Certainly once, you have felt surrounded with reality in SL… a true moment of emotion, a real expression on a friendly face…. is the tagline for Koinup’s ‘One Second of Reality’ photography. The aim? Right, you can guess it already: To capture an instant of reality, and have viewers believe the photo was taken in RL. The challenge here is to share with the community what for a second seemed real to you. We hope you will go beyond still-life shots and try to show us emotions that are real, no matter where - Second Life - or what is happening. ‘One second of reality’ aims to find out where reality begins for you. Try to mesmerize the jury and make us believe the photo was taken in RL.

The prizes

The winner of the “Jury Prize” will receive his/her work printed and framed in high quality format and the winner of the “Community Prize”, the coolest work in Koinup, will receive a complete package from Never 30 including a N30 studio, poses kit, lights… and more. Both winners will have the chance to participate to an exhibition in a RL gallery: LaCantina, located in the center of Paris. Winning photos will also be displayed on Orange Island (Orange 1, 195/134/30) for a minimum of three weeks.

The Jurors

Winners of the “Jury Prize” will be picked by a contest jury composed by Margharita Balzerani (curator at “Le Palais de Tokyo”, Paris, contemporary art museum), Marco Manray (photographer SL and author of the book “IO, REPORTER IN SECOND LIFE”) and ‘moi’.

The ruleset

1. In order to take part in this contest, you must have an account on Koinup. Registration is free.
2. The theme of the contest is “One second of reality”. The aim of the contest is to capture an instant of reality, and have viewers believe the photo was taken in RL. (As far as I care, this means you can have a Neko in there, as long as it looks real.)
3. The challenge here is to share with the community what for a second seemed real to you. We hope you will go beyond still-life shots and try to show us emotions are real, no matter where they happen.
4. Photos can be taken in-world using any available means (such as Second Life photo studios) except RL photographic backgrounds.
5. Photos can also be post-processed using programs such as Photoshop.
6. You are allowed to use tricks, and encouraged to share your technique. SLURL are welcome.
7. Photos should be submitted to the contest by posting them on Koinup. To submit a photo to the contest, please insert the tag ‘orangephotocontest’
8. Photos already posted on Koinup before June 9th cannot be submitted to the contest. Please submit new works.
9. The contest is restricted to Second Life residents and is a photography contest; artistic media other than photography are not allowed.
10. No brand logos or hidden advertisement. No sex, violence or offending contents. Black and white accepted.
11. Each participant can submit up to three photos.
12. Photos will remain on Koinup after the end of the contest.

My definition of ‘Real’

Of course, the ‘reality’ of a SL photograph lies in the eye of the beholder, and this beholder spends way to much time inworld, so I’m having problems with the real / not-real border. ;) BUT there are a few things that help me convince things are real:

1. Convincing shadows. Even when shooting with a softbox IRL, there _are_ shadows, they just are subtle. Regardless if they are subtle or over-present (film noir), make those shadows match! Second Life gives you total control about where the sun comes from (the height your avie finds itself, the time of the day, location of the sun and the height of the sun.) Use that! You even want to consider testing if the ‘Shadow’ branch client runs on your system.
2. Second Life tends to oversaturate things, giving them their comic/3D animation look. Try to start of with a hazy, foggy setting, and lessen the fog/haze until it’s just perfect. Better not enough gamma brightness than to much gamma brightness! It happens IRL photographs too, bleached out areas, but it’s not something that looks good most of the time.
3. If you are shooting indoors, you definitely want to put your ’sun’ strength to almost zero and the ‘ambient’ light up to compensate. Harsh shadows almost exist inside. Except if you have only one hard lightsource (extreme spotlight, or one sunny window.) If you have multiple light sources, you might want multiple (soft) shadows.
4. COLOUR TEMPERATURE! Back in those old real life photography days, you used to have separate sets of film & lens filters, depending on the colour temperature. This is - although or brain filters it out IRL - each type of light source emits a different coloured light. A good example is: shadow areas are blue, sunsets are yellowish. A good article about this can be found here. You can give a slight hunch of the colour temperature, but SL pushes it. Also, when doing for instance ’sunset’, it forces that colour temperature in extremis on the complete photograph although that does not necessary need to be the case, were it shot IRL. If you have two different light sources, you’ll need two different colour temperatures.
5. Reflections! Almost every object reflects in real life. Wearing a bright green sweater? Not a good idea! It will probably make your face look green. Your eyes? Right… they reflect light. If you have a metallic, shiny object, it is bound to reflect parts of the environment around it, and it’s colour on the environment.
6. Sense of depth. Depth Map + Lens Blur. Or manual blurring. Does not need to be exaggerated, though. This happens IRL when you shoot either a) Macro stuff or b) in Dark areas.
7. Motion blur. Definitely something that needs to be postprocessed. Only if you’re up to it! ;)
8. Step off the standard viewer wide-angle lens. Standard RL photography lens is 50mm. Press ctrl+0 twice. At least. (ctrl+9 to reset)

And there are more: round shapes should be round, shadow on clothing textures should match the atmosphere of your photograph, … . Guess you can’t include them all in one photograph, but I’m damn curious what people will come up with! Here are already some of the entries. Oh, and one final thing, obviously fake photoshop sun reflections in your photograph, are NOT the way to go! ;) To participate, go to the Koinup contest page.

Tags: contest, koinup, photography, photoshop
Categories: Contests, Photography, Photoshop
2 Comments »

A few weeks back the three first price winners of the Koinup WindLight Contest were announced. Today they were celebrated in world with a live performance of Jax Streeter and an exhibition of their photographs and 7 ‘honourable mentionings’ at the Rezzable ‘Cannery’.

Seeing there works on display in the virtual world was sure as hell impressive, and so was the music and the guests… Miss Ravenelle and Mister Torley ‘Linden’ Olmstead. Woot! I must admit, this was the first time for me to see Torley IRL.. euhm.. IVL and I was kinda stuttering. First thing Torley said to me? ‘Is that a watermelon drink you’re holding?’ :p

Jax Streeter gave the best of his virtual self and played one hell of a set - with ‘Avatar Superstar’ as my favourite song. As promised, I bumped the song 9 times on TheSixtyOne.com and gave Mr. Streeter my underwear layer. He has at least one new fan after this gig! /me hums: ‘No matter where you’re from. No matter who you are. In this world… you are… superstar… avatar. Play like you are. Act like you are. Rezz like a superstar, avatar!‘

More photographs of the exhibition opening in the Koinup Windlight Exhibition Opening Flickr set. For those curious: All photographs except the one of Torley Olmstead were shot with the ‘Pirate’ WindLight Preset.

The winning entries and 7 nominees for the Koinup Windlight Contest will still be on display in-world for a few week, so if you missed the opening, you can still go and see them. Correction, you should still go and see them! Directions: Open your map and search for ‘Cannery’ (or click this SLURL), upon arrival at the Cannery sim, you’ll see a big sign saying ‘Koinup & Rezzable’. Click the TP disk located under it, and we’ll get you right to where you need to be… but you won’t hear a live concert of Mr. Streeter.

PS. A certain Miss Mira owns me bandages for my poor little sour paws. Never ever give me a lighter before telling me to detach it when I plan on typing! ;)

Mr. Jax Streeter performing ‘Avatar Superstar’:

Tags: cannery, contest, jax streeter, koinup, music, rezzable, torley linden, windlight
Categories: Art, Contests, Music, Photography, Rezzable
1 Comment »

Le jeudi 24 avril soir, j’ai gag…. euhm… wait… I won! I won! I won! What did I win? Best ‘photograph’ - virtual world photograph, that is - in the Dr Muglerstein’s Machinima & Fantastic Picture Experience contest. Yeeey! Winning in the category ‘Art de la métamorphose’ with my Valentine Squid pic - I love it even more now, it also won me the Koinup contest - I’ll receive a large print of me kissing the squid. And it will get to hang in Paris somewhere. Yeeey! All hail squids! ;)

Other winners are:

1. Machinima - Marie Lauridsen
2. Instantané Paysage fantastique - Amelia Fayray
3. Instantané Portrait d’avatar mutant - Maya

I must admit I am a bit jealous of the machinima winner Miss Lauridsen. She will get a real life sculpture of her avatar, crafted by Standard Non Standard. I’m extremely curious how that one will look, and if the French company ‘Standard Non Standard’ is better at replicating avatars than the company we all now from the ‘take your avatar to work day’ ads. What they have up at their website under 3D printing (click ‘impression 3D’) seems promising.

But despite my jealousy, I’m already really happy I won in the first place. I did not expect that to happen at all. You can see the winning machinima, photographs and the other submissions at the Dr Muglerstein Island in Second Life. Oh, and don’t be surprised if they say ‘allo’ in stead of ‘hi’. ;)

Tags: contest, french, mugler, photography
Categories: Art, Contests
5 Comments »

I hate it when the internet eats my copy. Ah well. Less time waisted for you people on reading my blog! ;)

I could not choose between these two fabulous entries, so there’s a shared first place. The two winners for my ‘10 000L$ Bounty for Best Trademark Parody’ are:

Kanomi with
the Tiny Dancing® Brand Center

Niko Donburi
who added another two verses to his ‘Dear Linden’ song.

The other great submissions are listed in the comments on the original blogpost. Hooray to all, there’s some incredibly funny and marvellous stuff you guys and girls created!

Tags: inSL, linden lab, parody, second life, trademark
Categories: Contests
5 Comments »

Yeeeey! We have reached a dazzling 5000 comments - that does include track- and pingbacks, but not the 30.000 spam comments Askimet caught for me - here at vintfalken.com. Yes, I know, vintfalken.com is not a group blog, so why am I saying ‘we’? Well, none of those ‘conversations’ on my blog posts could have taken place without YOUR input, so thank you so very much! ;) Yes of course, some might say I just like to listen to myself speak, but I must point out that is not the case, and I utterly love people commenting here, sharing their thoughts and opinions, tips, solutions, complaints, dreams, hopes, good and bad jokes, … .

So as a big ‘thank you’ I’ve asked some kick ass Second Life creators, if they were willing to hand out some merchandise to the persons who made comment 5000 - 5005. As both Stephen Venkman and Kailie Quinn could not keep their mouths shut at the time I reached 5k - hey, I’m not complaining, please continue commenting here! ;) - and I got more than 5 things to give away, I’m just going to give something to everybody featured in the top 5000 to 5010, minus myself.

This means that:

Stephen Venkman - known for his Second Life photography - gets Miss Juliet Ceres’ beautifully created ‘Fitz’ avatar. Fitz was my favourite avatar to run around in during the last week. I just could not stop looking at myself walking when wearing Fitz and I would just *smile*. I’m sure Mr. Venkman will look dazzling as a mechanical steam-powered kitty! *purrrrsss* Read more on the Fitz avatar on the NPIRL blog. If you want one of your own, Miss Ceres has more of them available in-world.

Kailie Quinn - aka Katarina Malthus - gets Miss Ceres’ skilfully sculpted Wastelands Armour, an all time favourite of me. Perfect for wearing when you are in an hostile environment, or just want to look ‘though’. Maybe she can use it to collar Mister Venkman in ‘Fitz mode’ and take him for a walk? ;) As said before, Miss Juliet’s stuff can be found in-world at Virago.

Wordfromthe Wise - who participated in the ‘10000L$ bounty for best trademark parody’ contest - will receive CodeBastard Redgrave’s marvellous Machinimacam, which enables you to make better, more interesting machinima. You don’t have to limit yourself to filming your own avatar walking anymore! ;) I wonder if his - or her - next entry for a contest will be a machinima now?

Kanomi Pikajuna - ‘Kanomi is important. Kanomi is special. Kanomi matters. She is the friend to all. Everybody likes her! Everybody likes the nice girl who is the friend to all. She is nice and important and she is special and important and the nice special important friend to all! Kanomi is important! Kanomi matters!‘ - receives not one, but three different prizes, all created by virtual fashion designer Sofia London. Soon Kanomi will be the proud owner of a lurveBite after glow dress, a guy beater tank top and the black ink dress.

Notorious clothing collector Veyron Supercharge - well, as long as the clothing does not reveal to much, that is - has won famous designer Rebel Hope’s awesome Cleopatra outfit: ‘Cleopatra is a 23 piece costume including bodice, pants, skirt wrap, two options of snake arm bands, prim shoes with jewels w/base, jeweled ankle bands, scarab jeweled bracelets, ankh and jeweled staffs (one with a crossed arm pose), lighting system to cast a beautiful light on her upper body, crown of jewels with sculpted prims, sculpted jewelled necklace, Cleopatra cross arm pose separately also, and the box is Cleopatra’s Needle and is included in the package.‘ The throne she will have to buy herself, though. Or… does anybody feel like being her Marcus Antonius? ;)

Last but not least, Mister Tao Takashi will receive a an exclusive beta version of ‘The Ordinal Wilks&Co Vertical Clock-Loading Pistol’, created and donated by steampunk creator Miss Ordinal Malaprop. Rumours go that the pistol refusing services, or misbehaving occasionally is intentional. As this is an exclusive beta, I do not own one of myself, nor could I supply a photograph. So I’m very curious at seeing the ‘Ordinal Wilks&Co Vertical Clock-Loading Pistol’ depicted and tested. Mr Takashi, fire away! ;)

(As all winners were unaware they were entering a contest, they will be notified by email and asked if they want to receive the gift before they are being shipped.)

Tags: contest, vintfalken.com
Categories: Contests, Vint Falken, Vintfalken.com
8 Comments »

Yeah, I honestly promise, I won’t run off with one of the prizes in this Koinup Photography Contest, as I’m on jury duty. And I’m in one hell of a company: Pastrami Linden - one of the original WindLight developers and currently Windlight Team Manager - and Torley Linden - the WindLight uber-fan and well known guru of Second Life Arts and Aesthetics.

So show us your best WindLight settings! Did you know WindLight can not just do great scenery but also give your virtual photographs an incredible sense of depth? If you shoot at early morning, or just before sunset, the ’sun’ is low, which means you get great shadings on your avatar, what gets rid of the ‘flat’ overall lightning (diffuse) we had before WindLight. Personally, when shooting in evening light, I like to tone down the redness a bit - or boost the blue. But of course, that’s personal preference. ;)

Rules are simple:

1. In order to take part in this contest, you must have an account on Koinup. Registration is free and takes only a few seconds.
2. All the submissions in the contest must be tagged with this tag: windlightcontest (copy this tag and paste it in your entries)
3. Submissions can’t be photos already hosted on Koinup. So please, publish new works!
4. Each participant can submit only two photos. But pay attention to this: If you enter two submissions, use two different WindLight settings and shoot them in two different regions. (Note from Vint: If we need to play ’search for the two differences’ on your submissions, you did not follow this rule correctly! ;))
5. Some kind of post-processing is allowed, but remember: the contest is about WindLight. Excessive post-editing with psp (and other photo-editor) won’t be appreciated.
6. Photos have to remain on Koinup after the end of the contest. Obviously you are free to share them also on other websites!
7. Entering the contest implies the acceptance of these rules.

Here you go if you want to re-read the rules, or get a Koinup account. And take a look at your competition here.

Not a photographer, but still want to create and/or win something? I’m still offering a 10k L$ bounty for best trademark parody. You may photograph, build, sing, do acrobatics… whatever. As long as it’s original and close to hilarious! ;) Oh, and the Greenie Postcard contest deadline is postponed until the 27th of April, because the Surfline ft. SLSA Surfing event got postponed too. Happy contesting to all! :p

Tags: contest, koinup, photography, windlight
Categories: Contests, Photography
5 Comments »

I’m not on strike. Neither am I going to join in. I believe in making noise, and screaming out discontent. I believe in ignoring Linden’s trademark policy until they stop ignoring us and our petitions for more clarity on the matter. Real Life Gods gave mankind fire and let them keep it. Linden Gods gave the SL Bloggers and Content Creators restricted use of their logo and brand name - While you are in full compliance with the usage guidelines described here, you may use the “Second Life” name on your website, as well as the related logos and graphics available at Toolkit, solely in the form described there. Additionally, you may use screenshots from Second Life to the extent that Linden Lab has the right to authorize use of the content within such screenshot, including screenshots of Linden in-world objects and Linden avatars, subject to these usage guidelines. - and took it away again (while in the mean time not caring much about our IP rights). I’m tempted to change religion.

So what do we do if we do not go on strike?

Nope! my Second Motto is ‘always look on the bright side of - virtual - life’. When I combine that with ‘making noise’ I get… Trademark Parody Contest!

LL Trademark Parody Contest?

A LL Trademark Parody Contest isn’t that complicated. It simply means that:

1. You take any of the following Linden Trademarks: Eye-in-Hand logo®, Hexagon logo™, inSL Cube logo™, Linden™, Linden Lab®, Linden Lab Hexagon logo™, LindeX™, Second Life®, Second Life Eye-in-Hand logo®, Second Life Grid™, Second Life Grid logo™, SL™, SL Grid™, SLurl™, Teen Second Life™, Teen Second Life Eye-in-Hand logo™, TSL™, WindLight®, Your World. Your Imagination.™ (Full list and explanation of the terminology here.) and…
2. using photoshop, in-world building, music, clothing, body language, a poem, RL photographs, your mom, World of Warcraft, machinima, a pile of avatars, crayons, MSpaint, … you make a funny and original parody on the trademark you have chosen in step 1. Mind you, I said humorous and original parody! That does not mean glueing the trademark in question on a goatse photograph!
3. Then you submit a link to, a photograph of, a sound file, a video, a description of, … your parody here in the comments before Wednesday the 23th of April midnight SLT.
4. The one I like best will receive 10 000 L$ cash. (It’s my money, so I get to pick. ;)) (Clarification: Of course the parody does not get the money, but the person or team that created it. Duh!)
5. The sole restriction is that all entries - regardless if you win or not - should be released under a CC attribution non-commercial license, on the web or in-world. Of course, anything ‘more open’ (CC attribution, released into public domain, …) goes too.

Let’s get those creative minds to work, and show Linden exactly why they don’t want to chase us away. We’re amazingly good at creating content for their Second Life®. ;)

(On a side note: 27left to go)

Tags: inSL, linden lab, parody, second life, trademark
Categories: Contests
16 Comments »

Always wanted your photograph on display on the Greenies fridge?

The Flickr group Greenies Holiday Photographs is created especially for the gathering of entries for the Greenies Postcard Contest.

There are 3 themes, and you can submit a max of 3 photographs/theme:

1. Best Postcard (tag: “surfline_postcard”)
2. Best Holiday Photo (tag: “surfline_holiday”)
3. Best Action/Sports photo (tag: “surfline_sports”)

For an entry to be valid, the photograph must be taken at one of the Rezzable Surfline sims and must contain at least one Greenie.

The best entry in each category (as decided upon by Nock Forager, Nobody Fugazi and Vint Falken) shall receive 5000L$. The winning photographs will be put up on the Greenie fridge for a month with a note saying who created them. Rezzable is allowed to use the three winners for promotional purposes when attribution is given.

The contest starts *now* and ends on the 15th of April. The winners will be notified before the 22th using Flickr mail and in-world IM.

What hangs on the fridge now? Of course, these do not enter the contest. I’m sure you can do better anyway!

Tags: contest, greenies, photography, rezzable, surfline
Categories: Contests, Photography, Rezzable
2 Comments »

Imagine the sound that 20k L$ added to your in-world balance make… no sound? Uh? Ah well, there is one in my head. It’s a nice one, a tinkling, lovely sound, that whispers ‘clothes, guns, maybe some shoes, …’. Sadly enough I had to tell it to shut up by firmly saying ‘rent, tipping dj’s, even more rent’. But I quickly felt guilty, adding to that ‘ … and maybe some glowing pink neko ears and tail’. ;)

Assuming you all want to know where I got that 20000 L$: I was one of the two jury-picked winners for Koinup’s exotic contest. I own owe Shockwave some great thanks for giving me the Squid-o-gram as a Valentine’s gift, else I would have never made the winning photograph. And Sofia London for the dress!

Some great eye candy amongst the honourable mentions too, as there are Darkness by Annisha and Collin Savon’s Restroom Redemption (which you will need to look at over on Flickr).

Overly excited, I decided to throw a ‘Vint in Pink week’ fashion event, to celebrate both my winning and the acquisition of new ears and tails. I took over the runway at Rezzable’s Carnival of Doom and gave the best of my - pinkish - self in an outstanding modelling performance.

Sadly enough, I forgot about promo, so the amount of avatars that showed up to watch me model my highly fashionable outfit was … euhm… rather low and disappointing. Pffff… ;)
But I did find out the easy cheating trick to prevent models from falling off stage. *grins*

Tags: contest, koinup, vint falken
Categories: Contests, Vint Falken
8 Comments »

From 07 February to 30 March at midnight, the residents of Second life can participate in an appeal for creative work by filling in the participation form and entering their creations on the site www.dr-muglerstein.com/exposition with the limit of one participation per artist and per category:

1. Machinima (Video)
2. Photos :
   1. Photo of a fantastic landscape
   2. Photo: portrait of a mutant avatar
   3. Photomontage ”art of metamorphosis”

The artists can send their photos as “post cards” directly from Second life but digital retouching and photomontage are also permitted …be daring and extravagant!

No submissions of photos and/or videos will be accepted after 30 March 2008 at midnight C.E.T. To be valid, the photos and/or videos must imperatively depict the Dr Muglerstein’s Island, or part of the island.

A jury made up of image and Second life professionals, presided by the creator Thierry Mugler, will select the best works submitted for the purposes of an exhibition.

The winner of the MACHINIMA (Video) category will received a modelled 3D reproduction of their Second life avatar, made by the company ART TOY (measuring about 20 cm tall), of an approximate value of 1,000 euros.

The 3 winners of the PHOTO category will receive a “large format” reproduction of their photo of an approximate value of 150 euros.

Ow, and your work will be showed at a gallery in Paris.

Do read the contest rules though, if you participate you allow them to use your photograph for promotional and other purposes relating Dr. Muglersteins’s island, even if you do not win anything. Attribution not even obliged.

PS. Press ‘English’ version on the website, if you do not speak French. ;)

Tags: contest, machinima, photography, SLart
Categories: Contests
3 Comments »