Photobook: “Changing Hues” opening party

What a great couple of hours!  Thanks to Phinn for making this afternoon in Second Life so enjoyable.  And you to EVERYONE for coming!  (If you showed up, I probably snapped a photo of you…)

“Changing Hues” opens Saturday!

GRAND OPENING RECEPTION

featuring Phinn Boffin

Saturday, February 7 – Noon PST

Second Arts photography gallery is pleased to welcome Phinn Boffin in a rare exhibition of her inworld photography, “Changing Hues.” Please join us at a reception for Phinn as we celebrate the opening of her show. Over three and a half years’ worth of experience in virtual photography has culminated in this collection of over 30 pieces, most of which show off the unretouched vision of the pixie photographer. It’s a magical vision, from one of SL’s great creative minds.  Please join us!

The next Second Arts show is set!

 

Maria Maria by Phinn Boffin, from her Flickr photostream

With a scheduled opening for February 7 at noon SL time, we’re going to have a show by SL photographer Phinn Boffin!

 

Check out her Flickr photostream here.

Can’t wait to see what she has in store for the gallery…

Back in a couple of weeks!

It’s RL vacation time for Morris’ RL avatar…and he’s taking his laptop but won’t make any promises about his Twitter, Plurk, blog or inworld activity.  This has been one crazy year, and he needs to decompress.  Trust me, he REALLY needs to decompress.

You should stop by Second Arts while I’m out, though, as Carlotta Ceawlin has her month-long photo show up.  As great as her Bay City Visions-winning piece was, the rest of her portfolio is even better.  Definitely worth a visit.

And I’ll see you on the flip side…don’t let the grid burn down while I’m gone!

Sharing holiday joy in Second Life

An unexpected thing happened this holiday season…I was DELUGED with Christmas gifts and cards! It’s an overwhelming feeling have a handful of gifts waiting for you EVERY TIME you log in. Having been as detached from the SL scene as I’ve been (or at least felt I’ve been), these demonstrations of friendship hit me right where it counts. Thanks, everyone!

Beyond that, you really have to admire the innovative spirit in SL’s creative class. I decided to put out all of the Christmas gifts on the Second Arts plaza as a quickie display of this great work, and here’s a 39-picture slideshow of the world in and around Vig’s Christmas tree…

I didn’t mention that the particle snowflakes throughout the slideshow were from a rezzer by Alizarin Goldflake. Also, I received a number of no mod/no transfer textures that I could not put on prims to display…so there really was quite a bit more beyond what I set out at Second Arts.

Again, it’s humbling to know that one has so many friends across the grid. Thanks, everyone, for making my Christmas just that much brighter.

The “Bay City Visions” RL book arrived!

And, if I may, this book is downright stunning.  The Oyster Bay book is a great historical tome, with over 700 SL photos across the 200 pages, but the Bay City Visions book is about the art…not photojournalism.

Blurb does an amazing job transferring the very high resolution SL images onto the printed page.  The book itself is an 10×8-inch landscape format, so the photos themselves are around 6 inches tall (accounting for margins, captions, etc.).  The glossy covers complement the matte pages quite well, too.  I hadn’t purchased a softcover book from Blurb before (my Oyster Bay copy is hardcover with slipjacket), and the quality of the covers and the binding lead me to think that it’s very acceptable as a coffee table-quality edition.  

Here are a few RL photos of my copy…

46 pages of top-quality Second Life photography by 24 creative minds, all themed around the SL experiment that is Bay City.  The softcover edition is $24.95+shipping, hardcover with slipcover is $35.95+shipping and hardcover with imagewrap (imagine a hardcover book with the cover images printed onto the hardcover itself) is $37.95+shipping.  

Oh yeah, I’m not taking a dime in profit from this publication.  Don’t think that I’m hyping to line my pocket.  I’m darned proud to have done this project and want to share the incredible feeling of holding SL images in real life with you.  

And, yes, there will be more such projects to come in the future!

Congratulations Carlotta Ceawlin – “Bay City Visions” winner!

That’s Carlotta with her photo, “Bay City Rollers,” which won the “Bay City Visions” show at Second Arts.  What a gorgeous shot!

I look forward to including her work with the 22 other contestants (and Calli and my photos!), as well as some shots from tonight’s party, in the forthcoming RL show book.  Can’t wait!

Bay City Visions entries due Friday

The Bay City Visions show is coming up in December, and those white “Insert Photo Here” signs are slowly filling up the gallery.  If you haven’t entered your photos, now’s the time – deadline for submissions is Friday!

If you want information on how to have your works in the show and enter them in the contest for a free month’s show and a free copy of the RL show book, here’s the scoop.

Following Tary Allen’s great suggestion, I also opened up a Flickr photo group for “Bay City Visions” over the weekend.  We already have over 100 members, and I believe we’re over 10 photos posted to the group.  Some of them are entries in the contest, some aren’t…which is great, as I think a photo group devoted to Bay City can live past any single art show or contest.  The collection of sims has enough going for it, enough creativity and style, that it’s eminently photographable (Is that a word – photographable?).  

Anyhoo – get your photos in now!  Time is running out!

The Linden Department of Impaired Vision

Yes, it’s that time again…

If you haven’t noticed in the last 24 hours or so, the left-hand column block that highlights my latest Flickr uploads has looked a little different. As in, a bright, thin bar of light down the photos. Houston, we have a problem.

Now, a big caveat: I’m talking about the Linden Lab Release Candidate 1.20 viewer, not the regular viewer. The reason I even bother with the Release Candidate viewer as opposed to the regular viewer (or the performance-superior Nicholaz viewers) is that the 3D SpaceNavigator controller is only compatible with the RC 1.20. And, 95% of the time, the 3D SpaceNavigator makes all the other hassles of a “beta testing” viewer worthwhile. It truly transforms the way a user interacts with Second Life.

(For those who want to read about the Second Arts, I’ll put the rest behind the fold.)

The WindLight tour hits Black Swan

You knew it had to happen…my spin around Second Life was bound to touch Rezzable‘s Black Swan sim, which features works by Starax Stat—errrrr—–Light Waves.

I’m finding that each space demands its own combinations of light and color.  Some spaces, like the water shot I showed in an earlier post, called for a total oversaturation of light.  The Svarga shot demanded a greater level of haze.  Black Swan, by comparison, forced me to look at how to portray the pastel-like reflections off of many of the pieces.

We’ll start with the Ballerina – where I thought the reaching for the sun had both visual and emotional appeal.

The Lovers Rock is a tough shot to take, largely because Black Swan is too crowded with pieces all around.  It’s hard to get a clean photo of this centerpiece of the sim.  But I think this was a decent attempt, and the stone of the figures contrasts well with the serene water.

This one, Night Dreaming, is an interesting story.  I took a bunch of “head on” shots and found that I didn’t like the surrounding activity in the photo.  So, as I wound up at Black Swan, I doubled back for one last shot.  I scanned around the piece and found this unique angle, which lent itself perfectly to looking into a sunset.

I’ve put a number of my new-ish WindLight shots up at Second Arts Photography in Shepherd.  Four came from Black Swan, but there are some others too.

This was my last shot of the night…a tweak of scene gamma led to this Red Light shot.  A little devilish, don’t you think?