New World Notes

New World Tableau: Clarrice Cinquetti's Pensive Self-Portrait

I love the lacquered look and the melancholy gaze Clarrice captured in this self-portrait, found on her Koinup profile; as it happens, she tells me, she just took it while "trying out lounge furniture I had just purchased."  Once taken, she uploaded it into the Picnik image editor, "played with the exposure and contrast a bit and then framed it. Picnik is very easy to use and has taught me quite a few techniques that I also use when using GIMP."

She tells me her avatar's look somehow reflected her real life state at the moment she took the screenshot.  "I was in a blah kind of mood that day," she says, "and it seems my pictures usually reflect how I am feeling at the time. I have noticed that in a lot of my work lately and now wonder if others subconsciously have the same thing happen to them."

See more of Ms. Cinquetti's work on her Koinup profile; view the entire New World Tableau album here-- and read on for guidelines to submitting one of your own.

New World Tableau: Cala Rossini Does Neat Tricks

"Neat Tricks" is the name of a strange and marvelous area created by Kali Meads (direct SLURL teleport link here), and from certain angles, as Cala depicts above, Tricks seems like a moody Americana landscape.  From others, it's a gloriously wacky funhouse of discarded 20th century tschokes. (A pair of giant robots are up the road, for instance.)  Cala took this image in WindLight with no post-processing.  See more of Cala Rossini's work on her Koinup profile.

View the entire Tableau album here, and read on for guidelines to submitting an entry of your own.

New World Tableau: Kate Amdahl at Floatsam Beach

When she isn't busy creating an RSS-powered Second Life news portal, Kate Amdahl can sometimes be spotted in-world as a playful explorer with diaphanous wings.  Here she is for instance amid blown bubbles at Floatsam Beach.  (Direct SLURL teleport to Flotsam's Cove at this link.)

View the entire Tableau album here, and read on for guidelines to submitting an entry of your own.

New World Tableau: "Tres Seul" by Kee Llewellyn In [Rec]

Though it may seem so at first glance, this is not a recently discovered Edward Hopper painting, but an untouched photo taken directly from Second Life.  (Besides the addition of Kee's signature, that is.)  Taken in [Rec], the moody survival-horror region, the richly drab hues were achieved naturally, so to speak. "The lighting effect was done in WindLight," Kee Llewellyn tells me, "along with some tonal shifts of the ambient light. I added a touch of Fog.  I also shot with a relatively long 'lens', jumping in a few steps using Alt+0 to do so."  It's one in a series of photos the artist has taken in SL using minimal after-image processing.  "I'm trying to punch the envelope of what can be done without resorting to Photoshop," she explains. "I guess this is one of the images that worked."  You can see more and just as lovely on Kee's Koinup profile, where this image was first discovered.  (See "Tres Seul" here in full glory.)

View the entire Tableau album here, and read on for guidelines to submitting an entry of your own.

New World Tableau: Panteleimon Aeon In Straylight

"It's possible," I recently mused to a technology journalist, "that Second Life may become an immersive Photoshop, and even if its user base remains smaller than many other virtual worlds, it'll go on to become a content creation platform that everyone on the Internet benefits from-- just like Photoshop."  Or words to that effect.

Latest illustration of that point is this painterly image of Second Life's Straylight island, first found on Panteleimon Aeon's Koinup account, as lush and dream-inspiring as a classic 19th century landscape portrait.  Creation began in SL with WindLight settings, then went through several iterations in post-processing. ("I should note that the haze in the distance was created by WindLight," Aeon tells me, "and not post-processed.") He took it as a very high-res image, 3000x1900 pixels, "to keep things nice and crisp, and avoid the jaggies." 

Outside SL, he filtered the image file through Photoshop's render light filter, "adding light up top in the sky section, while darkening the foreground...I've been using this filter more and more recently, it gives me nice results."  In Photoshop,he copied the image into 3 to 4 separate layers.  I proceeded to play with levels, colors, hues, contrast and so on, on each layer individually, giving them different shades, which looked pleasing to me... then I piled the layers together, and adjusted opacities and so on, 'till I came to a satisfying result.  He also added a colored gradient, to give it the reddish-brown hue, and once finished in Photoshop, used the free editing program Photofiltre to save the final result "'cause it's quick and easy."

See more of Panteleimon Aeon's equally fine works on his Koinup profile; view the entire Tableau album here, and read on for guidelines to submitting one of your own.

New World Tableau: Solange Korobase At The Crucible

"Kiss the Rain", a Tableau taken from Solange's Koinup profile tempts me to explore more.  She took the photo, she explains, on a new region called Crucible, which features sheets of rainstorms created by Baron Grayson.  No after-image processing, simply a photo shot through WindLight-driven setting, and uploaded through Koinup's postcard feature.

[Update, 8/15: Solange sends me the direct teleport SLURL to Crucible, at this link.]

See more of Solange's sensual imagery here.  View the entire Tableau album here, and read on for guidelines to submitting one of your own.

New World Tableau: Jade Collins' "New Beginnings"

Intriguing on many levels, I found Jade's profile of an expectant couple on his Koinup profile.  A seasoned Second Life photographer, "I've had some couples come to me," explains Jade, asking him "to take a picture of them [where] the woman was pregnant."  He created poses for that purpose, and asked a couple of friends (the woman's avatar suitably adjusted to simulate pregnancy), to show them off in this image-- and also, "to show how much SL can be real."  After creating the screenshot, he added several layers of after-image effects, which he details here.

See more of Jade's photography featuring more couples on his Koinup profile; view the entire Tableau album here.  Read on for guidelines to submitting one of your own.

New World Tableau: The Nubian Steampunk Self-Portrait of the Artist Ahmad Hosho

"Yes," Ahmad Hosho writes of this image from his Koinup profile, as if already anticipating disbelief from viewers (including me), "it is a Second Life-based photo."  Of course much was done after-image, a complex process Ahmad explains in great detail here.  He describes this screenshot of an avatar as a self-portrait, and as it turns out, that's true on many levels-- in real life, Ahmad tells me, he lives in Egypt.

"May be first Egyptian/North African in Second Life," he muses.  He became a Resident two years ago, but, he says, "I had hard times in 2006 to make people believe I am from Egypt."  Instead, they insisted thinking he was European.

"My avatar is Nubian, by the way," he tells me later. "I think Nubian culture is one of most interesting ones out of Egypt."  I tell him that I admire how he merged Nubian imagery to steampunk elements in his work.

"Well," Ahmad Hosho corrects me, smiling,  "I combine:  Nubian, steampunk, cyberpunk, 70s retro stuff with some hip hop." 

"Awesome," I say, for how else could one reply.

See more of Ahmad's equally spectacular work on his Koinup profile, view the entire Tableau album here, and read on for guidelines to submitting one of your own.

New World Tableau: "Ooops" by Connie Arida

Connie's last Tableau entry featured the denial of death; "Ooops", by contrast, features the denial of gravity, to sassy effect.  (Click for full view.)  "How did I do it?" she writes me.  First task, of course, involved finding a locked-knee avatar pose. "I then textured a floor and background prim, then angled and placed them so my feet were placed relatively realistically. I then used the environmental lighting controls to set the shadows on my legs to match the light... For the undies, I grabbed a pic of [a pair] from the Net, cut them from the original, and stretched and transformed them [in Photoshop], then stamped a second copy slightly behind the first. Using a brush, I tidied up the cutout and painted slight shadows where the strap meets the skin. I then added in the shadow of the legs and panties onto the floor prim."  Pixel Mode, the maker of the shoes, liked the image so much, Connie reports, that the company now displays it at the store's new location.

New World Tableau: Faerie Hax in Hollow Earth

Faerie Hax sends this Tableau of herself and an unknown friend from the region called Hollow Earth, beneath the Tekeli-li shop.  "The owners of Tekeli-li created a large series of caverns underneath their store for everyone to explore and play in," she writes me. "The caverns are connected by water and they give you your own boat to go exploring in.  And you get to keep the boat! It's quite an extensive area."  (Ms. Hax used very little Photoshop for the final image, she reports, merely for resizing and adding some touches of shadow.)  Direct teleport to Hollow Earth at this link.

See more on Faerie's Flickr stream.  View the entire New World Tableau album here-- and read on for guidelines to submitting one of your own.