New World Notes

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Visually Arresting Images from Titanxxx

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

Titanxxx has created a deeply personal photostream with pics of him and him with his “love pea” Candy. I appreciate that he comments on his pics. Without his commentary, I might never have looked at the titles of the books which are hilarious. Some of the titles include The Narcissist, Selfish: The Healthy Approach, and Life as a Balloon. They are a great reminder of the gentle sensibility of the late Kean Kelly who created the book models.

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Love Cajsa's Coverage of Second Life's Flickr Community? Consider Contributing to Her Ko-Fi!

Cajsa's October 20, 2022 post featuring Mara Telling, bear

Cajsa Lilliehook's Ko-fi account is a great way to send a "thank you" to Cajsa for her Tuesday-Friday column celebrating Second Life's massive creator community on Flickr. I often get messages from individual Flickr creators she features, profusely thanking her. I'm grateful too. She vividly illustrates how Second Life screenshots can go far beyond pretty avatar pictures (as fun as those are) to become an art platform and attract a community of fellow creators too.  

Here's some of my favorite posts from her in 2022 below. I say "some" because I started to compile a Top 10 favorites list for last year, and realized that'd be impossible. Thanks to her sharp eye, most of her posts are my favorites. See for yourself:

Today's SL Flickr Picks: Devilishly Dramatic Male Avatar Portraits By Lᴇᴛᴀʀɢᴏ Cᴏʀᴠɪɴᴜs

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

Letargo Corvinus’ photostream is fun. I like how he has subdued color except for one or two that really pop. Take this one, the picture is desaturated except for his jacket. It makes the jacket the focal point which it fully deserves to be. The title is “Misery” so perhaps Letargo doesn’t like to dress up. 

For more color-popping pics, click here:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Exciting & Thought Provoking Images by Lyra Romanas

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

Lyra Romanas’ “A Slow Decay” is a far too beautiful image to represent actual decay, but it’s more accurate than “ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” 

It did get me thinking about human composting, a more ecologically sound alternative to traditional burial. It’s legal here in Oregon and in five other states. Of course there is an industry developing around terramation, the dreadful portmanteau created to describe the process in a more brochure-friendly way than composting. It’s not cheap, running about $5000, five times the price of cremation. Of course, you could do like my parents and my sister have and donate your body to a medical school. 

Of course, she could have been thinking of slow decay in a more metaphysical sense, like the decay of our illusions or the representation of moral decay such as in “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” The picture could mean so many things. As Ansel Adams said, “‘A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.’

For more of Romanas’ thought-provoking pics, click here:

SL Artist Amazingly Photographs His Friends Roleplaying As Circus Performers

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

Zakk Bifrandt is working on a project featuring his friends taking roles in the circus. He plan is to create 19 pictures in total.

The third in the series (above) is an impressive glimpse into the true difficulty of the trapeze artists. The wrapped hands and feet hint at the physicality of the trapeze, the wear and tear on the body it entails. Funnily enough, one of my former coworkers was a trapeze artist as her first career. Now she is sending her kids to trapeze school. It’s actually easier to learn as a child because they are fearless.

For more of his circus-themed picture, click here:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Mac Massimo, Metaverse Magritte

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

When I saw Mac Massimo’s “A Grounded Man” (right) posted on Facebook, I was stopped in my tracks, so to speak.

Such an original idea, but then Mac is full of original ideas from food blogging in Second Life to this deep dive into the surreal.

He works in black and white photography but still reminds me of Rene Magritte whose work was so colorful. Like Magritte he explores the body in relation to its environment, replacing blood and muscle with sap and cellulose in this picture.

He has a blog about his work and talks a bit about his process which adds even more to the pictures. 

For more surreal pictures, click here:

5 Further Flickr Feeds To Follow From Photographers of Second Life

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

See my first five follow recommendations here

Whiskey Monday not only gives us intriguing visual images, but her pictures are intended to make us think. She often takes a metaphor and makes it literal so we see it in a new way. For example, winging it implies just getting by, sort of an extemporaneous and haphazard approach, jumping in without preparation, but flying…that is success. So we have this image of her flying, but unseen, her success not visible even to herself.

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5 Favorite Flickr Feeds to Follow from the SL Photograph Community

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

It’s the end of the year and time to look back and share my favorite photostreams to follow. Nekonuko Nakamori is a perennial favorite. I love her consistency. Every picture includes her enjoying the scene. She goes from place to place and takes snaps. Her pics feel like watercolors. There is this softness, a luminosity that makes me smile every time. 

For more streams to follow, click here:

These Evocative Images Look Like Bygone Photos But They're Actually of Second Life Locations You Can Visit!

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

Mr. B’s photostream would be perfect for a game of “Is it Life or Is It Second Life?” except every picture is Second Life. I think Second Life looks more real in black and white and his pictures harken back to a time when all pictures were unless they were hand-colored by the photographer. The white frame on these pictures make me think of old slides that usually had a number stamped on them and the name of the photo studio that developed them. 

This is a picture of Jodis Old Train Station, Jodis. [To teleport, click here]

It reminds me of a single page my sister found from some long lost photo album (at right). It was a piece of that heavy paper old photo albums had and it had two pictures on it, one of my dad when he was a young man, the only one from before he got married. The other picture was of the river that went through the family farm. 

This was taken some time in the 1920’s and you can see the similarity in how photos were developed. I suppose they needed wide margins for those little paper corners you had to stick them on with.

For more of Mr. B’s extraordinary Second Life travels, click here:

 

Wonderful Wednesday Avatar Cosplay for Wednesday

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

Grazia Horwitz shared “If you don’t woe me by now” is magnificent. She did it after my column about SLers offering homage to the Netflix series. I have nothing to add. It’s perfect. 

For more Wednesday on Wednesday, click here: