Cajsa's Choices: Sparkle Skye Photographed & Also Created These Amazing SL Landsscpes

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Sparkle Skye takes landscape photos in addition to vendor pics for her hats, headbands, and accessories. She doesn’t shoot a lot of landscapes because she’s shooting the landscapes she builds. This one caught my eye with its spare beauty. I love a landscape that isn’t overdressed. Landscape design should follow the advice of fashion stylists, accessorize, then “remove one thing.” Skye isn’t beset with the common problem of too much everywhere all at once. What really makes me fall in love with this picture, though, is the small detail of the rain falling on the left side of the scene. Look in the foreground where the rain is falling by the desiccated remains of a fallen tree and how it’s pooling a bit as it does when the soil is dry and hard. It runs off and pools rather than soak in because the soil is too hard. There is such verisimilitude in this tiny detail. 

For more of Skye’s landscapes, click here:

I love the romanticism of “The Snow Queen”, part of the winter dressing for the lovely and absent Aurelias sim.  There is something so peaceful about this picture. The sim no longer exists so you can only enjoy this through her picture capturing the pacific beauty of the snowy path through the forest. I do love a sim that changes with the seasons.  

“A Little Mermaid” reminds us that landscaping happens under the water as well. This was part of her landscaping for Pemberley back in 2021 before PBR and many other advances in SL landscaping. The world making of landscapers and sim designers are a gift to all of us to enjoy and when they take great pics, then we are doubly blessed. 

Sparkle Skye’s takes great landscape photos, though only of her own work. I suppose it’s tough for landscapers to post pics from their travels in SL. They would have to make it clear it was not their work, perhaps with a red “Not Mine” stamp and that would be distracting and ruin the picture. She does a wide variety of environments, from aristocratic opulence suitable as a set for Bridgerton to rugged, windblown coastal lowlands. Yet there is a consistent discipline of not gilding the lily, of not going overboard. Well, except when overboard is what is called for.

Anyway, even though she doesn’t post often, you should definitely give her a follow to see what she’s cooking up next and check out her link tree or her YouTube channel for video tours. You can also hear her on this podcast with Hamlet here.

All images copyright Sparkle Skye 

See all Cajsa's Choices here. Want to recommend an artist to feature? Tag Cajsa with your favorite pics on Flickr, on Primfeed, and Facebook.  (Self-promotion welcome!)

Cajsa’s Choices is devoted to unique, artistic, and innovative virtual world-based images and screenshots that showcase the medium as an art form and Second Life as a creative platform. (Generally not images that fit on this Bingo card.)  

Cajsa Lilliehook is a seventeen year resident of Second Life, where she owned a photo studio, spent several years as a DJ at The Velvet, and for her first SL job, cleaned up prim trash. She co-founded and runs the It’s Only Fashion blog with her best friend Gidge Uriza. She also has a book review blog, Tonstant Weader Reviews and a cooking blog, Single Serving Recipes. She spends a lot of time researching and reporting on Republican sexual predators. In her first life, she is a retired grassroots leader who has worked for economic and social justice issues most of her life. She is also the minion of a cat named Nora.

Comments

[Sasy Scarborough]

Sparkle does incredible region work, I just visited one the other night, and could see myself sitting on a sand dune there for hours every day. So blissfully serene, just lovely. She definitely needs to take more pics of her work.