Photo Salon. Event Photography. Renee Caxton

Transcription

1 Photo Salon Event Photography Renee Caxton Event Photography by Renee Caxton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit Caledon Oxbridge University June 27, 2015

2 [slide 1] Welcome to Photo Salon. I am Renee Caxton and I will be teaching tonight. Photo Salon is a workshop for people who are interested in improving their photographic skills. Anyone is welcome to attend, but to get the most out of it you should be comfortable using the camera to take photographs in Second Life. Oxbridge has an excellent beginning photography class if you need help with basic camera controls. The Oxbridge class schedule is posted on the wall here and can also be found online at Photo Salon rotates teaching duties among several members of the community. Typically, we have a lecture and practice session one week and return the next week for sharing and discussion. Feel free to contact me if you have a suggestion for a topic you would like to see covered, if you are interested in leading a session, or if you want to join our chat group. Tonight s topic is Event Photography. Summer is upon us and Second Life s twelfth birthday celebration is in full swing this weekend. Relay for Life is right around the corner. Parties, concerts and other events are yet other places where we might want to take photographs. Tonight we will discuss the unique aspects of taking photographs at Second Life events.

3 Event Photography Challenges Lag Crowds Clutter Action

4 [slide 2] Event photography in Second Life can pose special challenges. Lag is almost always an issue. Getting good photographs in the presence of crowds and event-related clutter can also be a challenge. Events may also have rapidly-changing action that makes getting that perfect shot depend on the speed of your shutter-finger. We will discuss all these challenges in turn.

5 Tips for Dealing with Lag Reduce draw distance When you are ready to snap a picture Stand still Look in one direction Raise draw distance Wait for everything to Rez Snap picture Reduce draw distance

6 [slide 3] Lag is a big problem at events. Lots of objects, lots of textures to load, and lots of avatars to render. Everything slows down both the Linden servers and your viewer. One of the bit things you can do to reduce lag while walking around is to reduce your draw distance. With a reduced draw distance there are fewer objects and avatars to render. However, you may want to increase the draw distance when taking a picture: stand still and try to look in just one direction, increase the draw distance, wait for everything to rez and take your picture, then reduce the draw distance when you have your shot. You may need to tweak the draw distance to suit your environment. Look for and avoid partially-rendered objects in the background. Either increase draw distance to include them in the shot or decrease draw distance to make them disappear!

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8 [slide 4] Draw distance is adjusted on the Preferences- Graphics pane in the Linden viewer.

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10 [slide 5] Firestorm is virtually identical. Firestorm also has a shortcut menu in the lower right where draw distance can be adjusted quickly.

11 Other Ways to Fight Lag Turn off shadows Turn off ambient occlusion Reduce the number of non-impostor avatars If you wind up walking off uncontrollably, don't panic. Just wait until you regain control. There's nothing else you can do. Patience, patience, patience!

12 [slide 6] Other items can also be adjusted on the graphics pane to help reduce lag. Turn off shadows and ambient occlusion. Reduce the number of non-impostor avatars. Only the closest avatars are fully rendered. Avatars over the number you specify will be rendered in a simpler cardboard-cutout manner that greatly reduces the work that the viewer has to do. Of course, all these adjustments also affect the quality of the rendered image. You will have to decide for yourself what compromises you want to make. Finally, be patient! Events are going to render slowly and even walking may be difficult. Be especially careful of sim crossings. They are especially dangerous during big events. If you wind up walking off uncontrollably, just wait until you regain control. There is nothing you can do about it until then!

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14 [slide 7] Here are the items on the Preferences- Graphics panel that you might want to adjust.

15 Tips for Dealing with Crowds Reduce the number of non-avatar impostors to reduce lag Try unique points of view Make the crowd part of your composition Pick less crowded times for your photography Try control-alt-shift 4 This derenders all avatars, but also derenders some other objects

16 [slide 8] In addition to creating extra lag, crowds can also present problems with composition. Try finding unique points of view, or work to make the crowd part of your composition. Think about whether you could come back during a less crowded time of day. Finally, try control-alt-shift 4. This will derender all avatars in the scene, but you may find that it derenders other objects as well. Press control-alt-shift 4 a second time to return to normal.

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18 [slide 9] In this Relay-for-Life photograph, The crowd waving to the runners is the focus of the composition.

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20 [slide 10] Likewise, this photograph of a Champagne Rain recital shows off the crowd as an important part of the picture.

21 Tips for Dealing with Clutter Adjust draw distance to remove background clutter Try different points of view Make the clutter work for you Birds-eye view and worms-eye view can reduce background clutter It's an event. It is supposed to be cluttered. Derender problem objects

22 [slide 11] Clutter can also be a problem, especially at events like SL12B, which consists of many individual builds all crammed side-by-side along the avenues. Try adjusting the draw distance to remove unwanted background objects. Try different points of view: a downward-looking birdseye view will often reduce clutter, or try shooting up and use the sky as a clean backdrop. Another option is to embrace the clutter and make it part of your picture. SL12B is supposed to be cluttered! Finally, if there is some obnoxious object (or avatar) that is preventing you from getting that perfect shot, try derendering it!

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24 [slide 12] In Firestorm, you right-click on an object (like this flagpole) and select derender. The object will disappear! Unfortunately, I don t know how to do this same trick with the Linden viewer. After some searching, I came to the conclusion that you can t do it. If anyone knows how to derender objects in the Linden viewer, please let me know!

25 Re-render After Derender Find the Firestorm menu Open the Asset Blacklist Find the object you want to re-render Press remove to delete it from the list TP out and back

26 [slide 13] Getting the object back is a bit more work. You need to find the Asset Blacklist on the Firestorm menu. Find the object in the list, and press remove. You will then need to teleport out and back before you see the object again.

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28 [slide 14] This is what the Asset Blacklist looks like.

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30 [slide 15] Catching moving objects at just the right time can be tricky. There is usually a bit of time between the time you click the shutter and and the time the viewer grabs the image. A trick that you may find useful for dealing with this is freeze frame. Selecting this box on the snapshot menu will stop all action in the image. You can then take your time and compose a shot. Remember to uncheck the box after taking your picture!

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32 [slide 16] Freeze frame in the Firestorm viewer is on a pull-down panel at the bottom of the snapshot preview window. Personally, I think the freezeframe function works much better on Firestorm than on the Linden viewer, so I would recommend trying Firestorm if you want to use it.

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34 [slide 17] Two other items that you might want to select are high-res snapshot and quiet snapshots to disk, both on the advanced menu. High-res snapshot causes the viewer to render snapshots at a higher resolution than your normal screen resolution. The resulting extra-pixels can be a big help when editing. Quiet snapshots to disk eliminates the shutter-click sound that can be annoying to others at a musical or other event.

35 Assignment Bring back some great pictures of SL12B or another big event.

36 [slide 18] Your assignment for next week is to go out and bring back some great pictures of either SL12B or some other crowded, laggy event.

37 Field Trip SL12B Electify/85/172/21

38 [slide 19] Our field trip tonight is to Second Life s twelfth birthday celebration, SL12B.