"Anticipation"

"Red Hot"

Lynn Lionheart

Anatomy of a Shoot / $$$$

I got an interesting IM from a relatively new friend, who happens to dance, something I did a long time ago.

"XXXXXXX Resident: Hey, do you make money doing porn?"

I answered the best I could, from a photographer's perspective.

"No, you actually wind up spending quite a bit."

I thought about it for a moment, and then I went on.

"I think a lot of people have the wrong concept of it. It's a bunch of people trying to do something artistic. We spend a lot of time in Photoshop, or getting lighting correct. No money is made.

A lot is spent on props, and poses, and new outfits, and the newest photo HUD's. Sex can be a part of it, obviously, and we all have fun, but if you are thinking of getting into it to make money? Stay on the dance pole."

I am going to give you, dear reader, an honest perspective of a relatively new SL Pornographer.

I spend a lot of time researching the blogs and Flickr account of other SL Pornstars. The last thing I want to do is spend money and time into a shot or scene that has been done before, which not only could be considered a form of plagiarism, but also adds nothing new to the pool. A lot of the blogs are filled with insight, and most importantly, great shots.

I spend a **ton** of time on Marketplace, or in world, testing out props and poses. This is way more time consuming than one might actually believe. Consider the load time of a sim that has 100 animations, each with their own image placard and prim that needs to rez, along with structures, and the time spent finding the actual poses.

So now, I have my pose, I have willing models, and a shoot is scheduled.

Anatomy of a Photo Shoot:

I rezzed a skybox that has backgrounds and furniture, for realism, including adjusting textures, carpets, etc, just making things look "right."

I put out the pose I wanted my models to use, adjusting placement, etc.

I TPed my models in, gave them lights for my lighting system, and additional pieces for the scene, and had them sit down on the pose.

I adjusted lighting, and avatar positions.

I then began to shoot, a single, static pose, 16 shots in all, thanked my models for their time, and began to sift.

I went through the pics and decided on the one that I enjoyed the most.

I then spent about 90 minutes in Photoshop, completing the piece.

The result? "Obedience."

All told, roughly 3 hours in total, between pose research, set up, lighting adjustment, actual shoot, and postwork  in Photoshop.

Cost Analysis:

50L$ for the skybox (massive sale, and I got lucky. You know these can cost tons, but they really are invaluable tools for getting certain shots right.)

995L$ For my lighting system. This will pay for itself over time, but the more advanced ones can cost $6100.

299L$ for the pose itself, which, more likely than not, I will never use again, for the reasons already mentioned.

Total: $1,344L, not including tier, and truth be told, it was a relatively cheap shoot. That equates to $5.75 USD.

For a single shot.

"XXXXXXX Resident: Hey, do you make money doing porn?"

Fuck no, we don't. We aren't doing it for money. We are doing it because we want to.

"Obedience" - Pussy Galore / Carla Draesia

Working

I have a few ideas for new shoots. Need to get some props and backgrounds, but I think I should be good to go for this weekend.

I have a pending shoot tonight, so there might be a few new images up tonight or tomorrow.

I have ideas. I have a studio. I have props. I have space....what I DON'T have are models.

If you would like to be featured in one of my shoots, please, shoot me an IM or a notecard, and let's see what we can create together.

More soon...

~Damien~

Ayara Illios - Hard at Work

Gail Kohn

Pose Rant

A small rant, and I am sure anyone who takes photos in SL will appreciate this on some level.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of pose makers, in SL.

I have always been a fan (and my work reflects this) of poses that were built into prim props. Those props have a way of adding a natural look and dimension to your images. It's no longer just an avatar standing in front of a backdrop, positioned a certain way. It's something "more."

High quality prim poses are not exactly cheap, nor should they be. For the pose maker, they are spending time designing the prims, the textures, the menus, and the animations themselves. They are aware of the fact that whoever buys these is going to use them for something specific, and if they happen to be a photographer, the tool the pose maker provides is going to going to act as a source of income.

I have no issue paying for poses. I am not saying they should be cheaper. I think for what we receive, and what we can ultimately do with them makes the prices more than fair. Over time, they really do wind up paying for themselves.

My problem is this:

9 times out of 10, I am not the one sitting on it. The client who I am shooting is.

There is a specific pose maker in SL who I absolutely love. Their animations and prims are really well done, very nicely textured, and they have a massive variety of selections. This is not some small, hole in the wall place - this is one of the top pose makers in SL.

The built in menu system of their poses, however, leave something to be desired. It is only accessible to the person who is actually sitting on the prop.

That means, as the person shooting them, I cannot control their positions. I cannot easily switch back and forth between poses. Instead of being professional, and having an actual conversation with my client, every few moments, I have to ask them to "switch to the next pose please." "Please type this command into local, so you can adjust upwards."

I have a studio in SL so that I can control over as much of the image elements as possible. When some of that control is taken from me, it's frustrating at best, and unprofessional at worst. I don't want a client to be thinking "This guy doesn't even know how to adjust his own stuff!"

I know that there are other pose makers who have circumvented this problem. VP&P, specifically, comes to mind. The subject can sit, and at the click of a button, the photographer can switch them around.

There are also places like Fotoscope, who truly have some of the best designed, and easiest to use HUDs I've ever seen.

Now, you may have noticed that I did not include the name of the pose maker I am talking about, and I did that for 2 reasons:

1) I don't want to start a war with a large company, whose products I will continue to purchase and use.
2) So that any pose maker might wonder if it is them who I am discussing.

I am not a builder. I am not a scripter. I am not an animator. I don't know what it takes to design these elements into things. If I had to guess, based on my limited knowledge, it's not simple...but it cannot be super hard, either, especially for someone who makes their living doing things just like that.

My point is this: while having great animations, and well built prims is a wonderful thing that will keep people coming to your stores, having additional built in functionality for the users will turn your great product into an exceptional one...one we, as the users of these poses, would be willing to pay more for.

Just some food for thought.

"Raw Need"

I've Been Doing Everything Wrong (Part 3 - Communication)

Being able to easily keep people up to date, via a blog, twitter, Facebook or feed of some kind, nowadays, is really a no brainer. Setting up a blog takes less than 5 minutes to actually accomplish.

In the world of Second Life Porn, the people who are really into it actually follow others, read blogs and stuff daily, etc.

So, I set up a Flickr account, and a Wordpress blog.

Now, Flickr is pretty useful in and of itself, but the problem is, you can't really broadcast that you have uploaded something new. You really have to just hope the people you are in contact with happen to see that you have uploaded something recently, and pray that they click the image.

Wordpress...is not so simple. It's a solid way to blog, but its not as user intuitive, or as streamlined.

Now, I am in the minority of people who don't really care for Gmail, or the Google world, outside of using the search engine itself, and herein lies a small problem.

Flickr is owned by Yahoo, and you need a Yahoo email adress in order to access it.

Blogspot is owned by Google, and you need a Gmail adress to access it.

Instead of just biting the bullet, and taking 5 minutes out to make a Gmail adress, and be able to blog with the community on a platform that seems to be what the majority of PornStars use, I had to make things more difficult. I had to be "different."

Well, different is not always good.

You see, there is no easy way to connect comments and blogs between WordPress and Blogspot. There shouldn't be. They are competitors. If I were to post something on Wordpress, I couldn't easily share it with those on Blogspot.

Mistake #5: I effectively put myself into a postion of not having a way to communicate with the very community I was trying to become a part of.

You need to reach out to people. You need to let them know you are interested in working with them. People are busy in both SL and RL. If they have no idea you exist, or what you are up to, and you don't make it easy for them to find that information out, chances are, they never will.

In writing these blogs for the past few days, I have realized, and made changes to the mistakes I have made. I can only push forward and hope that the changes I recognized and made for myself have an impact.

If you have stuck with me this long, the most sound piece of advice I can give you is: Learn from my screwups, and don't put yourself into the position I put myself in. Re-evaluate, and find areas to improve.

With that all being said, the next few posts will be images. A Porn Star's life is definately a busy one, but ultimately, there is no porn life for you if you don't find yourself working. Well, I've been lucky, and it's time to share.

I've Been Doing Everything Wrong (Part 2 - Viewer / Photoshop)

"I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user. " - Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft

If you take a look at what we have been able to create, because of technology in general, but specifically, using a computer, it's ridiculous how far we have actually come, as a race.

Think about the evolution of Second Life, and what we, as a community, have managed to turn it into. Gone are the days of horrid textures, slow loading times, blocky looking avatars. Now, we actually look, and act, pretty damned real.

Your window to this world of SL is accessed by your viewer. In your viewer, you have tools to build, and create anything you can imagine....but the viewer itself has limitations, and you are limited by your computer hardware.

When I was taking pictures before, my computer was decent, but the viewer (Emerald, at the time) was horrid. Every time I took an image, it wound up jagged around the edges, because of pixelation.

To the best of my knowledge (and please, feel free to correct me if I am wrong on this,) but the earliest viewer that could REALLY adjust graphics settings, and give a more "real" experience, was Phoenix.

My problem, though, was Phoenix didn't run well on my system. It was slow, and clunky. If I had ever tried to enable advanced graphics, my system would, literally, shut down. I was never able to turn on the option when taking pics to anti-alias them. Things, as a whole, looked better to me using Phoenix than Emerald, but I couldn't fine tune anything.

So when I took an image in SL, it would have the jagged edges, and to help the final image quality, I had a tendency to blur them in Photoshop.

Blur is a fantastic tool, when used properly, and sparingly. However, it can also enable you to become slightly sloppy, and becomes a crutch. I hate admitting this, but I had gotten to the point where blur was used, way, way, way too much in my photographs.

Mistake #4: Becoming too reliant on what worked to accomplish something, instead of looking for ways to improve, and go beyond the norm.

If you were to ask any famous guitar player how to get the purest tone from their guitars, they would answer you, "Guitar direct into the amplifier," and they would be correct. Sure, they can add a million effects to it, but each one of those effects color and change the tone, and slowly and surely, that tone becomes "less pure."

Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Gimp, Corel, all the heavy hitters, are wonderful tools, but they suffer from the same "problem:" for each effect that you add, the less "pure" the shot becomes. A meaning or an idea that one might be trying to portray for an image might get completely lost in translation.

In short? More does not always equal "better," and "too much" usually results in crap. Garbage in, garbage out.

A standard image that I take goes through several cycles through several filters and corrections. Liquify this, clone that, select and adjust curves on this, burn this, but dodge that...etc. The more I did, the less pure my image became.

Too little and the image didn't look right, it looked like it had been simply glossed over and forgotten. Too much, and it removed all aspects and feeling of the original picture.

My style adapted, luckily, and I'm happy to say that I never once had someone pay for a picture they didn't truly enjoy. I've been told by multiple clients that my style of photos in Second Life are unlike anything they had ever seen before. For me, this is a good feeling, and I ALWAYS get a smile when someone tells me they like my shots.

I am happy to say that on Saturday, I spent quite a bit of time messing with graphics within Phoenix, again, with the help of the same woman who helped me re-do my avatar. Anti-aliasing is now turned on, max resolution, the works. Better starts, ultimately, lead to greater finishes.

Remember, the tools we have at our disposal are there to help us achieve something specific, but when we become too reliant upon them, our craft, and our desire to push the bar past our comfort zone suffers.

I've Been Doing Everthing Wrong (Part 1 - Avatar)

A long time ago, in a Second Life far, far away, I had, what I thought to be, a killer avatar, and made my living doing Photo shoots.

I actually tracked which poses got the most use from my clients. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't spending tons of Linden buying poses or props that no one was using, so they could take up another slot in my inventory.

Not surprisingly, 4 out of 5 shoots I did were erotics, or nudes.

Hence, when I found about the uprising of Second Life porn, I was immediately attracted to it, both for participation purposes, and because it allowed me to flex my image program (Photoshop) skills. I am an artistic, and sexual person by my very nature.

The problem is that 4 years later, times have changed. Skins have changed, viewers have changed. Instead of changing with the times, I was blissfully ignorant to the tech changes, and thought everything I was doing was still considered as the "Gold Standard."

Thinking I was ready to roll, because I hadn't taken the time out to see what new standards were, I requested to have an interview done with MissEmily23.

I am incredibly thankful she was kind and gracious enough to do the interview for me, but when it was posted, I realized, I had committed the 2 Cardinal Sins of SL Porn.

Mistake #1:  My cock wasn't properly tinted.
Mistake #2: I was so sure that my avatar looked amazing, I didn't bother to update it.

When the blog was posted, I was lucky enough to have a friend on my side telling me about the issues. At first, I was a little upset. Here I was, having take the time to create my own individual look, to be told that it was going to need work.

Talk about a wake up call, especially when she pointed out the mis-tinted cock.

Mistake #3: Getting upset by sound advice.

The people who are established in SL Porn are people who have gone through this already. If you happen to be friends with them, they aren't trying to hurt or upset you. They are trying to help you achieve your goals. They are supporting you in a desire you have. Listen to them.

Let's face it - you aren't going to be starring in any shoots or casting calls if no one wants to fuck you. I went from being pseudo-noobified to cutting edge with a few thousand lindens, and an hour or so of putzing around with shapes, and went from this:

to this:

I think the difference is clear.

Avatar changes, especially skin changes, are major adjustments, and big deals to anyone in Second Life, and they do take a little time to get used to.

However, if I hadn't been so stuck on an old look, and worried I wouldn't like the "new me," I wouldn't have found the "new me," who I am incredibly happy with, and now kicking myself for not converting to earlier.

After a fairly solid weekend of upgrading my skin, cock, eyes, clothing and accessories, just so I would look like I actually stepped out of this century after my eyes had been opened, I took a major look at viewer properties, and graphics properties.....but that's a story for another post....

Stay tuned, everyone. There is much, much more to cum...