This time I’ll warn you up front, the title is a deliberately ambiguous headline.
Ghost Town Welcome Sign
We have lots of interesting Second Life™ promotions stuff going on. Firestorm is asking for people to submit photos: Share your photos this weekend to promote Second Life. The photos will go in the Firestorm Gateway section of Flickr. Canary Beck is moderating the photo pool. It has 4,678 images as I write this.
CAUTION: SPOILER AHEAD!
On Flickr I came across an interesting image of a photographer’s viewer screen. I used the image in a previous article. But, in that article I didn’t say anything about the information Kerri Fegte included in the image description. You may not have seen the information, which I think is good enough it is a must read for any photographer shooting models.
Oh, Monday, you’re such a Tool Meme 1.20.14 by Kerri Fegte, on Flickr
This is a wonderful collection of tools. Add some of these and the Black Dragon Viewer or Firestorm Viewer tools and your talent… you’ll be making pro quality snaps. You’ll have to find you own model with photogenic legs.
Evolution by Kerri Fegte, on Flickr
Kerri’s image and posting were inspired by one of Strawberry Singh’s Monday Memes.
The Lindens made a post in the Second Life™ blog asking residents to make videos about the meaning of SL. To get answers rolling, they have included some videos:
Xiola Linden is also the author of the post requesting the videos.
There are 6 videos on the blog page. See: The “What Second Life Means to Me” Video Share Project.
I think Torley wins hands down on use of color.
You may have already seen Draxtor’s video, if you follow him.
Kaya Angel is new to me. The manor is awesome.
Gentle Heron is about helping people with disabilities.
What will you say SL means to you?
If you have not been into making video in SL, look at the two pieces of software Xiola mentions; Camtasia or Fraps. Both are retail versions with free trials. Camasia is US$299, but that includes video editing. FRAPS is US$37, but it is only an image/video capture tool. One could use Adobe’s Premiere Elements (US$120) for video editing.
There are free capture and editing tools. To learn more Google on: second Life machinima tutorial.
Alicia Chenaux has made her first video tutorial. It is a pretty neat idea that she presents. You can see it here: Smile Shape Tutorial. Iris Ophelia pointed me to this from her article in NWN: Learn How to Make the Perfect Smiling SL Avatar Shape With This Video Tutorial.
Doing a Smile Shape
If you have ever used the built-in smile, you know it is pretty hideous. But, Alicia shows you how to fix it by adjusting your shape. In her tutorial she demonstrates how to fix the built-in smile emote. Continue reading
One of the features added to Second Life some time ago is projectors, lights that shine on things. Bryn Oh used a headlamp thing for use by those visiting his latest exhibit, which is a projector. But, we see little use of projectors as lights in SL. Or maybe we just don’t notice them.
There is the problem of many people probably not having Sun/Moon + Projectors enabled in their graphics preferences for performance reasons. That is a problem for those building places. They want the majority of visitors to see their creation as built. So, they often skip using Projectors for lighting. But, for photography performance is generally not a primary issue and what the camera sees is up to the photographer. Everyone will see the photograph as captured as in general everyone’s computer settings are similar. So, there is no reason not to use Sun/Moon + Projectors. We just want to light our scene to create the image we want.
In RL photography lighting is a big part of it. For portrait photography it is somewhere between a science and an art. Lighting is used in capturing most all commercial images too.
The first I’ve heard of people using lights in SL photography is in the article Bloody Gorgeous in the PrimDolls blog. Notice the link there to Deoridhe’s Flickr images: Bloody Gorgeous.
I joined Flickr in 2009. I made use of Flickr up until March 2010. By that time I had nearly 200 images and that was the limit for a free account. That is almost 4 years ago. A lot has changed. More is changing. Yahoo is changing Flickr faster than people make tutorials for it.
I was way behind on Flickr. I didn’t know how it had changed. Many of you probably already know. For those that don’t here is some news.
Flickr 2014 – Image by: Alexander Kaiser, Flickr
With Jo Yardley adding a new group named Second Life is Looking Good I wanted to add it to my collection of contacts and groups. Wile I haven’t been adding photos I have been looking at what others post and I use it as a source of Creative Commons images I can use in my blog. I think I have some interesting images to add and wondered what it was going to cost me to with a Pro account. They don’t have ‘Pro’ accounts any more. Continue reading
Honour has a post up titled: How Deep is Your Field in Second Life? She was having a problem getting the viewer’s Depth of Field (DoF) feature to work. She links to Ricco Saenz’s explanation of how to get it working: How to actually capture depth of field on your SL photos. But, not why it does what is does.
Viewer Size Image
DoF is one thing I have found I cannot control in my RL S4’s camera, or have yet to learn how. It is a reason I still use my Sony digital camera for RL imaging. DoF is something I seldom use in Second Life™ because I prefer the control I have in Photoshop. But, I can imagine that some will find DoF more usable in the viewer than adding it in post production. Continue reading
Nalates
Update 11/23/09 – See Koinup below
I have not been blogging all that long. But I have learned images are important for a blogger. I suspect Torley mentioned my Emerald Viewer Review because of the images. What I am learning now is the number if images I need to publish. Also, I’m not making any money from this blog… I’m looking at how I might change that but that is another story. So, I need a free sharing plan.
I use Flickr, Photobucket and KOINUP. Each has some nice features. For my blogging use I find that I need albums, a way to group related images. For my gaming life I need Groups, which are a way to allow friends to share related images for social networking. I need an easy way to link to images for use in blogs.