Wandering in Musiclandia

Music has always been extremely important to me. A favorite band or song can have an immediate impact on my mood, it can recharge me if I’m having trouble focusing, calm me if I’m stressed, inspire me to create something, or just provide a soundtrack for my day. My husband has never connected to music like I have, he enjoys it but he’ll always choose to turn to a favorite movie to unwind and relax, I always go for my music collection. Sometimes I can’t even really explain what it is about a particular song, or a band, that moves me so much. It’s just something I feel, something that can make me burst into tears when I hear the first few notes at a concert.

I haven’t spent nearly as much time getting to know the SL music scene, though it’s always one of my goals. I do love to tour any music related builds though, from little record stores to full sim installations like Musiclandia at LEA-11. Music related builds combined with really cool visuals and opportunities for photos? Bliss… (more…)

Childhood

I’ve been looking through the Destination Guide to plan my tourist stops lately, and found colorful blocks tossed up into the air… (more…)

Windlighting

I was writing in my last blog post about how I need to remember to write down my windlight settings, then after I posted I saw that Strawberry Singh’s blog challenge of the week asks us what windlights we like to use! She’s psychic, I think…  I guess this is the universe adding an extra reminder for me to pay attention to what I’m doing.

Compared to many of the talented SLers who post their work on blogs and on Flickr, I am far from a master photographer. That doesn’t stop me from taking pics constantly, though, and being able to play with the atmosphere via the windlight settings is wonderful. I still tend towards a lot of Photoshop or Light Room processing (or occasionally Pixlr Express if I just want to add some instagrammy style filters), but that’s never as much fun as moving the clouds around, getting the sky just right, or changing the look of the water. For this post, as I did with the batch from my previous post, all the pics I’m including are unprocessed, uncropped, and just standing on their windlight settings alone.

I was thrilled to see that as of Sept. 1 the Calas Galadhon Park sims are open again! Could there be a better place to take some lovely landscape pics? These are some of the most beautiful places in SL, and always a great choice for photography or sightseeing. If you drop by please consider leaving a donation towards the upkeep, and to show the sim owners that we really do appreciate their work providing such a lovely group of sims for the enjoyment of everyone.

Calas Galadhon under the Greed2 preset.

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Roche

I woke up today to the sound of a car alarm going off somewhere in the neighborhood. It was far enough away that we weren’t certain of the location, but close enough that it was extremely difficult to ignore. Eventually it stopped, I suspect either the owners finally came home or the battery gave out, but after listening to that for so long it seemed like a good idea to go somewhere quiet, peaceful, and free of car alarms.

I’ve been seeing Roche in various photo streams I follow, but I hadn’t managed to visit before. I thought I’d leave all of the shots totally unprocessed and uncropped, and just show the sim as I saw it when I was wandering around. (more…)

Exploring Second Life

I’m a little late to the party with this weeks blog meme, but even without a challenge I’ll always jump on the chance to share pretty shots.  Strawberry Singh‘s blog challenge for this week is to share some of our favorite places in SL, so I began looking through my landmarks and thinking about the places I like to visit. This quickly turned into me being nostalgic, and a little sad when I tried to look up a landmark on the map and found that it was no longer on the grid. Like many people I was in love with all of the sims that AM Radio designed, and I’m delighted to know that The Far Away is still on the grid, I will definitely be revisiting it.

Here are the instructions if you’d like to join in:

Meme Instructions: Share 1 to 5 of your favorite places on the grid. I feel like exploring and discovering new places. Share places you think everyone should visit and also tell us why they are your favorites. Don’t forget to leave a link to your post in the comments (on the original post here)!

I was tempted to dig into my old images and find some of my favorites, but instead (with one exception) I thought I’d take a fresh look at some of the places I’ve always enjoyed  I typically edit pics because I like to play with color or add filters,  but I left all of these untouched except for cropping (again, with one exception) just to see how things would turn out using only windlight settings. These are in no particular order.

 

Calas Galadhon

Of course everyone knows about these sims, but I have to mention them anyway. I love all of Calas Galadhon.  I love to wander around, and look for interesting camera angles, and just sit sometimes and imagine that I’m really in this lovely setting. This pic was in Dimril Dale, and I think (it’s a couple years old so I’m not totally sure) that I used the viewer depth of field and the only extra processing was the vignetting (and probably cropping.)  This is one of my favorite images out of the SL pics I’ve taken over the years.  I am really looking forward to seeing the sims open back up in September, this is one of the places that the hub and I have had a lot of fun exploring.

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