Almost ready to send this one out to Sarina Dumart, Second Life Avatar. Hmm, yes, I know. It’s a bit mean. And all that. But a virtual girl needs to make herself a virtual living, right… . Digital blackmail is one of the ways to do that. We can’t all do SLescort work? What about Miss Dumart’s feelings, you say? Well…

She asked for this herself! I swear! Sarina Dumart knew exactly what was coming at her, when she submitted her photograph to the Second Life Picture Pile Up Flickr group! That’s right! ;) Picture Pile Up? Well, it’s kinda like “Photoshop Tennis” but then with Second Life avatars:

Second Life Picture Pile Up

1. After posting your unedited (or barely edited) image to flickr, create a discussion thread and post your photo for others to edit.
2. After posting an edited image to flickr, please add it to the pile-up photo pool and add it to the discussion thread for that pic.
3. It is essential that you add a comment to your photo about the group (so people don’t mistake the original work as your own, we want to give credit where credit is due). Make sure your photo description includes the following information: This photo was edited for the SL Picture•Pile•Ups group. See something you’d change? join the group, download the pic, and edit it your way. original capture by “name here”, 1st edit by “name here if relevant”, @nd edit, etc…

The Original Image by Sarina Dumart.

Picture Pile Up in short: An excellent solution if you yourself suck at Second Life snapshot post-processing, if you want to try something different for a chance, or if you’re looking for an avatar face that isn’t your own to massacre with dodge, burn and a clonestamp.

My “Second Life Picture Pile Up” version.

Why not use a Creative Commons license?

Only one thing disappoints me: despite being a Flickr based group, they don’t make use of one of Flickr’s strong points: the ability to tag your image as “creative commons”. They could drop the complete #3 of their rulebook, if they only stated “All Images submitted to this pool must be Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike”. No more fuss about “credit where credit due” as that’s included in the license and I’d feel safer editing a “creative commons” image than one that says “all rights reserved”. This way the person that uploaded the original avatar, could make use of the “derivatives” also, albeit it within the limits of the CC license (so for instance “only for non-commercial use”). Just my 0.02L$ though.

Mod-Vint

This is my submission for the Picture Pile up group, curious what y’all are going to make out of it:

Tags: creative commons, flickr, licenses, photoshop, picture pile up, post processing, second life, snapshot
Categories: Flickr, Photoshop
2 Comments »

Wondering why so many persons wanted to see my human, I stumbled over the iPhone 3G camera stats on Flickr. Both me (holding first place, yeey!) and Miss ColeMarie made it in the ‘interesting photographs with an iPhone’ top 18. Which explains heavier traffic than usual. Not so bad if it says ‘21,207 items uploaded yesterday’? Congratz to us both! ;)

In the mean while, the Spontaneously me Flickr pool could use 22 20 18 more photos of SL resident’s humans before I add another mosaic to the collage. Did you submit your human yet?

Tags: flickr, iPhone
Categories: Flickr, Vint Falken
2 Comments »

According to common beliefs, a Second Life inhabitant is at least one - but most likely all - of the following: ugly, fat, socially retarded, old and male. Even I dare to think ‘that’s probably just a frustrated old hag‘ sometimes. So… is that true? Let’s take a look, shall we?

The following ’spontaneous’ self portraits of Second Life players give a good idea of who’s part of the SL Flickr community. Collected in the Flickr Group ‘Spontaneously Me by - amongst others Rob Danton, Kean Kelly and ColeMarie and inspired by Nebulosus Severine this is a Second Life photo meme that makes a statement!

Instructions ‘Spontaneously Me’ Photo Meme

1. Take a picture of yourself (that’s your human in this case!) right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair… Just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.
5. Submit that self portrait to the ‘Spontaneously Me’ Flickr group.
6. Post a link here in the comments to your spontaneous human self. (optional)

Oh yeah, here is my human.

Tags: flickr, meme, photography, real life, second life, spontaneously me
Categories: Flickr, Photography, Second Life
12 Comments »

Who’s a Flickr Group whore escort? Now, c’mon, don’t be afraid, and raise your hands. You’re not a Flickr Group Whore you say? Right. Check your Flickr photographs. How many groups are they in? Above the 5 groups / photograph on average? Yep, no point denying, you’re cheap all right! ;) But no damage done. Really. Even, the whoring part just has become a whole lot more easy, thanks to a nice discovery made by The Boss: a neat little Greasemonkey Flickr Multi Group Sender script to add to your FireFox extensions. Yeey, it’s an incredible handy time saver!

Greasemonkey?

First you will need the Greasemonkey FireFox addon, download it here. Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to write scripts that alter the web pages you visit. After you install it, you won’t notice any change at all… until you start installing what are called “user scripts”. A user script is just a chunk of Javascript code, with some additional information that tells Greasemonkey where and when it should be run. Each user script can target a specific page, a specific site, or a group of sites. A user script can do anything you can do in Javascript. In fact, it can do even more than that, because Greasemonkey provides special functions that are only available to user scripts.

Greasemonkey Flickr Multi Group Sender

How do we use this user friendly goodness that allows us to send a photograph to multiple Flickr groups at the same time?

1. Make sure you are using FireFox. (Learn: Neat things are NEVER made for Internet Explorer! Never thought I’d refer to MS (crappy) support pages, but here you go.)
2. Download and install the Flickr Multi Group Sender script. (one click)
3. Go to one the page of the photograph - your photograph, of course - you want to submit to multiple Flickr groups at the same time.
4. Click the ’send to group’ icon above your Flickr photograph: your new and improved submission window opens. Notice it does not load group icons and all the fancy stuff, so it’s way quicker.
5. Use CTRL + left mouseclick to select all the groups you want to submit your photo to. (a few clicks, depending on how ‘whoring’ you feel like doing today)
6. Press ‘add photograph’. Your photograph is added to those Flickr Group Pools, and you even get a neat report for which groups this worked and for which this failed.

Some more ‘neatyness’ about the Flickr Multi Group Sender:

1.) If you check ‘Save this group selection’ and then press ‘add photograph’, next time you want to submit a photograph to the same pools, you just need to select the setting for the selection of groups from the drop down menu. Ideal for making ‘fashion groups’, ‘art groups’, ‘get your silly on’, … group collections presets. This is going to save you tons of precious time!

2.) To long a Flickr group list? Not sure which letter that group starts with? Not good at doing that abcdeeurr… alphabet thing? Don’t worry, group search is here! In the upper box, type a part of the group’s name you’re searching for - SL does not really help, still to much results! ;) - and press ’search’. The results - with amongst them probably the group you’re looking for - will show up. To go back to the overview, simple press ‘reset’.

I bet installing this beauty named ‘Flickr Multi Group Sender’ will save you tons of precious time, which you now can spend commenting on my Flickr Photographs. TY very mucho! ;)

Tags: flickr, greasemonkey, tools
Categories: Flickr
1 Comment »

Welcome, dear follow SL photographers. Take a seat, lean back in the desk chair, release the drawing pens and touch the scroll button for a fantastic, amazing and for some probably even shocking ride through the world of diffuse glow with me as your guide. ;)

The Diffuse Glow Story Prologue

I sometimes wonder if the photoshop filter Diffuse Glow is something like nuclear weapons: some say they should be abolished, others say they should be used. But even the latter folks do not agree on where and when to use them. And even then, what at first glance seems like reasonable use would only be abuse.

Although I would not put capital punishment on the use of the Diffuse Glow filter and I know there are genuine, good reasons to apply it, only to often I have to shake my head when seeing this powerful tool, given to us by the Adobe Gods, abused. The same goes for it derivatives as there are for instance the Beautify filter. Although Bella thinks I’m an enfant terrible, I’m not going to name the offenders here or point to their respective Flickr streams, but I think you surely know who you are!

As it draws attention to a photograph and gives it a feel of ‘liveliness’ a normal Second Life snapshot does not have, the Diffuse Glow filter is mainly used to ’save’ photographs that are else lousy or average at max. Yet, one can find some major reasons for Diffuse Glow abuse:

1. To make up for lack of composition.
2. To make up for lack of content/idea/story in the photograph.
3. To make up for lack of creativity.
4. To make up for lack of time spend on getting the lighting in Second Life correct.
5. Because one does not know better.

See where I’m going?

Yet I do not claim Diffuse Glow is evil, only that one needs to think on as to why one is using it and if it _really_ adds to the photograph, in stead of just making the snapshot look a bit more catchy.

So if I claim it can be used without ‘overdoing it’ and well thought trough, then why do I not prove it? Aha! Here it comes. Sit back, relax and feel free to mention so if you disagree. ;) When you read carefully you will find at least one alternative way to use diffuse glow.

My Story of Diffuse Glow

We all know I have a tricky skin: as it is white, major post-processing or boosting the contrast makes me loose all zits and detail. Yet this original snapshot does look like it could use some boost in ‘liveliness’.

Now, as Diffuse Glow is the answer to all boring photographs, let’s do that! At the same time this might help fix what bothers me most about this photograph, the harsh edges between my dark hair, my pale face and the red background.

Hmmm. Looks way better, but the harsh edges problem is not entirely solved yet. I think it needs some more diffuse glow and it will be _just perfect_.

Yeey! The harsh edges are gone. Does it not look awesome? And this way it takes up even less disk space! This photograph will surely catch attention now it’s glowing almost entirely. Let me quickly submit it to Flickr. A shame it does not contain any boobs. I’m sure I would get even more views with that. Ah well, the boobs - of course with diffuse glow on them - are for tomorrow.

No, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I just lost all detail in my light tones and did not make my photograph any better or interesting, but just more glowing. Let me try something else: I’ll return to my background layer and invert that. Yeah, that’s a great idea!

Now. Hmmm. What do I do next? I know! I know! Diffuse glow, the solution to all.

Strange, now all my details in the hair are gone. Let me undo this one and try again with a higher clear value and a lower diffuse glow one. Way better!

Maybe the inverted image is a bit over the top, I wonder what happens if I press ctrl+I again?

Oh my f*cking god! The harsh edges are gone. What I just did made the black hair blend in with my face texture and the background texture more. Geeh, that I did not expect. Diffuse Glow can be used for something else then just casting a white glow?! W00t!

Yet, the eyes are a bit dark. What if I return those to normal by using a mask? I must take care to leave a bit of the upper part of the eye dark, as that’s the natural shadow the eyes casts. Let me try…

Awesome! Who would have thought… . Yet, it does not catch the eye as much as a diffuse glow photograph and now I’m scared that people will not look at my photograph. Wait, I’ll just Diffuse Glow it to make it catchy again!

More catchy, indeed. Let me quickly submit this one. Or.. ow… wait… something just does not look natural. My face is way to white compared to my neck, and all my detail is gone again. Now, which retard stole my detail yet again?!!!

But yet… some glowing is natural, nah? But… yeah… got it! I am genius! What if I mask out the entire layer, and then use the white masking brush to only show highlights where they are supposed to be, as on my - cute - nose, my - sexy - lips and my - elegant - cheekbones?

Hmmm. Sweet! But some of the edges are a bit to hard, and do need some retouching. And oh, no! I know by now that Diffuse Glow does not _really_ solves that problem. My god, would I dare? Would I actually do some local spot correction which takes 5 times the time applying the Diffuse Glow filter? My Adobe Gods, I’m scared. I don’t know if I can handle this. Blur the edges manually?! Do some cloning? Manual labour?! No way! How the hell could that solve my problems and fix my self portrait?!!

Strange. Apparently manual spot correcting does solve a lot of the problems. Who on earth would have guessed that!

Moral of the Diffuse Glow Story

There’s more in life than just Diffuse Glow. There’s even more in Photoshop than this particular filter. Using Diffuse Glow once in a while is not a shame, but go easy on it, and know why you are actually using it and what you are trying to achieve - if that is not a quick and dirty cheap diffuse glow effect. Take the time to get your photograph exactly how you like it and for the love of the Adobe Gods, once in a while, dare to experiment - with something else but diffuse glow.

Diffuse Glow is like dry shampoo, it’s good once in a while if you are in a hurry, but at least a few times a week, you need a decent wash and need to lick every paw and ear that you have.

cordialement,
Vint

This ‘enfant terrible’ posting is dedicated to Bella March, who - despite what she thinks - keeps inspiring me, puts me with my two paws on solid meta-ground once in a while, is one of the best conversation and discussing partners I know off and has enough creativity in her virtual body - and thus probably also in her human - to be a great SL photographer with an eye for awesome scenes, a good scripter and an always interesting person. Even in her bad moods. With letting her go, Avatrait made probably the worst decision in their career and I’m glad I never accepted their invitation. Bella, meid, respect! ;)

Disclaimer: It could be that this Diffuse Glow Story is not totally truthful and that for some diffuse glow applications I knew from the beginning what they would result in. Surprise may be faked.

Tags: diffuse glow, photography, photoshop, photoshop filters, tips and tricks
Categories: Flickr, Photography, Photoshop, Rant
22 Comments »

Breaking your head over how to get Google Analytics to run on your Flickr account - as far as I know that was impossible - is now history: Flickr has given us stats. *click here to activate yours* I wonder what they’ll give us, as we allready know how many people see a photograph - that’s public - or how many fav’ed it. Locations? Referring domains? Search terms? I wonder what we would have got if Google and not Yahoo bought Flickr! ;)

Tell me, how many of you already pressed the button?

;

Ow, and some more about the Flickr stats:

• They are only available to pro members.
• Flickr has stats to show you on the amount of visitors since the day your Flickr account was born.
• Yes, they contain referrers. Only from a week before you active the stats, though.
• They can not track views on external sites. Well, I assume they can, they just are not doing that.
• They’ll show search engine traffic.
• Daily stats for your account as well as each seperate photograph.
• Most viewed photograph of yesterday & all time. I would like to see some more sub categories there.

An analytics addict

Tags: flickr
Categories: Flickr
4 Comments »

That’s MY butt, I say!

*insert random very much infuriated name calling here* Somebody - be it Kenzie (Kenzi?) Aenon or Lindsey Daviau - is posing off as being me. Calling the ‘butterfly’ photograph I took her own and displaying MY cute pixelated butt - not as cute as Veyron’s, but still cute - as her own.

Anybody else’s butt out there?

Kittie Lalonde pointed this ‘Girl of Many Faces’ blogpost out to me, which gives more information on Kimiko Nakamuro / Lindsey Daviau / whomever the *insert female name calling word* might be. In the comments ‘Moire G.’ points to a former Flickr stream of Lindsay Daviau / Kenzi Aenon that was revived with some Second Life photography, all probably not hers. I know about one for sure - my butterfly cute nude butt - and think to recognise the styles of ‘another weird photograph’, ‘depressing somehow’ and [Kenzie].

The ***** ‘borrowed’ at least two pictures from Torrid Midnight too.

Lindsay Daviau’s - 2nd - life story

Apparently, it isn’t the first time she pulled something like this, and she hasn’t been all that of a example Second Life Citizen either: a lof of messing up people’s second lifes on her account, it seems. Lying about RL data of other avatars and the like.

The girl has followed Aradia to places where her SL children hang out, pretending to be adoptable. She has IM’d Aradia screaming that Lucian is her real husband and that Aradia is a (insert various sexually demeaning names here). She has followed Sophia Gray and Mariya around countless times. Now she’s moved on to Violet, posing as her in SL and RL. She tries to get into various closed groups to gain access to their chat longs, uses her alts to pose as friends, even claiming that she IS an alt of the person she is stalking and attempts to get in good with the friends of the stalked.

Just read the complete ‘Girl of Many Faces’ blogpost for more behavioument gore.

How to report stolen content on Flickr?

I would the photograph on Flickr as stolen, but - just as with SL - she’ll probably get another account? :( As far as I know she hasn’t done anything wrong towards me in-world, so no abuse report. Although I was temped, I could not think of any good reason against Second Life ToS or Community Guidelines to AR her. :(

As for Yahoo’s Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy that Flickr links too, it says they need ‘an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or other intellectual property interest‘ and attachements are not allowed. So snailmail _is_ the only option here?! Or am I missing something here?

Lindsey Daviau and her alts

So, a rundown of the alts she is claimed to have and pretty please, will you throw a ‘mad emote’ her way if you would ever meet her?

Kenzie Aenon / Kimiko Nakamura
Angel Slade
Lindsay Daviau
Teagan Zabaleta
Angelaa Slade
Indigo Galthie
kendall Fullstop
Foxy Jubilee (possible)
xEri Theas
paris hickman (possible)
kendall freenote (possible)
paris toman (possible)
gisselle boucher (possible)

Tags: alts, copyright, flickr, photography
Categories: Flickr, Rant
36 Comments »

The SL Blogger’s party CodeBastard Regrave and I hosted was fun fun fun. We had a wide selection of shiny, cute, rusted, steampunk, … robots and androids. And two person in pyjama’s. Although they were very cute, I dare to ask: ‘What do pyjama’s have to do with robots?!’

As promised, Codie and I will give - in order - one year of free Flickr Pro for a Flickr account you choose, a machinimacam by CodeBastard and a lifetime supply of VintLabs outfits to the three persons that took the best SL Bloggers party photograph. So let us know* which photography - only one, please, don’t make choosing any harder than it already is - you submit before Wednesday the 31th of October and we’ll make sure you will get the price. Ow, upload it somewhere please, Flickr maybe? ;)

Ow, and yes, I needed more time than I had to finish my android skin, so I borrowed Chip Midnight’s texture mesh and changed it a bit. Still think the monitor with the ‘mean’ vs. ‘nice’ barometer was a nice touch. The huge amount of mesh on the nose did make me look like micky mouse a bit. :/ But.. ain’t I cute when staring at Dolmere like that? :D

A huge ‘thank you’ and some *purrring* for all that attented and made this Second Life Blogger’s party yet another great one! Special thanks to Codie for prepping her club and getting the stream in order, and to the DJ Balp Allen for playing great music and all of our requests for only tips. Although I think we’ve proven that the SL Bloggers are a generous people… ;)

Photographs in the running for winning a year of Flickr Pro:

1. GoSpeed Racer: High on Steam
2. Ryker Beck: Panoramic RedHawtness
3. Timothy Lilliehook: Vint in Space
4. Tary Yeats: Her Royal Redness
5. Raul Crimson: Dancing with the Sun
6. Nadine Nozaki: Vint & Nadine @ CodeRed
7. Looker Lumet: Dolmere at the piano
8. Elusyve Jewell: Into the ligth

Blogposts about the SL Blogmeet at the CodeRed Lounge:

1. Crap Mariner - Robots “Schroeder, do you ever wonder why people keep messing with classic cartoons to modernize them for modernization’s sake?”
2. Raul Crimson - SL Bloggers Party October 21th I just can’t believe there still exist Second Life Residents who do not recognize Veyron’s cute pixelated ass when they see it! Aaargh!
3. Nadine Nozaki - Blogger Party at the CodeRed I owe Nadine some thanks for correcting the SLurl and finding us a DJ timely. W00t for Nadine!
4. Alysha - Cool Moment - SL Blogger Party ‘The theme was robots, so I looked for three days for a costume I liked. Finally found it (purple of course) and joined the party. I saw some familiar names - Codie, Vint, Raul, Ryker - and some that were not familiar. But everyone was having a great time and, in turn, so did I.’
5. GoSpeed Rader - Vote For me Héhé. Sorry, no voting here. Must be an unanimous decision of the jury, which means Codie and I. That will takes some nights of discussion. ;)
6. Looker Lumet - Blogger Party October 21th Go and visit the Flickr set. =)
   

* If you post the URL in the comments here, don’t worry if it does not appear instantly, as I have comment moderation enabled for everything that contains an URL. Ow, and for people that did not comment on vintfalken.com before.

Tags: code red gallery, codebastard redgrave, contest, flickr, sl bloggers, sl blogmeet
Categories: Contests, Flickr, SL Blogs
20 Comments »

W00t, I’ve made it there too! Thank you for letting me know, Andro. But now I wonder, blog.secondlife.com still streams the latest pictures from the Second Life Flickr pool. What’s the difference?

Apparently all pictures appearing on the Second Life Showcase page belong to the ‘Second Life Birthday Event’ pool on Flickr and are tagged ’sl4b’. Yet not all recent pictures that have these two properties, are in the showcase. *scratches behind her ears*

Tags: flickr, second life, secondlife.com, sl4b
Categories: Flickr, Second Life
No Comments »

The first (and probably only) picture using the real life skin I’ve gotten from CyberExtruder. *grins* (And I’ve corrected the neck line on that one as that was way to dark to match with any skin.)

Tags: flickr, RL to SL, skin, texture, vint falken
Categories: Flickr, Portrait, Vint Falken
3 Comments »