Here’s a quick post with an old dress taken in our newly decorated park.
February is here, which means Valentine’s Day hunts! Here’s an outfit from the 4th annual Stupid Cupid Hunt. It comes on system layers and includes appliers for Slink, Maitreya, and Omega. And the necklace and shoes are included too!
This lovely little mesh top with a four texture change top is the February group gift from FA Creations. FAC is FREE to join. Run and get yours 🙂
I just want to comment on this sim too. This is the Loch Ness Inn at the Highlands of Scotland. It’s beautiful and well worth your time for a visit, be it for photography or dancing or just exploring!
Another item from the Stupid Cupid Hunt today, a pretty B&P set from Facepalm. This only comes on a tattoo layer and appliers, which is interesting to see designers leaving out system layers. I’ve always preferred mesh clothing as I think it looks more realistic, but with the advent of mesh bodies, and the better resolution it seems to give with appliers, “system” is big again. This outfit comes with a mega-HUD with appliers for Slink, Maitreya, Belleza, Eve, and Omega.
Normally I would have included my feet in my photos but for some reason there is no applier or sock option or anything to complete the stockings included in the outfit. I could easily make something up, as I’ve shown you before, but you can just use your imagination for the time being 🙂
Another Valentine’s Day hunt item today, this time from The Loving Kind Hunt. Fitmesh for Maitreya is my absolute favourite when it comes to dresses, and this one is no exception. The dress also comes in the five standard sizes.
I thought it was about time I gave you a look at these sandals too. I’ve worn them in a few outfits since finding them. I hunted around for something like them for hours one day, and while they are still not exactly what I was after they had the benefit of having a fantastic 40 colour HUD for the straps (which even lets you individually texture all three straps), and 5 texture options for the shoes themselves! And shhh, don’t tell anyone, they were only L$125 with versions for Slink and Maitreya Mids. I think I can hear the stampede now 🙂
Here is an absolutely adorable fae outfit from Wishbox, that was on the MM board in store recently. I searched the store for a vendor with the outfit but didn’t find it, which seems a pity, but it is available on the marketplace. While there are no appliers in this kit, all the pieces of clothing and ornamentation come with resize scripts, which allowed me to easily wear this with Lara.
It’s not often we get together to do a fashion shoot, however today it just worked out. I was trying on this lovely winter gown (which I might have to keep hidden from certain people until next winter when I can wear it to Eden‘s Winter Queen Event) when Aeon turned up with this fabulous looking off-the-shoulder gown. I immediately suggested we do a picture featuring both, only to think, “Oh my, do I have a couples pose that will work?”
You may not realize it, gentle reader, but a lot of work goes into putting a fashion shoot together. First, THE LOOK. What hair style to wear? (Aeon ran out and used this shoot as an excuse to buy the style she’s wearing). What skin? Makeup? Jewelry? Shoes? Do we need hosiery? Nailpolish? Handbags? Hats? Will this outfit work on this mesh bod? Or do I have to wear system (oh dear!) Oh my the list can go on and on!
With the proliferation of mesh bodies and enhancements such as Slink, just where did I tuck that skin applier away in my 50 thousand plus inventory?
Aeon is wearing:
The next question of course is THE LOCATION. What suits the outfits? What mood are you trying to create? What atmosphere will you use (and of course in Second Life, you have the option of selecting from a myriad of WindLight settings, or even creating your own). If you have the luxury of being able to rezz objects (like in this shoot that was done in our photo studio, also known as the roof of our house) you get the option of using lighting and projectors to create shadow effects and so on. I’m not even going to go into some of the camera options you have.
Once you have your outfit set up and a location selected, what pose are you going to use? For solo posts, we mostly use a posing HUD when we can’t rezz items, but occasionally when we can rezz we will use a remote control pose stand which makes positioning and even rotation a breeze.
In this shoot, we needed a couples pose. The first one I looked at was quite nice but needed some serious positioning adjustment. So I quickly threw the poses into the carpet we are standing on and added nPose so we could get everything just right.
And after all that, you point the camera and go *click* only to realize that someone’s eyes are looking the wrong way… “Can you go into mouselook and look over my shoulder love?” *click*
And don’t forget post-processing. I tend to eschew most post-processing other than crops and some smoothing if needed, although I have been playing around with some soft focus techniques in The Gimp recently. I’ve also recently seen some lovely examples of added lens flare that have got me thinking…
Wow you finally have your pictures! Which to choose to post? How should we crop that? Does that angle work? Ahhh, are you still here love? Let me get one more pic…
And what story to tell with the pictures? You should have figured out by now that Aeon is a better story teller than I am. I’m too busy putting pictures together and thinking about the next outfit and where are we going to shoot and on and on.
From start to end, this one post probably took 3 hours (although they hopefully average much less).
So now you know 🙂
Blue is wearing:
Aeon’s body:
When I first started in SL, I used to hang out at a place called Two Moon Paradise a lot. The people there are friendly and there were some nice events on a lot of the time. The sim features a large dance club where there are often live music performances. The other main feature of the sim is the underwater section which is just beautifully decorated. There are often mer contests on this dance floor!
Here’s an outfit I came across recently in a hunt. It was very timely as we were having an underwater party at Eden the following week. Here are a quick couple of photos to give you the idea.
