177: Woodbury Falls

Tonight I went and took some pictures at Woodbury Falls; I got the idea from a listing in the Destination Guide. Very cool build and I had some spooky fun!
You can find the link here.

176B: "Travel" (2 of 2)

And in this, the second of two little photo shoots I had some fun with, I was riffing on the theme of "Travel".  There are some amazing sims out there; they make it easy.

176A: "Patterns" (1 of 2)

Tonight I went out and did two photo shoots that I thought came out rather well. I thought I'd share a few shots with you.  I just did what came to mind ... in the first instance, the shoot below about "Patterns", I just tried to pack as many patterns into the shot as possible.  The second shoot will be next, "Travel".

175: Follow the Rule of Thirds for better pictures

There's a Facebook group to which I belong called "Snap... Do It!" (found here) that has a fun premise. The group's admins post 15 challenges twice a month -- words and phrases like "Animals" or "Falling Leaves" -- and then the group's members create and post Second Life pictures as they're inspired by the challenges.
  One such challenge recently was listed, "Headshot using Rule of Thirds". Now, I'm not very experienced with photography in real life; I gather that the

Rule of Thirds is well-known as a basic photographic axiom, I'd just never heard of it before. So I looked it up in Wikipedia and tried to experiment with it.
  My fellow photographers in the group seemed to have never heard of it either, frankly. There were quite a few headshots submitted, but once I read up on the Rule of Thirds, it seemed as though very few people were using it. So I thought I'd prepare a little tutorial piece here that may help you take better

pictures. It's certainly helped me look at my own visual composition more carefully before I take the shot!
   The Rule of Thirds works like this. Whenever you're composing a visual image, in your mind you can take two vertical lines and two horizontal lines and divide the image into a kind of tic-tac-toe board -- like the black lines on white background you'll see in this post.

There's some scientific research to suggest that the viewer's eye is attracted to the places where the lines cross (see the image with percentages). So if you want to make a more interesting image, you put things at those crossing points that you want the viewer to see, and they will look at the picture a few extra seconds. There's another couple of principles that go along with it. In terms of photographing people, you try to put the eyes along the top horizontal line (see the picture at the top of this post),

and the vertical line of the body down one of the vertical lines (see the third picture from the top, of the man on the phone).
  At the end of the pictures to the left, I've put my own entry in this category to the "Rule of Thirds" challenge in my Facebook group. I knew I wanted to have a photograph that had strong horizontal and vertical lines, so that I could play with the idea of dividing up the image, and I wanted to try to line up the topmost horizontal line so that it went

through my eyes, as it were. So the first one is the unprocessed shot and the second image is one where I went into Preview and, using a primitive annotation tool, added some lines to approximate the Rule of Thirds grid. The measurements are absolutely not exact.
  I don't think I did so bad, all things considered. I hit one of the vertical lines pretty much exactly, and the top horizontal line is not too far from my eye-line. With a little practice I'm sure I'll get better.

  As I discovered in my brief investigation of this concept, as you get to be a better photographer, there's a bunch of people who suggest that you should break the Rule of Thirds rule ... play with it, subvert it, joke with it so that other photographers will be amused by your approach. That's going to take a little more experience than I have at the moment. The one thing I do know is that I'm not going back to the "basic selfie pose" that you see at the end of the images here. Yes, it looks like me, and yes, it documents a moment and an outfit (and my crazy new hat and hair! LOL) but I could have made it a lot more memorable with the Rule of Thirds.

174: Photo tip (your own homemade light source)

I've been taking a LOT of photographs lately and, being the careless type I am, I haven't always remembered to adjust the available light. There are four choices: sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight. Noon is my fallback position, but it's rather like taking a selfie under the million-watt overheads at a discount drugstore -- harsh and kind of yellowish.  Sunrise and sunset both have a reddish overtone that may or may not work with the subject matter. And midnight is, well, too dark for the most part.
  But I like shooting in darkness or semi-darkness; to me, it has a little bit of emotional content that adds something to the picture. Was there a way, I wondered, to create a little light within the darkness, so people could actually see what I was photographing? Quite by accident, I found a tip on the internet that seemed to apply to this and seemed like something I could actually do.  So I've made my own light source.

  Now, I am not one of your building types. The most sophisticated thing I've built in Second Life is a large flat prim upon which to place artwork textures. Trust me when I say, you can do this.  Access the Build menu and use the tool to rez a shape on the ground. (I made a ball shape; suit yourself.) Set that shape to full brightness. Then take it into your inventory and rename it from "Object" to "Light source". That's it.  If you don't have land, you can do this easily at a sandbox.
  You can see from the pictures that it's easy enough to rez "Light source" and move it to wherever you need it to be, then manipulate your viewpoint to have it outside the photograph but still casting light. And since you made it yourself, you can make it full perm and rez as many as you need; go ahead, turn midnight into your discount drugstore, if you want. I haven't experimented with making the light something less than full brightness, but that's easily done too.
  Hope this works for you if you like taking pictures in the dark!
  (And for an even more helpful hint about lighting from someone who actually knows what he's doing ;-) see the comment below from my friend Galileo Michalski!)

173: Clothes from Hassel

First, a booster juice.

While you look at the pictures telling the story of an afternoon at the gym for Alex Thaub and myself, followed by the inevitable carbohydrate loading session at a pizza parlour, all while dressed in clothes from Hassel, let me explain.
  The other day, I said that if you see me wearing it, it's because I bought it. I don't make deals with designers to promote their clothes. But I'm not going to restrict myself from being happy with Hassel85 Resident's clothes just because he was a nice guy and gave

Sign in at the gym.

me a couple of sweaters.
  Here's what happened. I was out wandering around at Gay Fun World and found the Hassel store, with these nice colour-shifting sweaters, like the one I'm wearing as we get into Alex's car.  Dark violet on the top, pale violet on the bottom, a nice thick wool sweater.  Very nice, I bought two for L$200 apiece, and in real life I have something like this too, so it was good to have a virtual one too.
  Went home and unpacked them and was quite pleased. Then I got a note

Alex showing off his upper body gains.

from the designer, saying, "You know, you got two sweaters for L$400 when you could have had the fatpack of all five colours for L$475.  Thanks for shopping at Hassel and I've enclosed the rest of the colours."
  Well, I thought that was a very nice thing to do, and said so. Then I brought Alex to the store to show him the clothes, and one thing led to another, and we bought a bunch of clothes. And then Hassel dropped us a thank-you note and gave Alex -- I think it was two pairs of shorts.

Carbing up after the gym.

  We both like these clothes. For one thing, I think the designer has realized that people are unlikely to wear the same designer head to toe. People use clothes as elements to create a look. These clothes are comfortable and the colours are great for bros, bright but a little muted. Some of the shirts are quite dramatic, like the "star" shirt Alex is wearing at the coffee shop. When you wear something like that the rest of your outfit has to be a little less dramatic, to let your "statement piece" stand out.

Off home.

  Anyway, we were trying on clothes and I said, "Let's go do a fashion shoot." These are literally the clothes I would wear to go work out and then out for a pizza, so that's what we set up. It was fun to do ... to try to tell a story and show off the clothes at the same time.
Alex's shirts, and my tank and sweater, are from Hassel. The rest is our own stuff.
  Please don't make Hassel's life hell by expecting the same thing from him. It was obviously a nice gesture but presents aren't mandatory ... unless perhaps you're prepared to do a fashion shoot to say thanks.  ;-) But if you need some versatile casual clothes, check out his store at Gay Fun World or his Marketplace listings.

172: Back in the blogosphere

In the last while I've been meeting people and discovering things within Second Life, and I keep thinking, "Gee, I should be blogging about this stuff." I seem to be in a better mood, and much less stressed, than I was six months ago; although I don't intend to pressure myself unduly to post every couple of days, as once I did, I think I'll try my hand at the occasional post.

To that end, I've had to consider exactly what it is I want to do with the functions of a blog. I've renamed my blog to reflect my focus more precisely; what I'm interested in is creative things and creative people within virtual worlds.

With my very first post, I speculated upon what sort of topics I hoped to cover; in retrospect I was fairly completely wrong.  Not surprising. I've given it a little more thought this time and I expect in a few years I shall look back at this effort also as short-sighted.  Nevertheless, here's what I think you can expect, at least in the near future.

• Interviews with interesting people doing interesting things. This seems to have been the most popular feature of my former blog, but I intend to be a bit more freeform in my questions from now on. 
• Photography. I think I'm getting better at it, and I like to tell a story with photographs.  I also have a very cooperative model on tap (thank you Alex Thaub!). 
• Mini-tours of places that interest me that I think you might like to visit. 
• Clothes, furniture, clubs, and other commercial products that I think are above the average and may interest you. I'll reiterate that I have a firm policy of not entering into any agreements with designers, etc., to promote anything. By and large, if I talk about it here, I've paid cash for it; if that's not the case, I'll let you know.
• Tricks and tips about how to use various aspects of Second Life. I've noticed that this is something upon which few people focus. I have to add that I am not claiming any great mastery of Firestorm, which is my preferred program, or anything else; on the contrary, it's precisely because I am such a doofus about technical things sometimes that I hope to save others my embarrassment. If I learn something useful, I'll try to share it with you here.
• Discussions about trends and current events in Second Life and virtual worlds. I'm interested in Sansar and will be trying to stay ahead of the news on it and other such endeavours. 

Things I rather doubt you'll see here in the future:

• Photographs of who was at what club when I went out dancing, unless there's a good reason. Other people cover those things quite thoroughly and well.
• Unfavourable reviews of anyone or anything. Honestly, I don't see the point. 
• News about upcoming events. This will almost certainly include some very good causes like charitable fund-raising events ... you will not find those things here not because I am a hard-hearted bastard but because, again, other people cover those things quite thoroughly and well. More to the point, you are used to finding that information elsewhere. I'll probably make exceptions for people whom I know personally; c'est la vie.
• Anything much about real life. That's why we have news portals. 
• Anything much about who is marrying, scrapping with, or screwing whom. Not my circus, not my monkeys.  

What I hope to accomplish is to find things to do that I will enjoy doing, and that you will enjoy doing too. You'll be seeing a lot of my husband Alex Thaub in these pages because he's a part of everything I do here.

So please return for a look over the next few weeks and we'll see how it goes. If you have comments or questions or suggestions, I'd be pleased to hear them below.  I hope you'll all be tolerant of me at the outset; after such a long vacation, I'll be a little ... rusty. ;-)