School's out....

For summer.

So, today is their last day of school, and I now have 6 weeks of taking them to the park, swimming, cinema and craft stuff at home.

My time in SL will be limited, to spend time with them :)

My friend Ayumi is about to run a flickr contest, for her new skins (shown above), so I will get that set up for her hopefully within the next couple of days, and as Yumi is Yumi, she will be giving away a stupid amount of $L as prizes :)

I've been slack

I haven't posted in ages, what with a load of RL hassle and my recent SL dramas.

I've been working on a series of photos with quotes, http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkley/sets/72157619912578405/ Using famous and not so famous quotes from all sorts of sources :)

Along with this I had 2 6 page spreads in July's Vain Magazine and worked on a few more for August, plus redoing my studio is been a bit hectic.

Don't take it personally.....

Secondlife, where everyone is anonymous, where anyone can leave and come back as someone else.

So what is real in SL?

What's real is your words and actions, your interactions with others. By producing "Work" of some kind within Secondlife you are leaving yourself out for criticism, praise or derision.

Sometimes people attack you and your work under the guise of 'no offense' - I accept constructive criticism gladly, and am very aware of my limitations, but sometimes, someone will knock your confidence so badly, that you begin to doubt everything.

I have been slammed by someone, that I thought was 'better' than that, from my avatar appearance, to my working environment, my style and my attitude. Simply because I disagreed with certain 'professional's and their behaviour. I am a nice person, but I don't keep my mouth shut when I see bullshit, I call it. If this makes me a bitch, then so be it.

I work hard in SL, and think I am better than average, I have no illusions that I am the best at anything.

Anyway........

moving on!

Photo contests.......

Photocontests!!! one of the biggest marketing tools by any content creator, get people to buy something of yours, and create a buzz about your product, more people using/wearing your stuff and the possibility of a prize - what could go wrong?

There are many photo contests going on every week in SecondLife, and they come under 2 main categories, voted for and judged. Each has their plusses and minusses for the contestant. A vote contest typically involves payment, and is a money making scheme by the contest owner - people pay to enter, and then people pay to vote, and as with all voting photography contests, its a case of who has the most contacts. Although this type of contest is bad regarding the quality of the winner, there is some honesty about its dishonesty, it's obvious to everyone what is going on, and they can choose to participate or not.

The other type of contest is a judged contest. At first glance, this type of contest should be fair and I suspect 99% of them are, however there is the odd one (obvious to anyone who looks at it for more than 2 seconds) which is unfair, either rules are changed, someones friend/alt/partner wins or in some cases, the contest doesnt end, it just dies quietly.

This photo was an entry for a Casa Del Shai contest some months back (I came 2nd) and I am really pleased with that, I bought the outfit before I knew about the contest, so it was a happy coincedence.

I hear about contests regularly, and will read up, and if it's something that I am interested in I enter, if not I don't bother, I don't enter contests if I don't like the store - what's the point in winning a gift card for somewhere I would never buy anything?

There is a major contest on right now, for Genesis skins, and although they are beautiful, they just don't look right round the mouth for my shape, so I didn't buy and didn't enter, I've been watching the flickr with interest as they look amazing.

So, the bad contests....... what do you do? - vote with your feet. When I see something dishonest, I don't name names, I just never buy anything from them again, plenty more shops and plenty more contests around :)

Post processing for Second Life

There seems to be a massive trend lately with SecondLife images being photoshopped to the extent where they look nothing like the avatar, and although beautiful and well done, who would want an image of a stranger as their profile picture?

I personally use a little photoshop, partly through personal taste, and partly due to ability. I like the image to still look like its from Second Life, but with a few alterations, and for the most part it entails cropping, tidying and the odd brushwork to add an effect.

This image for example has only had some levels and curve work done, for the mood, and it's bascially a snapshot but still effective. :)

The horror, the horror.....

You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em.

I've seen horrors … horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that … but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face … and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us, and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember … I … I … I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized … like I was shot … like I was shot with a diamond … a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God … the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men … trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love … but they had the strength … the strength … to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral … and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling … without passion … without judgment … without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.

Brand newness from a couple of my friends at Stuff, it's not open yet, but will be soon at AYUMI mainstore at Dreamer, the outfit is brilliant, and includes everything you see in the pictures, apart from hair.

2 of the pictures here I played with the exposure and offset, to make it look slightly darker and retro, the other picture i played with overlays, and blurs in an attempt to get the rainy look to them

Shadows!

For those of you who have downloaded the latest Kirsten or Cool viewer and have the graphics that can achieve them, you can now get Shadows in Second Life! lucky you.

My graphics however, are utter shite and I cannot :( So I just make my own using photoshop.

There are two methods that I use to add shadows to Second Life Pictures, by creating an overlay layer and painting using a fat soft brush a vague outline to where a shadow should be, using blur tools and reducing the opacity to suit. The other method is taking a duplicate layer, cutting out your object and making it black using some blur then laying it on your photo as a shadow, and reducing the opacity again. The two photos added show the methods I have used.

Ears.....

I don't often wear prim ears in Second Life, although I own a fair amount, puppy ears, elf ears, neko, rat and usagi ears. I really like all of them, but for some reason I don't tend to wear them. Anyway, the ears and tail are from Eat Rice! and outfit from Sn@tch. The skin I got for free, courtesy of Minnu Palen after I found a rip of hers and told her about it, hair from Deviant Kitties.

Regarding the photos, the poses are from Torridwear and taken in my studio, backdrops from Distressed textures and processed in Photoshop :)

How to take better photos....

Something that makes a huge difference to the photos you take is the clothing and attachments, I tend to wear short or 'up' hair for photographs as although I love long hair, it really limits the type of pose you can use, Similarly with clothing, lots of prim clothing tends to flick out at odd angles, so keep in mind when deciding on what to wear. Bling, it shouldn't have to be said is hellish, and should be illegal! ;P

Shoes can also be an issue, regarding alpha layers, if a shoe has a particularly clumsy invisiprim attached it can mean you have to disregard a lot of props or poses as the prim can 'cut through' your clothes.

Choosing the right pose, that doesn't distort your skin/clothing and suits the look of what you are wearing is vital, rather than a static 'rabbit caught in the headlights' look,

A few tips I have picked up......

Working in Second Life, I have picked up a few tips regarding taking Photographs, so I am going to share a few with you.

In your preferences, under Graphics, go to Hardware options, and tick Anisoptropic Filtering and set Antialiasing to 4x, set your graphics for as high as it will go, if your computer can handle it, set it on Ultra, tick all the boxes in bump mapping, shaders etc.

In your Advanced menu (ctrl alt d to enable) click High rez snapshot to disk.

Ok! now you are initially set up!

Now, if you are out and about in world, play with your windlight settings to get just the right effect, move the sun, the moon, increase or decrease cloud cover, have a play around, save your settings if its one you like. If in a studio settings set your world to midnight so you can control all the lighting,from intensity to colour to create shade and tone.

I think probably above all else what is important in SL photography is the poses, whenever I get a pose stand, I immediately bin all the full perm freebie newbie rubbish poses in there, as they tend to be badly thought out and make your photos look cheap, with wierd arm or leg glitches, or distorting the midriff. If you can't afford to buy poses, most stores have free poses to pick up as a taster, or massive sales every so often.

Second Life in pictures

I take a lot of pictures, and probably only upload 1% if that, I constantly reject ones, stuff that just didn't quite work or that I'm not 100% happy with.

I took this one a few weeks ago, for a contest (I didn't win) for a 'famous image recreation' thing, the thing is, this type of thing is my favourite, making a Second Life image in the style of a famous RL picture, I've done a Christine Keeler, Kylie, and I'm going to start work on a Flashdance one this week.

The picture above is Photoshopped very lightly, basically a little cleanup and adding the smoke, I am still learning Photoshop but I love it, changing the feel of a picture through layers and light/shade.

First post......

I've been working on some store posters for a friend of mine, AYUMI clothing, she's great despite the fact she keeps moving her store and has so far refused to make bum cleavages, the bitch!

I've been having a few graphics issues lately, but I think I've mostly sorted them, after fighting with the computer for ages, downloading updated drivers and praying to the SL gods for things to rez in a timely manner.

Anyway, anyway, these are her clothes, including her cleavage, which comes in all layers and loads of shades, and a little secret is, its her real life cleavage, so theres a bit of megalomania in the creating the world in her own image going on ;-)

I'm kidding of course, she's lovely.