Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Barra Sweetwater does excellent and intriguing landscapes that make me want to travel to the sims she highlights. This (above) is “Ukivok” taken at the sim of the same name. Ukivok is a sim by Serene Footman and Jade Koltai who have brought to life Furillen, Black Bayou Lake, Khodovarikha, and other memorable builds. Often when sims recreate real-world locations, they are made false by their emptiness, but Ukivok is a village that was abandoned decades ago when their school was closed. Sweetwater’s picture captures the melancholy loneliness of a place that has lost its people.
In taking a picture of a “Tokyo Street” that emptiness would be profoundly falsifying. But Sweetwater avoids the contradiction by shooting a dock and some boats from above. There is no expectation of seeing people in this photo. The photo takes something so casual as a boat dock and formalizes it by using the dock as a frame, forming the left and upper limits of the picture. The four boats are arranged in an arc, as though dancing near the deck. It is a stunning photo that gets power through its simplicity.
“Winter Moon” is a very different picture. Sweetwater uses the Rule of Thirds to place the horizon and the elephant. The wild splash of the surf creates a foreground that makes the photo dynamic and exciting.
I alway love it when there are SLURLs so folks can go visit the sites in pictures and Sweetwater usually provides the location and teleport link. While her entire photostream is inconsistent since many pics are casual snaps of her just enjoying herself, she has an instinctive ability to create a mood in her pictures, capturing the essence of a sim.
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