Color Challenge: Week Eight - Green

This week's color is GREEN, a Spring-like color that warmed me up even while I was re-awoken to old pains.

Funny thing about thawing - it's a mixed bag, not exclusively pleasant or painful.

This is also a Studio Sidhe week. I'm gearing up to join another contest and probably fail, but who knows! I'll be looking at which pictures get the most attention and then either go with one, or refine it further. The sim I ended up on, Emerald Green, is a glorious spot for photography and romance. There are cute little dance areas everywhere, and you get to go up high in the sky or deep under the water (there's a whole underwater area, but it wasn't terribly green so I resurfaced!). I love the waterfalls, and the cute little houses, and there was an adorable mushroomy area but I floated above it, so pictures near it didn't work out. Woe.

Finally, I tracked down RAINBOWS. Now, anyone who has known me for, like, five minutes knows that rainbows are my favorite color. It's goofy and silly, but it's also true. Something about the colors, harmonious but each required to be itself utterly, brings me a great deal of peace. It's like fugues (which is the same thing presented in a variety of ways) or fractals (which is itself, repeated to infinity micro and macro).

So of course I had to take pictures with rainbows. Starting rainbows, against rainbows, around rainbows. I mean... come on.

I don't think they're my best pictures... but..... RAINBOWS!!!

( Full Set of pictures here. )

Credits:

Skin: Nomine, Sylvan Latte - pride 1
Eyes: Tacky Star, Pride
Ears: Illusions, Mystic Ear - Fairy
Hair: La Boheme, Deae Matres
Wings: Fancy Fairy, Azarelle Recolerable (tinted green)
Dress: Studio Sidhe, Green Leaf Cocktail Gown
Necklace: Illusions, Rose Necklace - Black
Gloves: Bubble, Laced Corset - Green
Stockings: Kuri Style, One Piece 64 Dot
Shoes: G Field, Ribbon Slingback Shoes - Dark Green

Poses:
Top - Studio Sidhe, Ballerina 5
Bottom - Studio Sidhe, One more thing

Location: Emerald Green
Light Settings: [TOR] SCIFI - Gelatto - made slightly more green

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping only

Color Challenge: Week Seven - Cerise

I actually picked the clothing from Vexed up for this challenge (which I did THREE DAYS EARLY - can you believe it?) weeks ago, as one of the sixty linden weekend deals. I've read some critique of the long series of daily deals people have begin to take part in. Every day now has some sort of "deal" going on - though it started with Fifty Linden Fridays. The critique is that creators work so hard for really cheap deals, and that isn't fair since it means they can't make their money back.

I'm a fairly unrepentant freebie and cheapie hunter. I do a lot of hunts, I hit a lot of midnight manias, and I check a lot of the blogs for cheap deals during the week. There are a few stores I tend to spend more money at, but recently I've been pulling back as I organized my inventory and got a better handle on what kinds of clothes I'm missing.

I have a LOT of clothes, you see.

So on the one hand, I can understand creators really losing hope. We're still in a recession, and even those of us still employed are taking pay and benefit cuts to remain employed. Stores are closing left and right, and even those remaining open are tightening their belts or struggling.

There's a strong tendency in times like this to fight amongst ourselves, blaming people trying to get fun stuff for not much for all of the failures. If that's your target, I belong squarely on it - a lot of my extra money has been going to keeping the Sim of a friend open instead of to buying clothing (though I did splurge on some G Field shoes because G Field shoes are awesome). That means less money to go to other purchases because I'm having to tighten up on my spending to keep my head above water, too!

It's easy to let your anxiety take over, ruining your relationships and connections with other people. Anxiety can be light blinding electricity, freezing you or setting you against people you'd normally get along with. It's even more important, in times of stress, to remember that we're all in the same boat and reach out to each other - if we support each other, maybe we can all fly!

( Look for the rest of the pictures here. )

Credits: 

Skin: De La Soul, Mythos - Cream Neon Blush
Sparkles: Studio Sidhe, Faery Dust Body
Eyes: Tacky Star, Pride
Ears: Illusion, Mystic Ears - Fairy Natural
Hair: Calico Ingmann Creations, Calico - Light Hot Pink
Straps: Vexed, "Urge" Latex Teddy - Pink
Shoes: G Field, Ribbon Slingback Shoes - raspberry
Bracelets: Begendings (my proto-store), Bracelets

Poses: Long Awkward Pose, Fantasy Faepose9

Location: Omega Point
Light Settings: AnaLu Studio 6

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping only

Color Challenge: Week Six - Yellow

The challenge is .... YELLOW!

This close to Goldenrod, I really wanted to go for something bright and over the top for yellow - to set it apart if nothing else. The lemon dress by Frick has always been a favorite - the color is so saturated and yet the style and texturing is still solid (though I remember fitting it being a bit of a pain, since my shape has a belly).

My Yellow folder is sadly thin on the ground, though, and I shook it a few times to get a wealth of accessories - taking full attention of the new feature where I can attack more than one thing to the same attachment point. Yay for two things on the spine!!!

Is it pathetic, or amusing, that I'm this excited by this feature? I loved Emerald's double attachment points, but anyone not on Emerald couldn't see it, so it seemed pointless. This can be seen by everyone, which makes it awesome.

Anyway, back to yellow. Once I had this obnoxiously saturated yellow outfit, I needed a place that could match it - even take it over the top. Given I was wearing a fantastic lemon key, I thought a candy store made sense, and some searching (and an inadvertent look at how other people interpret candy) later, I found Photon's Castle. It's actually a store, with fun furniture and decorations and some paintings upstairs. I had planned to take a couple pictures inside, then go to the grounds (which aren't photographed at all in this set) but I ended up being so charmed by the inside, and how seamlessly things were available for sale and yet didn't stand out jarringly against the decor (not that much would) that I took all my pictures inside.

And then it happened, right there in the store I leveled up!!! OMG! I'm a level four Virtual Photographer!!!!

Party at my place.

(Rest of the pictures here.)

Credits:

Skin: Curio, Petal [Dark] April - Rainbow 2
Eyes: Tacky Star, Pride
Ears: Illusion, Mystic Ears - Fairy Natural
Hair: Ploom, Dot - Snow tinted Yellow
Dress: Frick, Lemon Lolly
Shoes: G Field, Ribbon Slingback Shoes - mustard
Monocle: Sanu, Greatest Love Monocle - Banana
Chocker: O!, Bleak Dripping Peal Chocker (large) - tinted yellow
Key: Violet Voltaire, Lollipop Guild Doll Key - Lemon

Pose: Olive Juice, Jumping Through Bubbles

Location: Photon's Castle - fantasy adventure park
Light Settings: [TOR] BIG SUN - Variaitonz

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping only

Props Challenge: Paintbrush Week

One of the things I love about a huge inventory, and a tendency to do hunts and squirrel things away, is moments like this week when I type in the word "paint" and this lovely prop from Studio Sidhe emerges from the labyrinthine depths of my Second Life Closet. A giant flower with mushroom attendances, upon which a fairy might repose to paint a ladybug, this prop was absolutely perfect for both me and this week's challenge.

The dress I'm wearing was in my "To Photograph" folder - where I keep the outfits I particularly like as a reminder to do photoshoots with them. I found it when I was looking for an in character outfit for my darling Zoe to wear, were she ever called on to be, well... official in one of her in character rolls. The requirements were for a bare neck, shoulders, arms, and showing lots of cleavage. I think this outfit meets those standards quite well without, dare I say it, descending into the realm of the sluttish.

The ladybug part made me seriously giggle because the book I just started tonight, Blameless features homicidal robotic lady bugs. It's also a charmingly British book in a series about what it might have been to have vampires and werewolves in Jane Austen's England - and does Austen and the time period in general much honor by managing to combine a slightly snobby pretension, satire, and action adventure with one of the most amazing protagonists it's ever been my pleasure to enjoy the company of. I picked up the first book, Souless on a whim, looking for a book to transport me out of my doldrums without being horrifically sexist or racist, and it manages that plus making me smile like a loon and lose track of time.

This fairy, though, lives in a different world of the suburbs, where she's trying to prepare the insects for inspection on the sly, while children play nearby. Look down now and then when you walk, and you might catch sight of her!

( The rest of the pictures are here. )

Credits: 

Skin: Miasnow, Rainbow Tan 3
Eyes: Tacky Star, Pride
Hair: !lamb, Wild Nothing - Honeycomb
Dress: Nomine, Rose Red Dress - Red with Dark Red Roses
Stockings: Sn@tch, Ribbed Knit Tights - Black
Shoes, G Field, Ribbon Slingback Shoes - crimson
Ladybug Pose Prop: Studio Sidhe, Ladybug Painting (paintbrush and paint included)

Location: Falln Sanctuary
Light Settings: [TOR] BIG SUN - Slips through walls 6

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping only

Color Challenge: Week Five - Sepia

I have to admit, I quailed at this challenge and eyed my brown folder dubiously, but it only took a short time (my brown clothing is not numerous) to identify the dress I absolutely had to wear - and I had forgotten how beautiful it was. Timepiece 6, by PixelDolls, is absolutely gorgeous and an awesome example of how texturing and flexiprims can create what seems like a cohesive outfit, even when it's really more complicated than that.

I ended up going to the World's End Garden for taking pictures, after some dithering to find a place that was primarily brown. It was hard to get Windlight settings which worked - brown is not an easy color to work with - and the setting I ended up with, Siennarel, had the bonus of some brilliantly colored lights depending on which way you turned.

Looking for a spot for my final picture, I ended up literally falling through the floor, and fell into an area of World's End Garden which I hadn't seen before, which was where the carousal had disappeared to. Combined with the falling cages and fences, it formed the backlight for several more pictures, and the path out forced me toward picture ten. I can truly say for this serious of pictures that World's End Garden as a sim inspired a lot of the images.

This is by a large tree which appears in the background of one of the other pictures. Beside it, unseen by me until I approached, was a rising line of butterflies and I was determined to include them in the picture. This, my favorite image, was the result.

(The rest of the photoshoot is here.)


Credits:

Eyes: Tacky Star, Pride
Skin: Doux Petit, Rainbow Love - tone 2
Hair: Calico Ingmann Creations, Suzume - Burnt Golden
Dress: PixelDolls, Timepiece 006
Shoes: G Field, Short Lace-up Boots - Brown

Pose: Striking Poses, Camera Candy 4

Light Settings - [TOR] DUSK - Siennarel
Location: World's End Garden

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping only

Prop Challenge: Week One - Umbrella

This challenge was a real challenge.

I have some umbrellas, but to be honest it's not an accessory I use often. I keep them because they're pretty, and I'm a bit of a packrat. I ended up using an old outfit I got from Dilly Dolls that came with a matching umbrella - Lexia. I liked the effect of the full match and the mixing of black, white, and blue together.

The hardest part was finding poses, though. I sorted through loads of my poses, over and over again, trying to find ones that work with an umbrella and that let me highlight that umbrella. I've been overall determined with these challenges to use things I already have in my inventory, or as much as possible, since it gives me a chance to delve into the depths of my inventory and bring some awesome clothes to light.

Editing these pictures, though, I've become aware of another influence on them. I've been feeling very conflicted recently - both personally and professionally I've repeatedly felt like the most abject failure. I've been beating myself up, trying to focus on other things, running away from my own thoughts and feelings. It's a sort of whitewash, much like these pictures put the essential darkness of how I've felt for the last month or so in sharp contrast with the careful way I've been covering up what I'm feeling.

I don't know if this is a sensible way to react to pain, but I've been managing to walk on the crust of snow and avoid the frozen depths beneath. I know, however, that under the darkness new life is resting and waiting for spring.

Credits:

Eyes: Miriel, Standard Eyes, Light Blue
Skin: Doux Petit, Rainbow Love - tone 2
Hair: Magika, Bow - Black A
Dress: Dilly Dolls, Lexia Blue
Shoes: Favole, The Nightmare
Accessories: Milk Hall Fair's Attic, Shawl; Sn@tch, Long Gloves Black; G Field, Halloween Spider-web Tights - Black

Pose: POSEbility, Attitude2

Light Settings - Original
Location: Calas Galadhon

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping only