Second LIfe Destination Guide

There’s No Place Like Ctrl+Shift+H

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If you aren’t a resident of Second Life, you’re probably scratching your head thinking, “Huh?” For those who do inhabit SL, you know it’s a reference to the keyboard shortcut for “Home”. It’s also the name of the sim I visited yesterday, and it is truly lovely.

Originally, I went to Empyreal Dreams with the intent to photograph some of the artwork there. It is an interesting concept, as described on the Destination Guide:

Empyreal Dreams is a collaborative project between two creators based in England and The United States. It aims to visualize famous poems and literature using Second Life as a canvas. A teleportation machine greets the visitor with destinations available to: The Raven, Emily Brontë’s The Bluebell, The Ancient Mariner and Les Misérables.

However, once I arrived, I could only find the teleporter to “Les Misérables”, and while it was an amazing display, I wasn’t the only one who thought so. It was rather crowded, and while I don’t mind sharing my space with others, I didn’t want to have to derender their avatars to keep them from appearing in my photos 😉 Instead, I simply wandered outside…

Empyreal Dreams is housed on the Ctrl+Shift+H sim. The main theme of the sim has an old-world feel, and I was captivated by the gentle music and the lovely build. You can rent space in some of the cottages, if you would like to set up shop there. There was quite a bit of activity on the sim with the explorers of Empyreal Dreams spilling out to ramble about, as I did. I found a spot rather removed from the main area, though, and while I had the occasional friendly passerby speak to me, I was able to grab a few shots. I have to wonder what they thought of this woman flipping through pose after pose, imagining her to be some sort of puppet on a string. Ah, the joys of location photography! Perhaps that’s why they steered clear of the area where I was shooting 😉

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I wandered off after a while and found another beautiful, but different, place on this sim and happily snapped away. But I’ll leave that until another post. For now, just enjoy the beauty of Ctrl+Shift+H.

Single Frame Stories: Creativity – Lessons From A Dead Poet

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Surprisingly, this week’s Single Frame Stories prompt, “Creativity”, pretty much stumped me. I’m not an artist. I take photographs and play around with processing them, but I am hopeless at creating anything from scratch. I have my own style, but it’s nothing ground-breaking or heart-stopping. It’s just what I do. It fills my time and it helps me relax. I just get in a zone and don’t see anything else. My senses are heightened, and they are fixed on what I am doing – trying to create my interpretation of the scene I have captured. Results may vary.

I was going to wimp out and skip this prompt. But then, ironically, I stumbled across this quote:

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
~ Sylvia Plath

So…feeling chastised by a dead poet, I intended to go into Second Life today and travel the grid, trying to find something that could tell the story of Creativity in a single shot. I was actually anxious about it, wondering what I could possibly come up with.

And then, I remembered a photo I had taken at Runestone, but hadn’t used in my original post. This painter’s easel has been at Runestone for as long as I have been going there. And it’s one of my favourite spots. I can never walk past it without grabbing a palette and putting brush to canvas, pretending to recreate the scene of the house across the water, playing at being an artist. When I opened the photo, I knew I could show in one shot how I feel when I am working to finish a picture: focused on the object, with everything else around me a blur.

I hope I succeeded.

If you want to participate in Single Frame Stories, you don’t have to be a blogger. All you need to do is upload your interpretation of Creativity, in a single photo, to the Single Frame Stories Flickr group. You can open a free account there, if you don’t already have one, and participate in this remarkable project. The deadline this week is Friday, so there is time to display the work at the Single Frame Stories SL10B installation. Go ahead…give it a shot. You may find yourself in the zone, too, once you’ve overcome your hesitation to share your creativity.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting – What Others Imagine

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I always anticipate the Weekly Photo Challenge. Often with trepidation, but always with the intent to complete it. I check the other entries each week – maybe not all of them, but on my Saturday, I go through all that have been posted. This is usually between 50-100 blogs. And during the months I have been participating, I have never seen another post from Second Life. Maybe they’re out there, but I just haven’t stumbled across them. I get a lot of views from other bloggers taking part in this challenge. I wonder what they think, seeing our virtual world instead of the corporeal one. Perhaps they fleetingly wonder what the heck this is all about, or perhaps, for a moment, they are tempted to join themselves. Whatever their reaction, I hope they take a moment to read my ramblings and understand my appreciation for their work – and for stopping by to see mine 🙂

The challenge this week is “Fleeting”. The instructions are:

IN A NEW POST CREATED SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PICTURE THAT MEANS FLEETING TO YOU.
Some ideas to get you started:

– Observing nature and capturing a quiet, special moment.
– Experimenting with shots of movement.
– Taking a snapshot of someone deep in thought (or alternatively, in mid-action).
– Exploring a place that’s transient in nature (airports, stations, streets, etc.).

For my interpretation of “Fleeting”, I went back to my photos of Alirium. This sim, with its display of the seasons, exemplifies the word “fleeting” to me. As does Second Life. I’ve mentioned before the ever-changing landscape of SL that is our virtual world. Although Second Life is celebrating its 10th birthday this month, it has changed so drastically in that time that I’m sure that an early pilgrim who left after a fleeting visit in 2003 wouldn’t recognise it if they came back to see it today. I’ve been a resident for not quite five years, and I am amazed at the changes and advances I’ve seen.

So for one fleeting moment, suspend disbelief and just immerse yourself in a world where there are no limitations beyond what you can imagine. Or better still, what others can.

Please stop by The Weekly Photo Challenge post to see what other other bloggers have presented.