfrogging

Second life is an interesting place, especially when it comes to things like fashion, photography, and landscaping. Anything you want to find, you can.

As I've mentioned before, I was introduced to SL by a Dolly, and while I've never much felt LIKE a dolly, I can understand the appeal of being beautiful and cherished and kept save in a glass jar.

Description: Deoridhe, in red, her heart pierced by an arrow, under a glass doll jar on a stand.

A lot of my SL experiences are confluences of influences. Azriel, of Falln Angel Creations, gives out a heart to his group members. This is shortly after Tomoyuki showed me a fantastic outfit he'd just picked up from Rabbit Kiss (aka Umi Usagi) and inspired me to do likewise. And then, wearing my dolly-pretty dress and my arrowed heart, I remembered a placed that Rowanhad taken me early in my introduction to SL - an entire dolly extravaganza complete with doll stands.

I suppose, in some ways, you could say this was the beginning of what I'll later call my "photoshoots," which are extended sessions of posing and photographing a particular outfit and hairstyle against a thematic and often beautiful background. I'm still working on it, but for a point of amusement, let's compare this early example of a photoshoot to one from my absolute latest.

Description: Deoridhe in a cream colored gown in front of a seascape.

I think you can see the differences pretty quickly.

I chose the one from my latest which has a lot of views, and which also was the one I had to do the most waiting and modifying for. Since this is underwater, I played with the water settings more than I normally do, adding some atmosphere. Also, the skirt is connected to the chest, which means in that pose it went flying off to one side without being shifted significantly. Each time I do a "shoot," it seems, I begin to learn something new about how to edit prims while in pose to make things look better.

I also had to wait for that docile looking jellyfish in the background to get into position and disguise the poseballs in place there.

One of the banes of my slandscape photography is poseballs. They hardly ever look good or blend in, and often cropping to remove them crops other stuff you might want to keep! I really wish people would come up with more decorative ways to place them - making them pillows, or fountains of bubbles - or something else. The text over them vanishes in photography, but the poseballs remain to taunt me like evil taunting things.

Day Three: Lost Wandering places

Description: A tea Table with two dragons sitting at it. A female figure is behind. It is extremely dimply lit.

Somewhere around the four months in, I started exploring new places. I have no idea how I ended up in the place where I took these (extremely badly lit) pictures, and I'm still sad I didn't landmark it. It went across several sims in incredible sprawling glory, including hidden areas and enough art and items to make me swoon. This was also one of my first experiences with trying to make the environment and my avatar co-exist; an early start on what I do now in my "photo shoots".

Description: Sculpture of embracing orange and purple figures. A figure in blue floats behind next to a glowing waterfall.

Some of the art and imagination in Second Life is amazing.

Female figure sitting in front of the head of a hippogriff.

I think one of the other things I find amazing is the mingling of natural and supernatural elements, and the sometimes seemless blending from land to sea to land again.

Valley with several waterfalls into it and an island at the pool at the bottom of it.

I could live here and be happy.