Tag: SL Photography

SL snaps and Flickr housekeeping

Posted on by Inara Pey

I don’t pretend to be a great SL photographer, but I do like to capture images of the places I visit and blog about – usually producing a slideshow on Flickr for those interested in my Destination articles.

Up until now, I’ve tended to simply drop my Flickr uploads into sets, one per event / location, as a rule, and leave things at that. However, as I had some time on my hands recently, I took the opportunity to finally organize things into collections, which I hope will make browsing my efforts easier.

I’ve create five “high level” collections so far, and there may be more to come. These are:

  • SL Destinations – which comprises the  sets of images of all the SL Destinations I’ve visited and blogged upon over the past few years, arranged into a series of sub-collections
  • SL Art Events and Installations – sets of images taken at various art events I’ve been able to preview
  • My Second Life – sets of a personal nature, such as Fallingwater images & my looks over the years
  • Space and Astronomy – image collections which have gone with some of my space & astronomy reports.

While I’m nowhere near the calibre of some, photography wise (I’m useless with PhotoShop and the like, as I’ve mentioned before) and so am reliant on whatever the viewer has to offer in order to capture my pictures, I’ve also created a little set of what I regard as my personal favourites – one that will probably grow whenever vanity grabs me, and which I hope you enjoy. Please use the full screen mode and click Show Info if you want the specifics of each image in the set.

(Or click here to go directly to the full screen display)

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SL photography and me

Posted on by Inara Pey

I’m the first to admit that photography is a little hit-and-miss with me. My efforts within SL aren’t particularly great and I can burn water easier than I can get to grips with PhotoShop. However, when it does come to taking SL photographs, I can be grateful that there are great Viewers out there that can even overcome the handicap of having me sitting at the keyboard – Exodus and Niran’s being two prominent cases.

Thank heaven, as well, for client-side Windlight.

Over the past few days, I’ve been trying to update my various photosets – buoyed on by the discovery that not only does Flickr have a slideshow capability (yes, I’ve only recently noticed it does!), but also because I’ve got more space to play with there. Most of this work has involved revisiting places I’ve written about in my “virtual destinations” pieces in order to try and do them real justice.

So, in a blatant bit of self-promotion, here’s a list of the posts I’ve updated, and links to their associated Flickr slideshows. The latter are hardly likely to fall into the category of “amazing” pictures – but I hope they at least please the eye. Feel free to take a look.

I’ve also added a list of slideshows to the main page index, on the right, directly below the Viewer reviews lists.

Mirror, mirror…

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update: I’ve add a link to Zonja’s excellent instructions to the my Tutorials Index Page. 

Last night, Chestnut Rau led me, by way of Whiskey Monday to a three-year-old post from Zonja Capalini on using Linden Water as a mirror. As old as the post may be, it has considerable relevance given how LL and TPVs are striving to improve the graphics capabilities of the Viewer – and it goes to show how easy it is to miss a highly informative blog post! My thanks to Chestnut and Whiskey for pointing me in the right direction, and to Zonja for documenting the process.

The technique isn’t new, per se, as a number of people have been using the idea for a while and produced some very clever effects, but Zonja’s instructions make it so easy to implement, they are a joy to follow and make trying things out for oneself as easy as 1-2-3.  And I mean easy – if I can get things sorted, then anyone can.

As well as clever visual effects, the technique can be used to produce some interesting shots as one travels SL – or even of one’s own home region.

Using the mirror water effect to capture one of the houses on my land (click to enlarge)
Black Spot, one of my favourite places in SL, gets the mirror water treatment (click to enlarge)

Of course, it is rare for real water to be so glassy-smooth, but the results are worth ignoring that fact. The effect can obviously be combined with other graphics effects – Windlight sky settings, lighting and shadows, etc., – although you can find your system getting pushed hard. Lighting and shadows in particular left me with very grainy pixelation on images…

The same shot, but with lighting and shadows active  – on my system, this does degrade the image quality somewhat

There is a slight difference between Zonja’s instructions and achieving the same result in V3-based Viewers, inasmuch as everything can be achieved from the one dialogue box when setting-up the water Windlight requirements. Just go to WORLD->ENVIRONMENT EDITOR->WATER PRESETS->NEW PRESET… Not exactly rocket science to find, but worth mentioning. Once there, set all options and sliders as Zonja defines in her article.

The most interesting use for the technique is that of self-portrait style pictures, where some fun can be had. Zonja and Whiskey has some stunning examples of these. I was a little reluctant to include any of myself, given my current fetish look – but “in for a penny”, as they say.

Reflections