I have been writing this column for almost a year. The 11th of July will be the official one year anniversary. In these 80 columns, I have featured more than 500 Second Life artists. When I began, I had no idea how vast the universe of Second Life photography was, but I am getting an inkling now. There’s so many different styles of Second Life photography and all are worthy of admiration when done well. From the multi-layered collages produced in Photoshop to the raw shots captured with careful in-world lighting and framing, from complete scenes with custom builds and set dressing to plain, simple shots in front of a screen, there’s more fabulous work than I can ever capture in this column. Each week, I feature somewhere between a tenth and a fifth of the photos that capture my attention and each week, I find someone new to me – producing work that is exciting and wonderful.
I am most fascinated by those who are able to shoot pictures that look like the photographer was just going about her day and happened to pick up her camera and snap on an impulse, capturing a slice-of-life photo full of immediacy and intimacy. Kean Kelly is that sort of photographer, or as she says in her Flickr profile, a snapshotographer. Even in this photo where she overlays two other photos and a texture layer, the feeling of the photo is one of a hurried snap that captures a moment, a mood. It takes tremendous talent o make successful pictures look so natural and unstudied. Her pose is so very ordinary and casual, but still care has been taken to avoid intersections. Her hair falls where it should, not through her shoulders. She is taking care, but not letting it show.
This is a magical photo. I love how the foreground blurs while the background is in sharp focus with great details in the shadows. The lighting is extraordinary and you see the shadows falling on the foreground as well as the background. The blurred and focused parts bisect the photo so dramatically, but note that she is not perfectly centered, there a little more of her behind the wall than is showing. This is a simply stunning example of depth of field and lighting making a photo into art. I hope you take the time to explore her photostream, it is full of snapshotographs that will startle you with their urgent sense of now.
There’s a bit of the snapshotograph with this photo from Sirena Spitteler for her blog, I Will Fear No Evil. I really love the angle it’s shot from. It adds to that sense of not being planned, of happening naturally. In terms of composition, the arching line of the shoreline is a powerful element, the curving line leading our eyes. From this angle, the subject is all triangles – the eye’s favorite shape – and I love how the beach becomes the frame.
Here’s another slice-of-life photo from micro-blogger Taro Nishimoto. His work is also very immediate, capturing people as they move, as they relax, as they are doing things. The light and shadow cast by blinds make this photo so much more interesting as does the soft focus and blurring that give it that feeling of being just snapped. Cropping half the subject’s face away actually increases the intimacy the photo suggests and because we paint in anything missing with our imagination, it enhances our emotional connection to the picture. UPDATE: We’re lucky enough that he volunteered how he achieved this beautiful effect.
“Thank you. this photo is not a shadow. I’ve taken four different light settings SS for same angle position. Processing and removing them repeatedly in the layer, made a false shadow.”
Lynx Lysette gives us a more nostalgic feeling, aging her snapshot for her blog, Pearls and Pistols. However, it still has that same sense of having been snapped without setting the stage and planning it all out – even with several people in the photo. She achieves this by not giving us five people posed together, but five people together – not posing. Sure, since it is Second Life, they are posed, but they are not in a group of five all looking toward the photographer. They feel like they were caught as they were preparing to get into position for a “Say Cheese” pose.
This picture from Kami Zong for Kandju Style gets that same immediacy, a feeling that the photographer snapped while shifting into position, not aiming so cutting off her head. But we see just enough of her head – and more than we think with the shadow behind her giving us information to complete the picture. Of course, this picture was framed to emphasize the clothing, but notice how cleverly it’s cropped at the top, giving us her jaw line, her earrings and just enough information that our imagination has all it needs to work with.
I love this photo from microblogger Mayumi Sugarplum. It has that fantastical lighting that happens on a misty morning when the sun breaks through clear skies and turns the misty to a liquid sunshine before burning it away. The lighting is beautiful and enhanced by a texture layer that adds a bit of noise, softening the lines of the picture and adding a touch of age. She’s framed the picture against the rules, having the subject looking out of the frame and not leaving her room to move in front of her. The thing with rules is that if you’re very good, you can break them and it still works. I think it works.
I love this photo from Kallisto Destiny. It tells a story, capturing a moment like a snapshot, but this shows so much detail in setting the scene from snails to the cat to the pig, the water, everything. And everything is such sharp focus – high-definition focus so that each droplet of water has its individual expression, each leaf, every petal defined. This is a picture to linger over to catch new little details like the mouse on the fence rail. The rich colors, the bright yellow, the blazing red, the deep blue all intensify those details. It’s simple stunning.
This picture from Zachary Zufreur for L’Homme is beautifully done in black and white – a choice that really brings the focus on the composition and on the interplay of light and shadow. You can see the strong leading diagonals of the sidewalk and street that frame the subject. There’s much more detail to the left while the street functions almost like empty space and that is where the subject focuses. That simplicity keeps him from being loss in the mass of details in the city.
I love this photo from Darla Elena Caroline Mill. Little Red Riding Hood was a child. It’s lovely to see this picture showing her that way complete the tear-stained cheeks of a frightened little girl in the forest. The composition is beautiful, with the subject offset and looking into the frame. I love it’s chiaroscuro fading to black with bright highlights where the light falls. I hope someone takes care of the wolf so she can dry her eyes.
I love this photo by Dammi Quan for Mallory Cerise’s brand new blog, Pink Cigarettes. How new? First post ever! I love how her dress flows into the water and the clock. The details are sharp and intense. This is a picture that made me shiver even though it’s warm and sunny. I love seeing artists making full use of the reflective water of Second Life and this is a great example of how a picture can be enhanced by the water’s qualities.
I like this photo from Evelyn Hartshon who microblogged it on Flickr, not on Evie’s Fashion Diary. I love the angle of this picture. It puts us in line with the eyes of the subject looking up at the balloons. I love how she bisects the picture diagonally with the line of her dress, making essentially two triangles – the subject and the vast blue negative space. It’s beautifully composed.
I love this picture from Evangeline Eames for Vinyl Cafe Addicts. She emphasized the contrast between light and dark while desaturating the colors so that the picture is very stylized. It’s very editorial looking and I love how the pose takes full advantage of her wild hairstyle.
This photo from Jaja Lubitsch could be found in a high fashion magazine. The deliberate grainy texture and soft focus gives it a dreamy quality. I love the lines formed by the light on the different angles of the walls and how they frame the picture and add geometry to a simple background. The lighting is exquisite.
This picture from Laura18 Streeter makes me want to tp there immediately to see if it’s really like that. Of course, it is and it isn’t. She snapped what was there and then made it a grey and white outline. That, coupled with the off-center cropping of the three windows makes this a striking and fascinating picture.
Taija, a microblogger, gives us this stunning photo where the sunlight burns away most of the details, but gives us such a powerful feeling of place and mood in doing so. You can almost feel the heat of the sun pouring in that window even with all the cool blues. It tells a bit of a story. Her pose, leaning back against the wall, her leg propped up suggests a contemplative, even sorrowful mood. But you can see that is not her usual style. Her clothing is bright and cheerful and whatever sorrows she has, she’s also someone who lets the sun shine in and who will find a way to move forward with optimism.
