When you poke around Flickr you find a lot of the expected and you think, "Eh, so what? some people took some screen captions and posted them in flickr." There is in fact a lot more that goes on in SL photography. I will cover more of it in the next post about art in SL. I will mention a few techniques I have learned about and some theories used in taking pictures. As it turns out (and you shouldn't be surprised!), there is a lot more then most would think when it comes to SL photography. However, this week is about the stories pictures tell, so let's stick to the program.
FLICKR_FIND1: landscapes and lots of them
There seems to be a lot of pictures detailing realistic landscapes in SL on Flickr. Perhaps this represents people's willingness to travel and even actively create and design the areas they travel to. There are a lot of builders on SL who take an extreme amount of pride in their work. Rightfully so I think. After watching the tedious video of someone making a guitar, the idea of sitting down and designing and building an entire island/ city/ building is extremely daunting.
The pictures on Flickr tell a story of people who are proud in the work they do. They utilize Flickr as an artistic outlet (just like SL) in order to create an audience for their work.
FLICKR_FIND2: RL Meet-up's in Belgium and RL/SL comparisons.
Some users post pictures of their social gatherings about Second Life in real life on a virtual place (the Internet). Sounds confusing, but it's just people who have met up in real life after meeting in Second Life. Pictures were taken, the party was had and I'm sure it was a pretty interesting time. It would have been fun to guess who's avatar was who before they divulged that information to the group.
Another interesting thing I stumbled upon in Flickr in my searches was comparison pictures. People create a collage of real life pictures with their Second Life avatars beside. I'm assuming here that this is for purely entertainment purposes, however I'm sure there are other applications. For example, if people are dating in Second Life and want to meet up in real life, I would imagine something like this would come in handy. Looks matter whether you want to agree or not. Everyone would walk around with their eyes close if they didn't.
FLICKR_FIND3: 3d Viewing!
Now this is interesting. The University of Michigan has created stereoscopic (read: red and blue 3d vision) for use with SL! This website has taken the code and modified it slightly to work better with some renderings. Seems like an interesting pathway to go down regarding SL. Could this change how people are building things? Does an extra dimension add usability to the virtual world? Is it even necessary? The pictures hurt without 3d glasses, however it is still an interesting installation.
What strikes me in the pictures I have sourced is that each of them strives to emulate real life in second life. Be it in photorealistic landscape pictures, the incorporation of real life group events along side Second Life reality, or the advent of 3 dimensional technology which would make the seeing aspect of Second Life a bit more realistic to the physical world. I think that this is limiting the possibilities of a virtual world. When all is said is done, we will end up with a mirror of this reality, which would include all of the limitations involved. Let's make something new!
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