Reel Expression

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Absolutely brilliant. Rather fitting that when I try to log in for the first time in almost a year, this is the message I get.

The short version:
- Due to school/work/kung fu/life I haven’t had the time in almost a year to log in. Let alone make anything.
- Dropped all prices by 1/2.
- My store will be around until it no longer pays for the sim.
- If anyone is looking for 3/4 of a $195/month sim to rent, let me know.

Prices:
They dropped by 1/2. No real reason other than I no longer take L$ out, it all goes towards paying the sim. It messed up my taxes last year - something about being self employed and not being able to get the big tax breaks for being a student - so in Jan I started to let it accumulate for the sim.

The store/sim:
I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever make any more poses. I don’t know if I’ll ever log in after today. I may still want to dink around if I ever get the time, but who knows. At this point in time, I’d rent the sim at cost if I could keep a small shop and workspace on the off chance I’d want to.

If not, I’ll either sell it or just give it up once the L$ runs out.

The personal bits:
Last fall, I took a full time job in the graphics department of an ad agency. As well as starting a graduate degree in game development. Lack of time and just a general disinterest in anything SL related ended up with me just not logging in since.

My first year of school was completed yesterday and I have a week until summer session begins to get things in order. I’m going from part-time to full-time so I’m going from almost no extra time to defiantly no time. Classes are oddly fun and a bit of a challenge, but I’m really enjoying programming. It’s nice to think mostly with the other side of my brain.

I had been thinking about this for a while now, but since I’ve been waiting all day for my new computer parts to arrive (hurry up UPS) I decided to go ahead. I suppose this way I won’t have to install SL.

Creating for SL was a big part of my life for 6 years. It was fun, thrilling, frustrating and annoying usually all at the same time. It was great to see SL grow and change over the years, but I think my time here is over.

Thank you all for the support.

Cheers
Luth

I spent all day yesterday with a friend of mine at a cemetery in northern Chicago. Here are some of the pictures I took:

Hopefully next weekend I’ll be going on a photo shoot with a friend somewhere out in Chicago. For at least some of the shots, I was hoping to do a little playing around with high dynamic range imaging (HDRI). It’s a photography technique that increases the range between the lightest and darkest parts of an image by merging multiple exposures of the same shot.

Yesterday I was reading up on some tutorials and found you can cheat it by processing 1 image into the various under and over exposed steps and merge them together. So I dug up the RAW images of my trip to Rome a couple of years ago and had a bit of a play. It might not be true HDRI, but they certainly look interesting.

Update:
About the sources used to “cheat” HDRI. Its actually rather easy if you are using photomatix: copy the picture the amount of times you want (need about 3-5 total), drag them into the box for “generate HDR,” and the program will tell you they are the same exposure and ask if and how much you want to change the E.V. spacing. There are a few other ways to do it, but that’s what I did.

My entire process was pretty much taken in bits and pieces from these 3 tutorials:
http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr-guide/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cleever/145838011/in/set-72057594134300570/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cleever/255026221/

It’s interesting the kind of shot you can get with a mobile phone (palm pre), contorted, unable to move, 1 handed, and having a needle repeatedly jabbed into your leg. The photo is an untouched original.

Last weekend for my birthday my friend gave me a new tattoo. It’s not fully finished, but it’ll be kitten paws going from my heel spiraling up my shin to the side of my knee. That brings the count up to 9 and quite a few more to come. \o/

Don’t mind me.. just making certain the photoblog section is working properly.