Hello and welcome once again to my blog, my name is Katrinova and I'd like to share with you some very unique and very smart ways to improve your SL photography, learned to me from our great Classic with Style University Professor Laylah Lecter. Now, I have practiced these techniques before but had not fully understood why they worked so well until now. They are very simple but effective ways to truly make you look like a professional.
First there is a technique called the "Rule of Thirds". Don't worry, it's simpler than it sounds, like have you ever noticed really great photos where some of their subjects is off center, to the left or right? Many music groups do this on their album covers, standing at a railway station or on a road somewhere, it adds more depth and your eyes tend to focus on the main subject better. A very simple trick to do this right is to just imagine tic-tac-toe lines across your desktop screen, you'll notice your screen is now divided into three sections, top to bottom and left to right. Just put your subject on the left or right lines of the tic-tac-toe lines, and maybe something in the background to offset the open space, ie... graffiti, car, lamppost, etc. and you'll see how much more dramatic the photo will be instantly, just like that, simple huh?
Next is using a special tool called windlight that is built into all SL viewers. It can be found in you lower buttons, mine is the Phoenix wings button on the Firestorm, I think it can also be found in the World tab or Advanced tab at the top of most viewers. This windlight tool is HUGELY important to lighting your subject just right if you don't like the generic environment sunlight. In most instances, I'll just change the normal setting to sunset or sunrise to add a more dramatic effect to my photos, but sometimes you can really get the absolute perfect photo getting the perfect windlight effect, I think there are about 100 different windlight effects you can use, from icy light blue, to dark apocalypse red, extra bright spotlights and even night city street lights. It really is amazing and fun to create something so easy and see instantly.
As an example, I have included two of my photos at the top, both are of normal environment windlight, the top from a studio which has its own windlight and under that, me in front of my house, 100% natural windlight. Both look good on their own but I think could have been improved (also notice the main subject is centered, so not so dramatic).
The following four photos I took at my natural surroundings at my Demon lair in front of one of my favorite paintings as a backdrop. I am naked to show lights and shadows as well as it is my natural state here. If nudity offends you, please close this blog now.
The first photo is taken in the natural environment windlight setting, also notice that the main subject, me, is set off center to create a more dramatic effect...
In this next photo, I added alot of light with a different windlight setting...
Noticing there's too much light, i found another windlight that brings the light close to the normal light but just a bit brighter to bring out just the right shadows and definition on the subject...
But still looks a bit dull huh? So I looked some more thru the windlights to find this brightness but a more dramatic tone and color... and wha-lah!
And there it is, the perfect shot, perfect lighting and tone, and more dramatic using the Rule of Thirds setting the main subject on the right side line of the imaginary tic-tac-toe screen. Simple right? Now you too can look like a pro, try it, have fun with it, your photos will never look the boring same old way again :)
Hope you had that "ah ha!" moment and continue to enlighten your dreams here, the sky's the limit. Thank you so much for stopping by and as always, ENJOY! -Kat
Credits for the clothing and accessories for the Demon Kat shoot:
SKIN: SKING
TATTOO: WILD STYLE
HAIR: AGM
GLOVES AND STOCKINGS: DEMON MALL
HORNS, FANGS, TONGUE & TAIL: VIOLET STUDIOS
WINGS: SINFUL CREATIONS
NAILS & RINGS: FORMANAILS
PAINTING: QXI
