I’m in my ninth year of exploring and playing in Second Life™. There are some things I think are still difficult to accomplish within the Second Life framework. One of those is finding interesting and beautiful places to visit, very much like real life. Another is meeting interesting people and being able to see them… not just look at them or see their ‘hello’ face, but seeing them in moments of their life. iRL that is usually only possible with close friends.
There is the Lab’s Destination Guide, web and in-viewer, and now Places Pages. Plus, a number of ‘travel’ blogs. They show us various places in Second Life. But, they still don’t do Second Life justice and it can be tedious going through those sources.
People… meeting interesting people is not really hard, there just isn’t any simple… fast… easy… ok, lazy way to do it. Well, like real life you can go to clubs and parties and join groups. Like iRL you can participate and meet participating people with similar interests. My point is you have to put out some energy and spend some time iRL or SL.
Flickr provides a bowl of vignettes of places and people. There the challenge is finding people that can see those places and moments and capture them. These are moments from SL. They are only clues to where you may find people or places in SL. But, Flickr is a rich source of people and places hidden by the nature of life and the virtual world
WARNING: The images at these links change. Assume they are NSFW. Some are, some aren’t, and that changes.
-Nattie captures emotions… feelings. She does it, IMO, amazingly well in a virtual world where avatars tend to be aesthetically… stiff and bereft of facial expression. It will be interesting to see how Bento changes that facial thing.
Another artist good with emotions and capturing a feel is: Nime Daviau.
Strawberry captures avatar beauty. Her images are more than just surface looks. Her beauties have some character… may be just Hollywood deep, but Hollywood is about America’s idea of beauty. Strawberry is well known but, there are some other way talented artists at Flickr too. Check out Ornella Batriani, Юля Касперович, Chanty Chanterelle,
An interesting thing to do with the exceptional artists we find on Flickr is click into their Profile and then their favorites.
Camryn Rae captures a variety of places and avatars. There others like Ziki, no posts since January, focused just on places. Most that I like have mix. Check out; LOVERDAG, Wendz Tempest, pokute Burt, Mia Dekkja, Auryn Imari, SeleneDark Neximus, and others.
But for places, look to groups focusing on places, they provide a huge variety of places. Check out; Xploring Second Life, Photo Locales in Second Life (SLURL REQUIRED), and Explore Second Life (SLurl in description).
These are only a few of the talented artists on Flickr.