I took these pictures a while back; actually this is a location that I've used before. It's a kinetic sculpture of shifting planes of colour on the public grounds of 3Bears sim; my husband and I live not too far away.
I think what fascinates me about this sculpture is that it offers a chance to do a kind of photography that I think is the most interesting, and perhaps the most difficult, in Second Life. The keyword
for this is
serendipity -- I use what I find at the moment. Essentially I stood in the middle of the sculpture and snapped photographs, and looked them over later. None have been altered. I don't use Photoshop, and in this case I didn't change the Windlight settings. I didn't even change the daylight settings! I let my av move according to my AO, and every once in a while, *snap*, just like photographers used to do, and then find out what you've got when you develop the pictures. Well, okay, I didn't develop
these! Too old-fashioned. But the surprise you sometimes get when you look at the picture after the shoot is wonderful; a great feeling.
The picture at the top is the most serendipitous one of all. The little grin is the reflex that Second Life produces when someone takes a photograph -- a kind of "cheese!" reaction. All I had to do to get that was take a shot and then quickly refresh and take another. That brings in the other most interesting and difficult thing to get into SL photographs:
emotion. We all look wonderfully handsome or beautiful, but finding a way to get emotion into a picture is really difficult. Most often I try to show emotion in the way I place things and people in the picture, but a serendipitous little grin -- hell, yeah, I'll use that.
I know that my friends have a lot -- a LOT -- to teach me about SL photography, technically and every other way. But don't you find that the best photographs have serendipity and emotion?
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