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Crystall Dunes and Second Life Stock Images

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Crystall Dunes 1  - Stock Image

This is one of those times where you have to run, not walk – or in our case TP – as fast as you can, because you only have two days left. Crystall Dunes was open to the public recently, and so much love was bandied back and forth about it, that Neva has graciously extended the time until the 7th of November. Now if you do not know about Crystall Dunes, just imagine if every single home decor item or furniture piece you have ever admired, was set up in a way as to create the perfect home, or in this case homestead, because there is not only one house on the sim. Then the outdoors also is just beautiful, soft, subtle and has hundreds of possible photo taking oppurtunities.

Now a year or so ago we started the Second Life Stock Images group on Flickr, you have possibly seen me mention it before. It was actually inspired by Cajsa Lilliehook who so often sends out a long list of possible locations for photography, and the different attributes the location has, such as being able to rez or scripts yes or no, and so on. You see I tend to want to shoot outdoors, but by the time I find a space, and am happy with the location, something always goes wrong. Then with frustration I return to my VR Studio and am in bliss and safe from the outdoors and take my pics.

But I thought what if someone like Cajsa was to take pics without herself in the images, and share the locations that way. If people added pics to a flickr pool and we were given permission to use them for store ads, blog pics and/or photography it could maybe help some people. Also I hoped that it would give an advantage to those that don’t have strong enough graphics cards to load all the outdoors info into their pics as well as take the photos. So anyway that is how that came about.

Whimsy, Cajsa, myself as well as others add to the pool whenever we have time, and I would love everyone to consider each time they are out and about taking pics, to take a few extras without avatars in them and add them to the pool.

Now one thing I did do, because Crystall Dunes is a location that I believe Neva uses for a lot of her own Photography, I did contact her and ask permission, also I did not shoot her ‘things’ as such, there are amazing inside items that would take a lot of work to catalogue to give them the credit they deserve, so those types of things I left out of the Stock Images I made. But if you do go there yourself you are allowed to take pics, that is the idea of her opening it up.

Whimsy Winx of Virtually Dressed earlier today did a mini tutorial on Faux Shadows, and how even if adding yourself to a stock image, you can recreate the shadows from overhead leaves or other items in the scene. Her and I do this very similar, but we both have our own steps etc, and finished looks we create, but along the same lines, I did a pic using one of the many pictures I took yesterday, and using an older post pic you may remember from a few weeks ago, because the outfit worked in the scene. The shadows of the leaves etc are done after the fact, using the same sorts of steps Whimsy did in her post, so I hope you will give that a whirl too.

So If you are ever stuck for backgrounds, or ideas for them, also we do include the slurls to the locations the pics were taken at, so that may help also. Feel free to use the ones in Second Life Stock Images, and have fun, and also please comment in the pics with a link to what you do with them, would love to see the way people change them etc.

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