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After doing the photo set for the Black Ice pictures, I needed to go back in and check on the WindLight setting I’d used, so I could credit it properly. Fortunately, since I have some hundred or more WindLight settings, I found the right one quickly (Torley Linden’s “BIGSUN: Awwyeah” [grin]). But in the process, I had to do some hopping around to compare lighting and sun size, so as to make sure I did have the right thing. I ended up on the roof of my house, which has several trees around it, especially now with the winter decorations.  I happened to position myself in an excellent spot to experiment with poses and expressions, and with shadows turned on (as in the original photos). The feathery cape from the RFyre outfit I was wearing added another layer of light interaction, and I reeled off several photos.

I would have been willing to do many more; but turning on shadows makes my computer run like a stoned sloth — it creeps. Some good shots were lost because I’d click the shutter button, but it would take several frames of refresh before the screen was copied. Other problems were less mechanical in nature and more a function of what I had available to work with in expressions and software to model myself. Still, I picked up some interesting bits here, and may have learned a little as a result.

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(If you wish to see larger versions, you can go to my photo stream at Flickr, or you can right-click and select “View image” [or equivalent].)

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Say it ain’t true
The things that they’ve been saying
They say that you’ve found
Someone new
But don’t break my heart
‘Cos your baby never looked good in blue
Your baby never looked good in blue

     — Exposé, “Your Baby Never Looked Good in Blue”

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Contact Sheet is an irregular column of selected photographs and portraits from Residents of Second Life and other virtual worlds. All rights to featured images are reserved to the artists under appropriate copyright laws. Click on the links as necessary to go to the required blog, Flickr or Koinup 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.

NOTICE: Some of the photos/links may contain nudity. Viewer discretion advised.

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Lost Worlds are sims or builds that have disappeared from Second Life for one reason or another — often because the owner/builder can’t afford tier.  Sometimes the owner just loses interest and tears the build down.  Other times it’s only a temporary site or exhibit, as in artworks or the temporary sims done for various fairs.  But for whatever reason, they are gone, with nothing left for us but the photos taken of them.

Let’s take a retrospective of some places that are now gone….  If you know who built some of these places, because it isn’t always clear to me who did them, please leave a comment below for all of us.

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Hitomi Mokusei has documented many lost places, especially the builds of AM Radio, in a Flickr group I’m a member of.  She took this shot of gargoyle fountains near a bridge at night in Sanctum Sanctorum back in 2007.  The builder appears to be Baron Grayson.

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Raul Crimson showed us the Unicorn Gardens in Deizha.  You almost expect to see a maiden here feeding them.

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emvee cuba was a very popular location, made to resemble some streets in old Havana.  Petr Vanbeeck gave us this shot of a fruit stand near the waterfront.

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Stephen Venkman worked this shot up as an experiment, if I follow him correctly.  The original was taken in La Reve.

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Getting back to AM Radio, Brie Pinazzo gave us this shot of the train in The Far Away, perhaps AM’s most remembered build.  This engine mired in a wheatfield was always interesting, and the secret it held never failed to amuse.

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Torley Linden stepped aside from his eternal fascination with watermelon-colored things (Sorry, Torley; had to get that in [grin]) to take this picture of the Grand Staircase in the Opéra Populaire in Intemptesta Nox.  The builders chose to “burn it down” not long after I became a Resident, and so I never got to see this lovely place.

Copyright (C) 2007 by Torley Linden

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And, finally, “ZERO-to-ZERO” gives us a pair of contrasts from the great corridors of White Taj and Black Taj:

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Until next time and next theme, I am y’r ob’d’nt servant….

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It isn’t often I write about something that’s just been released.  But, after getting the notice from Sascha’s Designs and stopping in to look at it — and also spending some very nice time chatting with Sascha Frangilli and a pair of Dutch visitors — I decided that this was so good that it was definitely worth talking about.  The only trick was what hair to wear with the magnificent jacket.

Doesn’t look like much here, does it, if you focus on just the blue undershirt and the white pants?  (In this color choice, there’s also a pink top; but I favor red hair, as you know.)  It’s the dressy jacket that makes this iteration of the outfit so nice — one of the nicest dress jackets I’ve seen yet in my fashion history in world.

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The weather's getting colder all the time now, and we start breaking out our woolens even in the virtual world of Second Life. This black cardigan with white linen blouse, from INDI, is particularly nice for the late fall and maybe even early winter.

I was chilly with the November breeze,
and it was a courtly thing you did
draping the sweater over my shoulders,
taking care to smooth the wool
with a touch that whispered
that later you would claim the garment,
and the shiver taking it would bring
was something you coveted
with breathless avarice.

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How many remember the Master of Watermelons — or at least of the colors of watermelons in Second Life — Torley Linden?  Since I don’t read the Big Blog — also known as the Official Blogs — as often as I should these days, I’ve probably missed out on some of his excellent tutorials, both text and video.

Well, Torley Lives!  And he just wrote a doozy this weekend.  If you haven’t opened your copy of The Sandbox, the official Second Life newsletter, follow this link to his article.  He gives us the settings he always alters to his preferences when he tries out a new viewer, official or TPV.  He’s also asking what you would do, and he has a whole bunch of replies already.  (Hopefully it won’t top out!)

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O brothers mine, take care! Take care!
The great white witch rides out to-night.
Trust not your prowess nor your strength,
Your only safety lies in flight;
For in her glance there is a snare,
And in her smile there is a blight.

After seeing the original at Harper Beresford's blog (A Passion for Virtual Fashion), I had to give Eshi Otawara's "Black Gems are Forever" a shot of my own. However, I decided I'd discard the pants she had in the confection, and used an old skirt from Anubis Style instead (which I think was created for the old Rezzable "Black Swan" show, as that was the name on the gown).

The great white witch you have not seen?
Then, younger brothers mine, forsooth,
Like nursery children you have looked
For ancient hag and snaggle-tooth;
But no, not so; the witch appears
In all the glowing charms of youth….

I especially love Eshi's headdress of jet-topped pins and a "veil" of thin, flexible "wires." I've pinned it into a fri.day coiffure -- normally the SL epitome of casual style; but with this headdress added to it....

But though she always thus appears
In form of youth and mood of mirth,
Unnumbered centuries are hers,
The infant planets saw her birth;
The child of throbbing Life is she,
Twin sister to the greedy earth.

Candy Nail has an amazing variety of prim nails, including these black talons with jewels stuck all over them.

And back behind those smiling lips,
And down within those laughing eyes,
And underneath the soft caress
Of hand and voice and purring sighs,
The shadow of the panther lurks,
The spirit of the vampire lies….

Note the black jet choker and the earrings, which mirror the headdress. There's also a ring, but the nails knocked it off, of course; one of the two things I don't appreciate about prim nails, no matter how good they make you look.

Oh! she has seen your strong young limbs,
And heard your laughter loud and gay,
And in your voices she has caught
The echo of a far-off day,
When man was closer to the earth;
And she has marked you for her prey.

She feels the old Antaean strength
In you, the great dynamic beat
Of primal passions, and she sees
In you the last besieged retreat
Of love relentless, lusty, fierce,
Love pain-ecstatic, cruel-sweet.

O, brothers mine, take care! Take care!
The great white witch rides out to-night.
O, younger brothers mine, beware!
Look not upon her beauty bright;
For in her glance there is a snare,
And in her smile there is a blight.

Excerpts from “The White Witch”
by James Weldon Johnson (1922)

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The details:

• Shape: L. Fauna Lapine
• Skin: L. Fauna Lapine.Snow-Fae Frigid
• Hair: fri.day Jules (startled white) (Parvarti Monday)
• Eyes: Poetic Color Gold Flakes (amethyst) (Lano Ling)
• Dress: Eshi Otawara Black Gems are Forever (top, gloves, earrings, choker, headdress); Anubis Style Black Swan system and prim skirts (Anubis Hartunian)
• Shoes: Detour Glamour Metallic pumps (Detour Sideways)
• Nails: Candy Nail P045 Swallowtail Black prim nails (peche Bury)

WindLight setting: Torley Linden’s DUSK – Briony

Teleport to Utopia01

Read Harper Beresford’s original article

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La Belle Dame sans Merci

(The Visitor speaks:)

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

(The Knight answers:)

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

“La Belle Dame sans Merci”
John Keats

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The details:

• Skin: Chai Diabla 05 (no longer available)
• Lashes: the oBscene Artemis
• Hair: Tukinowaguma Storm (ebony)
• Gown: Innovations Gothika (Amber Glow), with cape
• Jewelry: EarthStones Karuka series (purchased a la carte)

Wizard’s staff by Damanios Thetan (may be available as a freebie)

WindLight settings by Torley Linden — Dark Came Over

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The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,
and on its outer point, some miles away,
the lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.
…
And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,
through the deep purple of the twilight air,
Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light,
with strange, unearthly splendor in the glare!

The Lighthouse, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The lighthouse here is in Isla Menorca, and I discovered it from the opening wallpaper on Emerald Viewer.  Emerald has this nifty ability to visit the place that the wallpaper picture was taken at.  And Isla is an excellent place:  a series of islands — not the ones set up as house lots, but far more like something on the New England or Canadian east coast of North America.  A lighthouse on one of the outcroppings here would be appropriate indeed….

Fashion details:

Standard shape/skin type 1, except:  Redgrave Moon Pale 07 skin

• Hair: Goldie Locks Regina (white/blue tips)
• Lashes: Detour Edge
• Shirt: SAS Bibi top (the bodice from an evening gown; not available separately)
• Pants: SLink Skinny Leather Pants (silver)
• Shoes: Style metallic snakeskin boots
• Jewelry: Imagen Triangulos suite

Photographed with WindLight settings by Torley Linden, Chinese Legacy

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I’m not that much of a clubhopper in world (or out of world), but this one looks interesting, and I liked the music that was playing when I stopped in.  Flickr and Plurk friend Rylan Carling put up four photos of a new club called Waterside on her Flickr stream, and it looked interesting enough that I decided I’d stop in and take a look.  Nothing was going on at the time — it was early afternoon — but the layout of the place, taking a chunk of the Morabeza sim, is intersting.

Water is, of course, a theme here, with the club placed on a set of docks and ramps around a pool with shooting fountains.  Seating appears to be not as heavy as at some clubs; of course, dance is the big thing at clubs anyway (it being hard to have a beer or martini at a Second Life club), so seating is not quite that needed.  The music on at the time was slow pop/rock, and quite listenable.

This might be a place to have a stop in for conversation, but more so for dancing with your partner/lover.  Check it out sometime, and see what you think!

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Fashion details:

• Standard shape/skin 1
• Hair:  W & Y style 90, script type C, dyed red
• Gown:  Prelude Ambrosia
• Shoes:  Adam n Eve Volar pumps (silver)
• Jewelry:  Eclectica Chevron suite (silver and pearl)

WindLight setting:  TOR Canyon Dreams (Torley Linden)