- Always Your Best Shot -

Buckarroo Media creator Bucky Barkley shared a pretty useful and user friendly tool to take photos anywhere you are! I have used it to make this silly photo and I found Flipper very easy to use and effective, so I'm sharing some specific of this very reasonably priced photography tool with you!   It's-a-me Maria! I have used the backdrop on that shot, with post-editing of course! I initially wanted to add fun stickers around her, but when i found the can and the flower, I decided to go a bit more funky and used a drawing to add a graffiti painting to the brick!  So it's a simple construction, only 1 prim that you can enlarge or shrink with the menu. As you see  you can also wear it! I was happy to know that the scripts still works well when wearing it because I think it's very useful, especially when you own a store and want to make similar photos of different products (ie hairdos).  Let's start with the click features, in the four corners!  You can see ...

Maybe you noticed that tiny setting and wondered what it was, what you could do with that? Maybe you just thought it was useless when you tried... Maybe you never even noticed it! In the cam settings, just above the filters, at least in Black Dragon, you can see the two types : Color and Depth... If you tried the Depth you probably thought you can't do nothing with this, it's not like a black and white shot or anything, it looks like this :  Now I don't pretend I understand everything about photography, Second Life or Black Dragon, but I'm thinking it's related to the depth of field, maybe just the image illustrating what is more complicated and used to intensify it or diminish it in your settings. If you take very high resolution photos, though, you will notice that the DoF is very hard to control as you have to crank it up higher than you can see on the screen to have an effect on your actual shot... It can seem nice and then your body has this weird halo or some ...

  Soooo... I have heard about it, even opened it... But for the first time last night, I have tried the Flicker Photo Editor that's built in the page for the first time with impressive results...  It was a late night and I really wanted to submit my shot right then, but I knew it didn't feel complete... I planned on editing it with Photoshop and/or Gimp, maybe crop it, didn't really know where this was going... I loved this shot, but didn't quite like it, if that makes sense! It's a gorgeous outfit, nice background, lighting wasn't too bad, but I found it cold and it had more empty space than it needed...  I figured I could already play with the cropping straight on the page, that would be a starting point... Then I thought why not try and play with those editing features a little, see what it's like in there... So the first step to checking it out is finding it! You can find the editor with a few more options that you may or may not already know...  Delete ...

  You know they're there, but don't really feel like you're in control, or that it matters at all....? You need to read this!  Ratings are a very useful tool to avoid triggers or to be able to scroll through photos while in the company of fragile eyes or to avoid making it awkward around work ;)  But what are some side consequences of a Moderate or Restricted rating on Flickr?  Other than not being seen when a search is set to "Safe", it has the unfortunate side effect of not allowing the photo as a cover on a group, or in galleries. In other words, it really reduces your chances to have your image shared and viewed, which is without any doubt the goal to showcasing your heart, reaching other souls... Another problem with ratings is that Flickr Bot!!! It's pretty sensitive and will rate up anything that looks like skin for a machine, beige clothing, close up, even same color backdrop sometimes... So your innocent picture in a skin colored dress with a similar ...

  It happened to all of us... The perfect expression, perfect angle, the light hits beautifully on your avatar.... And the gorgeous bangs hide your lashes!!!! Not cause they're behind it, but because of the alpha surrounding the hair, glitching on cam like only SL can do!!!  Now I don't claim to own the best tip or even a tip that might work every single time... But I did use this technique to fix hair glitches fairly easily and even switch only one foot's position out of two (before they could be positioned separately) (...or before I knew they could??) and it does the trick pretty well so I want to share it with you!!!  This will seem too easy, but you need to plan ahead a little... So when you go to take your wonderful shot and notice this nasty alpha glitch, still take it! And then Re-Take, without hair! How can this help, you say? Well you can use the bald version as a corrective layer to your photo! put one above the other and erase slightly until you get the desire...

This is a tiny secret that seems so very simple, but if you don't know about it, it can be very annoying!  And it's also a good piece of info to avoid posting related anxiety... So next time you notice a little mistake in your shot, don't Delete and then ReUpload... Replace!    ;)