Winter Wonderlands

Like the rest of Second Life, I’ve been exploring winter sims – and of course, taking pictures.

Here are a few favourites:

WINTER DAY on Embryo

WINTER TOWN, Sacramentum

SEVY’S WINTER RETREAT on Palaka Cove

And SOUTHHAVEN

Go to the images in my Winter Album on Snapzilla to see them larger and get TPs!

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Winter in virtual London

Today I’ve been ice skating in Kensington, and explored a bit of virtual London – of course, taking some snaps along the way.

I feel particularly proud of the couple of shots below…

Kensington Church:

(see larger)

Hyde Park:

(see larger)

See my Snapzilla profile for some more shots from virtual London, and thanks to Ed Clarity for recommending the area.

Want to visit? There are TP links on the Snapzilla pages, and here’s a TP to Mayfair and Hyde Park.

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On Second Life Photography

Reading SL blogs recently, I’ve come across a little contention about the term “photography” as applied to Second Life snapshots. It’s not really photography, say some, it’s just taking screen captures.

Photography is one of my favourite RL hobbies. I love the challenge of film, but I can’t afford to shoot it often, so mostly I’m using a digital SLR. I used to think it was cheating to Photoshop things afterwards, until I realized Photoshop was just replicating things people used to do in darkrooms. Now I love to play with a bit of imitation cross processing before I post my pics!

How much is photography in Second Life like RL photography? Well, you find your scene. You follow the same rules of composition as you would in real life. You make sure your graphics settings are up high, and then if you’re like me, you play around with the Windlight settings to control the colour and light. You can’t precisely achieve variations of depth of field as you would by changing the size of the aperture, but SL offers other things you can play around with – like haze density, and moving the time of day or the sun.

No, it’s not the same as “real photography”, but it’s still basically using composition and light. And in my opinion, the best SL photographers are true artists.

I’m not counting myself amongst them, but I still love taking pictures in Second Life. My early SL snapshots were crap, and it still makes me crash when I turn my settings up high for good pictures, but it’s worth it! Vint Falken has some excellent SL photography tutorials which are very much worth checking out if you want to improve your SL pics.

Here are a couple of my shots that I feel particularly proud of:

Empty Valley at Error; Product of ROT Dev.

Evening Peace at Tranquility Lake; rentals available from Solace Beach.

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Welcome to Innsmouth

One of the things I love doing on Second Life is simply exploring, and taking snapshots of places I find.

The town of Innsmouth is based on the works of H P Lovecraft, and has a suitably moody, spooky look.

The way in…

Arkham cinema:

Opera House interior:

Innsmouth Lighthouse:

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