SLArt

One of my passions before finding my Second Life (tm) was working in digital media. I enjoy the creative flow of dipping into a virtual space and pushing pixels around to make something dynamic and interesting. My tools of choice were Photoshop, Poser and Bryce.

When I came into Second Life (tm), I largely left Poser and Bryce behind. There is a "social creativeness" to working in SL that you can't get in Poser. Even if you're just snapping pictures of scenery or people at random, there are (or can be) "people" nearby, communicating... participating in some small way. Building can also be collaborative. Whether the participants each get a few buildings to contribute to a sim, or two or more people work together closely on one build, the final whole is a collaborative effort born of the consciousnesses of different people... and in SL, those different people bring with them differing cultural senses of design that can make for a very interesting virtual space.

The candid "photography" in SL, though, leaves out that bit of control that I enjoyed in Poser. So I like to do more formal work, on occasion. It's easy enough to snap pictures of me, manipulating my avatar as needed. What is harder is getting others to be more participatory... to have a more true collaborative work. Posing, collaboratively.

I've been itching to do something more collaborative in SL photography for a while. Candid shots are all fine, but to make a picture tell a story you need props, poses and scenery. And of course, willing participants.

Alysa and I worked on some pictures on the docks at Blacklist: Cataclysm. Blacklist has always been a rough place... so what better setting than the docks to pose with guns? I had a lot of trouble with my SL viewer (thank you, Linden Labs). It made capturing frustrating. Alysa showed great patience for my troubles, as I managed to only capture about 6 useable images (the rest corrupted by poor viewer software). The image above was one of the first captures of the day... processed heavily in Photoshop to add some motion blur, alter contrast, add some muzzle flash, and paint in highlights and shadows. This is the kind of collaboration I enjoy... working together on poses and settings, each taking several snapshots to process and compare.

I do have some images of Blacklist which I will post very soon... but get there if you haven't and see it for yourself. Our grand opening party is this coming weekend. More info, soon!

-SK-