Mel Thompsons Blog

I was wandering in SecondLife recently like usual. And I ran into some kiosks that allowed you to click a link or to buy an in-world copy of a magazine. I also noticed that most of the magazines look for a public towards clothing and their trends. And often consists of a 50/50 mix of advertisements and articles. So in the end I was pondering and building the spark of an idea I had, and I started experimenting. Now let's first tackle the idea.  Let's imagine a magazine that although general, is a part directed towards the photographers in SecondLife. But on the other side it should also opens another view on places in SecondLife. The content I had for my eyes was more a mix of sim explorations that are photo attractive, model portfolio presentations, tips and tricks, and so on. I did experiment a bit with the software I had to see if I could come to a "blueprint", "draft", "sketch" of how I would see it. I spend some hours on it, and one of my first

When you ask a SecondLife photographer which tool he or she uses to work on his snapshots, the most standard answers are either GiMP, or Adobe PhotoShop. So when I started I tried these also. And yes, I know, Adobe PhotoShop is very good, except what struck me the most whas the price for it on a monthly base. GiMP is also good, except I had too much trouble to find my way in it, and get a decent result. I would say GiMP is build for the geeks by the geeks. And I am not a geek... So I looked further, and finally dropped in my google search on the application suite of Affinity , a U.K. company, and decided to give them a try as they had what I needed. Their price looks decent, and I downloaded their software for the trial of 90 days. And to be honest, they have a good structured approach in their way of working. You get the applications quickly in your hand (fingers), and the results are there quickly. And most of all, they exist on Windows PC and macOS. The only thing I missed, was an a

OK, first my "blonde moment". I just noticed that I forgot in a lot of my previous blog articles that Blogger has a field named title. And I just forgot to fill it in. And I was even so stupid to complain about it towards the template creator. Duh. And then my OMG moment this week. I just wanted to check if I even popped up when I did a search in Google on my name. And of course, my blog doesn't show up. So I need to work on this I suspect. But 2 other links showed up. And to be honest, seeing these 2 links made me want to open a bottle of champagne. It seems that 2 of my blog articles have been published as links also on the SecondLife community website, woohoo. The links to these articles are: https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/6902-mel-thompsons-blog-gadgets-i-use-in-secondlife/ and https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/7027-mel-thompsons-blog-gadgets-i-use-in-secondlife-part-2-studio/

As English is for me a learned language and not my mother tongue, I know that the way I write is not always the best way. I seem to have a tendency to write to difficult and with too much influence from my classic studies. I had in the past many complaints about it, so I needed to work on it. And then I found me a website, which had even an offline application to help me. The website is https://hemingwayapp.com , and gives you a good aid when you redact a text. It flags very clear where your structure fails, and most of the times overs you a solution for it. It also grades your text in readability, the lower the better. And in this way it makes sure that your text is understandable in an easy way by everybody. It looks as an extra task to do, but the result is there.  Your blog, or any text is better for its reader, and they appreciate this. On my desktop PC, I use the editor provided on the website. But when I am travelling, I invested in the application on my laptop. In that way I ca

 Just a draft of an idea... World Insights - February 2021

Enjoying my Monday morning on the island of Bumrose... Some quickshots taken, well quick... I did spend some time to tweak poses. But was a short fun moment.

About a bit more than 2 weeks ago, I wrote an article on the gadgets I use in SecondLife while taking pictures. And in the end I want to extend that list a bit with some additional useful tools I also use. The first one I want to bring up is for Studio Work. I know you can buy for thousands of L$ the promoted studio with all the bells and whistles and in the end you will always find a missing factor. So I shopped a bit around, listening to my mentor what he advised, looking at my small landplot of my gallery in number of prims allowed, and with my wishlist on it what I thought could be helpful. As displayed on Marketplace As building for my studio, I got me the Tulla Phoptography Studio ( https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Tulla-Photography-Studio/4418924 ). A simple modern M/C building which has the advantage to have 3 stage rooms in it, one bright white, one black and one more general. I cleaned up the building a bit by resizing a part of it, removing unwanted picture frames, and I

Just wanted to get the feeling of a nice day at the beach... Enjoy :)

OK, after building my gallery, and messing around a bit, like visiting some places, I decide it was time to do some experiments in studio again. And as I build me one in a skybox above my gallery, I needed to be sure that I could use it if I was ever asked for it. So the final result from this, became: Used an A.E. Photo Studio with one of their lamps for main light, added a LumiPro projector, and use the Poser functionality in Black Dragon to make the standard pose in the stand more attractive. Original picture takin in 12K resolution, cropped to 4:3 and scaled down to 1920x1080 format. Black Dragon display settings maxed out, with adapted DoF lens settings. I did experiment again in my BW style also.

Beauty Isle Visited this sim as it gives a nice environment for a Mediterranean moment. So took my time to get some photos there.

OK, so the most asked question I receive, is what is my contact page on Facebook. Well I have to disappoint you. I don't think I have to list all the reasons why I haven't got a page on it, because you all know th emain issues like data integrity, ads, and so on... And next to that, it seems that FB doesn't like my name, date of brith and email address. When I wanted to create a page, it just got locked because of breaking community rules in publishing. And I am still wondering which rule I broke, during publishing, on a newly created account which I never was able to access. So if you want to contact me in a much better environment than the giganteous overcrowded with dead accounts, and advertisments, just join me on MeWe where my page is:    https://mewe.com/i/melthompson19 Just go on https://mewe.com and create you an account. For your information. Ever since its launch in 2014, MeWe has put privacy at the forefront. The platform touts that it’s “The Next-Gen Social Net

So if you want to visit me there, follow, or just tag my photos, feel free. Flickr Page But don't expect much yet, as I only got 2 photos on it yet for now, and they are 2 photos of me... :)

But then I also wanted to give my visitors some help while they were there, and I hate to use these hover texts. So I decided to use a nifty tool I could find on Marketplace, Furware Text https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/FURWARE-text/141379 for the awseome price of 0 L$, so yes a freebie. But this allowed me to build in-world text display on prims, which I could easy adapt and modify in text. And with that I made myself: A list which displays the pictures / models I currently show; Assign them a color tag; Place next to each picture a colored square to link them to the list; And put some help texts around the gallery without annoying hover texts; OK, it does require some basic scripting to make it work, but this is rather easy and straight-forward. Anyway, if you would need any help, or texts made for you, just contact me.

I started a gallery, and in fact also an inworld studio if needed (in a skybox). My Gallery Anyway it is just as an act of presence, nothing else. BTW, the building I used is just bought on Marketplace, https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/MLAW-Photo-Studio-Gallery-box/6154724 for 50 L$, and modded it a bit in layout of the furniture, as also added my own. But while I was doing this I was wondering, do I really need to upload all the pictures I want to display and spend L$ on it. And then I sorted out a very simple solution: I am using to display my pictures a set of frames I bought on Marketplace,  https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/JOMO-Photo-Frame-V2/6828789 ,  for 1 L$ because it included my usual format of 4:3 and 3:4. And afterwards I went a bit tampering with it, and came up with a very simple idea. Instead of uploading each picture, and put it on the face to display it on the frame, why not use the media possibilities of SecondLife. As my pictures are stored on Google Photos,

As I was setting up my new studio, I suddenly got in the mood for a short photoshoot. So I asked my younger sister Sofia if she wanted to be model for me to experiment with the Cube World I had; And you can find in the following album on Google Photos the result of it. (Warning: Photos are to be considered as NSFW)

Been messing a bit with my avatar. Well, it was the moment of the year for it in fact. Received a number of updates, so why not tweak a bit then with everything. I am in fact a very basic standard market avatar, Catwa head, Maitreya body. OK, I have added the V - Bento from Session to it, and that is it. Hair and so are paraphranelia that get easily changed, so I don't consider them as body parts. Now I was using as skin a LAQ ( http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LAQ/154/67/23 )  one, and was rather pleased with it. But now I notices that the main activity of Sessions are skins, so I decided to give it a try and check their skin set out. And I was stunned by the result. They do take another approach. In fact they have one skin, in a number of tones, so up to this very simple. Their skin is developped specific for BoM (Bakes on Mesh  https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/bakes-on-mesh-r1512 /), but instead of creating a number of skins with different details, the

When I take pictures in SecondLife, I use a number of gadgets I was introduced to. They are helping you to get a nice picture in the whole. One of the first I often use, is the LumiPro gadget ( https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/LUMIPro-Professional-Photography-Studio-Machinima-and-In-World-Lighting-HUD/2585413 ).  This one helps you a lot during light and posing. It allows you to hand out to your model a set of face lights and projector which you can control completely in position, color and strength. And it can also help you with the eye position of your model. Next to that one, I also use the AnyPose HUD ( https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/AnyPose-Basic-Pose-Stand/774338 ) allowing me to modify the pose used to het it better. This because poses are often made for a specific avatar and they need small tweaks to fit other people. Another one is the Fate Hand Poser ( https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/FATE-Hand-Poser-HUD/10123949 ) allowing you to modify the poses of Bento ha

Just to avoid any further questions, I just want to get over some important stuff, some technical for the geeks, and some just out of the blue as I want to get it written down. I will just write it down in a Q/A style, so it is a bit easier to follow. Q: What viewer do you use to access SecondLife ? Currently I am using the viewer BlackDragon. You can find more information on the following URL  https://niranv-sl.blogspot.com/ The reason why I use this viewer is very simple: Photographs I was pointed to the viewer by a friend of mine, and I was pleased with the way it uses my system to give me a decent view on the world. And also it allows me to create the best possible pictures. Please note that the viewer is not like any other standard viewer, which are most of the time embellished, enhanced copies of the official secondlife viewer, but is a complete revisited environment. So the first time you will use it, you will have to learn it, because everything changes. Q: What hardware do you

Hey, Welcome to my first post on my blog. Well, everything needs a start, so does this blog also. Anyway, I will try to be not like the others (I hope) and just post or even do a copy/post of already existing information on other places. No, the goal is that I achieve to publish as personal as possible on it. So what will you find here ? Well, probably some ideas by me which popped up when I was trying to mess in my photographs as an amateur and I achieved something decent (in my opinion, so it doesn't mean in yours :) ) Otherwise, nice places you can visit, or clubs that I like. But as always, it will be my personal view and opinions. And it is up to you to come back and read them.