Contact Sheet is an irregular column of selected photographs and portraits from Residents of Second Life and other virtual worlds. Images used in this article are used under permission of the owners via their participation in the Creative Commons license; otherwise, all rights are reserved. Click on the links as necessary to go to the required blog, Flickr, Koinup or Snapzilla page. Please go to these artists’ pages in any case to leave comments, (as well as comments here), if you have an account on the appropriate service.
Suggestions are appreciated; please send descriptions and links to me by in-world IM, notecard, E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com, or leave a comment below. I can also be reached on Twitter (Harper_G) or Plurk (Harper G. — include the period!), but the message may get lost in the luminiferous æther.
NOTICE: Some of the photos/links may contain nudity. Viewer discretion advised.
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I was planning on putting an article or two on something other than art/photography between columns of “Contact Sheet,” but the in-world news isn’t cooperating with me (grin). So here we go again.
Incidentally, I’ve set up groups on both Flickr and Koinup for collecting all those artists whom I feature in these columns. If you’d like to see the entire “gallery” at one stroke (or as much of it as the owners are willing to add), click on the links.
Another thing: in going back through the old columns to invite artists from Flickr, I discovered that I used to link to their profile, either on Flickr or Second Life. It seems like a good custom to revive, and so I’ll try to do that where possible. In Koinup, that means basically the person’s home page, since they don’t seem to have another place to say anything about themselves in detail.
In order to get the Koinup group rolling, this column will be purely from that service. Most, if not all, of the artists whose work you’ll be seeing today will be new to “Contact Sheet.” Welcome to them, and I hope to see more good work in future!
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Costumes —
phaylen works in Second Life, and appears to do both commercial photography as well as artistic and personal shots. In the first shot, a trio of ladies are channeling the days of Marie Antoinette and her court, possibly in the replica of the chateau at Versailles, and they do an excellent job of it. The second is titled Witches of Avalon — possibly Avilion, in this case — but the first thing that came to mind for me was The Witches of Eastwick. It’s not an inappropriate comparison, actually, although the book and film were set in modern times. Here, the costumes are definitely mediaval in character, and the ladies look ready to weave a spell or two in this woodland setting.
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Next, Eves Rodenberger gives us Hunting Chicks. This does not look to be part of a series (yet), though the title is surely referring to the model, not the quarry. The fantasial heroic female is becoming more popular, especially since Mercedes Lackey’s Velgarth novels. I’m most familiar with those, and so the character that comes to mind is Tarma shena Tale’sedrin, though the resemblance doesn’t truly occur here.
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Mermaids are popular avatars in Second Life. bark Aabye combines this with smashing costume pieces by Tekeli-li, and gives us this view, one of a series. The model is Kyota Spitteler. You’ll be seeing much more from bark in future, as she’s done a batch of monochrome images I intend to offer samples of.
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World of Warcraft makes its debut in “Contact Sheet” and Around the Grid, with this image from Maiyya called vrykul Ice Maiden. I have no idea of the ways WoW works, so I don’t know what powers this warrior has. Some sort of cold effect is implied here, however. The aurora in the background only emphasizes the concept.
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This WoW avatar is called Azzurra, and the appelation is appropriate. Arowhena shows her in a throne room or place of ritual; judging by the glow in the subject’s eyes, this must be a place of Meaning to her.
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Closing out the collection for this column, Magggg gives us our first image from The Sims, entitled Ruled by Darkness. This subject shows that, no matter how beautiful the package, imbalance in the soul has its consequences.
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That’s all for tonight. Please remember to leave comments on the artists’ works if you have an account on Koinup — and comments are welcome here, too! Also, if you know of anyone whose work I should take a look at, Plurk me at “Harper G.”, send me a tweet on Twitter at “Harper_G”, or send E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com.
Around the Grid 