Photography

First, the good stuff!

My hair with this adorable beanie is from EscalateD, it is, or was depending when you read this, her 35L$ special, I of course bought the whole friggin pack because it was only 150L$, and it's called Valentine.  The hat has a cute little emoji you can change.  Mine right now is a broken heart, because my poor character is going through a really hard time right now :(

The top is from zOOm, a store I recently found!  Join the group and get 11 awesome gifts, some are on sale for 150-300L$, and the group was only like 150L$ I believe.  WELL worth it!  It's called Irreversible, and comes has a full outfit.

My shorts, which considering it's the dead of winter in Colorado I should have bundled up haha, but it's from ~Rebellious Rose~ that my friend Londynn recommended <3

My shoes are from L'Emporio and were part of a full outfit that was around 250L$ I think?  Been awhile since I bought it.  It came with EVERYTHING, Top, bottom, shoes, a necklace and a jacket.  When I got it, the pants weren't there, so I sent a nice notecard to the owner, and within like 20 minutes that WONDERFUL person sent me the ENTIRE outfit again!  They were so nice!

The flag I'm holding I made by myself!  The story of the photo is that Vestal Pass had a MASSIVE snowstorm, and the supplies from the train were taken and scattered, and then the town had an avalanche as the rescue copter crashed into the mountain.  So it was every man and woman for themselves, so I thought of taking a photo to signify it.  It was either Tarra or Penniah who said "I would love to see a photo of that!"  So...Sera in this photo is hijacking the train, the rebel flag signifying it's  everyone for themselves.  The sky signifies the oncoming storm.

So at the suggestion of Londynn, I'm going to talk about photography and stuff.

So as you can see, a lot of thought went into this single pose. I don't just take random photos, at least not for blogs.  My flickr yeah, those are fairly random, lol, but blogs?  I try to fit it to what I'm talking about.

For example, let's go back to the "Sunset Boulevard" post.  The photo was of her framing her face for a shot.  "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr DeMille" is one of the most famous lines in Sunset Boulevard.  So when I took the photo, I used a special windlight ([TOR] Aww Yeaaahhh or something) to intentionally frame her, and blur the background, but it was still noticeable it was a theater.  Norma was at home in a theater.  She lived for the spotlight.  She talked about it many times, and the entire musical and movie were all about it too.  It was ALL about the theater for Norma, getting back into that limelight.  So that's why I picked that particular pose and that particular photo.  It fit the topic I wanted to discuss.

Before that, I did "I can't hear you!" and that was about cyberbullying.  That one, the background was a waterfall, and the foreground had her fingers in her ears.  I felt that the roaring waterfall and her fingers in her ears would drown out all the negativity going on in my OOC/RL world (and there is a LOT RL right now).  The water, to me, signified washing off the drama and starting over.  When you get up in the morning, most of us, we take a shower.  We strip naked, get in the shower, and wash ourselves off, get out, and redress in new clothes.  A new day, a new start, and that's why I picked that one!

Recently I did some B&W photos as well, which turned out beautiful, they're on my flickr.  Ive been goign through a lot RL, I won't get into it, but it's been dragging me down, and I wanted to bring that out in my photography.  Ironically, my GPU is garbage.  I can run 3 avies with relative ease at home lol, but I can't do high graphics.  Suprise!  I get 2-3 FPS everywhere!  Presets are your friend.  But anyways, the reason I say that is I have to use a 32 bit viewer, and occasionally I get "# of textures discarded" .  Well, one of the saddest looking pictures I took had that on it, lol.  At first I was like no get rid of this.  But then, I realized it actually was pretty significant.  To me that sort of represented her feelings, discarding them somehow.  It's amazing how little things in photos, mistakes, work out great.

I started photography in SL a few years back.  I started taking couples photos of my old av and her girlfriend Onyx.  I quit after awhile, my photos were garbage to me, and so I paid people to take them.  Eventually as time went on, I met Alexandrea, who took AMAZING photos.  She introduced me to phototools, and it was on again!  Shadows, reflections, sun, windlights, I started learning them ALL.  I watched videos, I read up, I asked people, and I learned all about photos.  I got better and better in time.

Eventually, I got to a wall again.  My windlights were sketchy always, and i had to be fast on a photo.  I had to catch it as it flickered and had to be fast, but something was still wrong.  I couldn't figure it out!  Eventually my friend Liberty said something like "Stop being a chickenshit and turn your graphics up."  To this point I had left them on Mid-High.  I never thought of upping them.  I thought "Oh I'll crash!".  But then the thought occured to me.  I have a couple presets for high lag areas, and my home which is a higher setting, and a setting for busy RP sims.  So, why not do one with photos??  DUH!

So I did it.  I went to a low lag sim, I jacked my graphics up to Ultra for the first time, and through all the lag, I was able to save the preset for photos.  So now, I use my lowest setting, set the photo and lighting and everything up.  Then, I bring up the snapshot, change my preset, snap the pic and drop them before I crash haha.  At full Ultra with EVERYTHING on I have about 1 minute before I crash, so I learned to be fast.  Snap, change preset, reset shot, change preset, snap, change preset, set up shot, etc.  It's been a hell of a learning experience.  But now, I'm pretty happy with where I am!  I've taken some photos for people, Muire, Londynn, Sofia, Hera, and I occasionally (im a profile perv.  If we're talking, im reading your ENTIRE profile), see MY picture as someones profile picture, and that makes me so happy to see.  It's a great feeling to see your work in SL where everyone can see it, even if you aren't credited for it :P

So...that's that.  Highly uninteresting blog today, sorry, lol, but it's some material at least!