Photography in Second Life

This week, for the first time, I decided to try doing some photography tricks in Second Life.  I’ve done SOME photography before, of course, but it’s mostly been with default lightning and maybe a few local lights.  However, I found a few photos on Flickr featuring one of my outfits that got me thinking. (Here’s a link.)

I think I’ll still use default settings for my vendor images, so people see exactly what they’re getting, but being able to show off my work in a more romantic atmosphere intrigued me, so I tried to do some of my own:

This was the first photo I did, of the same character as the photos on Flikr.  I was using the Emerald Viewer since it has more windlight settings.  I took a few photos with some of those settings, but to get this photo, I actually created my own windlight settings to wash out the background and lose some of the edges on her arm (which is fun).

I showed it to a few people, and a good number of them had to look at it twice to realize that it was my avatar and not the official game model.  I thought that was a pretty good compliment.

So anyway, I decided to try it out with a few of my other avatars and make some promo posters to set up in my store.

The only thing I did in Photoshop to any of these was add the logo.  Everthing else was done entirely with Second Life’s windlight and anti-aliasing.

Of course, that means the image with the three Cloud Strifes was done with the help of a couple friends in someone else’s back yard.  <_< But after I finished and uploaded all of the promos to show them off, one of those friends was so impressed by the photography that he decided to buy two of the avatars.

I’ve also set the images up in my store along with a cleaner vendor layout, and my sales SEEM to have increased, but it’s hard to tell since it’s only been a few days, and you might attribute the increased sales as a result of the store redesign and not solely the photos.

But don’t underestimate the power of good photography!  There’s no better way to market your products than by having nice, clear images of your work.