Gadgets N’ Gear: Stage Performance and the Sphere of Influence

It cost me 8,000L. I get updates for life. It’s gotta go.

I bought PhotoLife back when I didn’t really understand photography in SL. I was thinking like a RL photographer. I have umbrellas and soft boxes on my studio lights in RL. I should need them here, Right?

Wrong. I wish I had known:

• Light in SL punches though prims and it doesn’t bounce. Reflectors, soft boxes, barn doors and umbrellas just burn prims and get in the way to look “photographic.”
• Equipment stands get in the way both in RL and in SL. The difference is, you don’t need stands to hold up lights in SL.
• Less is more. Arrays of multiple lights, (often used for ambient and soft box simulation) are pretty iffy. You only get six local lights.
• The most important light is found in World / Environment Settings. You can move the sun here.

Long before the SL6B controversy drove the final nail into my PhotoLife coffin, I had decided I wanted a flexible, low prim, low clutter studio environment that delivered the cornerstones of SL studio photography: Backdrops, Poses and Lighting.

I found two. I bought two.

• PhotoSphere by Saeya Nyanda.
• PhotoStage by Ananke Media Systems.

The Sphere of Influence

I see the Photosphere everywhere, which is why I call it the “Sphere of Influence.” It’s straightforward, gets a good shot right out of the box and it is uniquely SL. Imagine draping a backdrop seamlessly around the inside of a sphere in RL. Yeah, right.

The “edge of the backdrop” is a huge problem, because when you decide to scoot to the side because the pose angle and light is perfect over there, you no longer have the backdrop in frame. Arrrgh.

RL photographers don’t get surround backdrops – but we’d kill to have ’em.

The PhotoSphere includes three independently adjustable lights in fixed positions (lower left, lower right and upper center), a basic hud for backdrop selection and a selection of backdrops loaded. Most things are adjusted via menu dialogs. (Backdrop selection, tint and repeat density, light color)

It’s worth mentioning that you need to add bits to the PhotoSphere to have a complete system, notably a pose stand, gazer and an extra independently moveable light or two would be handy.

You can make a gazer – any prim will do. You can make a light too – create a sphere and turn light on in the features tab.

Buying It

Saying the photosphere is cool is hardly news. What might be news to some is the extended delay Saeya has experienced re-opening her store. You can’t buy it now.

Ok, you can buy it, but you have to find the under-construction store, cam in and pay the vendors from afar. Thanks to Vivianne Draper for the assistance there

The PhotoSphere is great for basic single  and small group shots. It’s a fashion photographer’s dream – superb for shooting for blogs or in-store displays and basic portraiture.

Stage Performance

A circular backdrop surface doesn’t work so well for pictorial backgrounds, and some patterns (if you want straight lines on your plaid, for example). Fixed light positions are great if you like where they are.

If you’re pushing your photography further, and need a flat backdrop and/or a power performance platform, take a peek at PhotoStage. This is a lean, mean platform that has enormous flexiblity and convenience in adjusting lighting and gazers during a shoot.

It’s all in the Hud

The PhotoStage hud makes accessible pretty much every adjustment you want to make mid shoot. You can rez, turn on, position, adjust, hide and tint lights and gazers on the fly, and they’re all labeled with hover text.

The gazer adjustments from the hud are for me what a ball of string is for a kitten.

I should mention the problem of eyes. You probably know it. You’re constantly zooming in and out moving the gazer to try to get the eyes right for the pose. You’ve got the Ao twitching the eyes around and while you’re zoomed back, you can’t see the eyes up close to fine tune.

Ok, now imagine you can move the gazer around while staying zoomed in on your subject. Eureka.

It didn’t take me long to find the Position Editor either. This lovely innovation positions lights, gazers and effects units relative to the model’s position, and does the math to move the object “further or closer” to the model. I was lost in it for 20 minutes, and fell in love.

There’s also a configuration save/restore, so you can save off standard setups. There are some basic effects units as well.

This system also comes as PhotoLite which is everything but the backdrop for location shooting (if you can rez in the sim you’re shooting in). There’s a bundle called PhotoTools Pro that “fatpacks” them.

And philosophically, I love this system. It doesn’t have an extra prim in it. The studio set up above is 19 prims. (including the 3 pose stands off to the side).

The pose stand on this system is weak, but I’m spoiled. The poses loaded in the stand are pretty solid, so I’m moving them over to my usual stand.

Backdrops

It’s not easy to find great photo backdrops in SL. I end up making a lot of my own, google image hunting or repurposing traditional building textures. Viv also told me to stock up on the texture packs offered by Saeya. You said I wouldn’t be sorry Viv, and true enough, I’m not. Not one bit. We need more photo backdrop designers.

It’s also worth a mention that LeeZu Baxter created 15 textures specifically for the PhotoStage that are included, and truly rock (one of which is pictured above.)

Missing Stuff

I want one thing PhotoLife has, and neither of these systems has it. A page display of a selection of poses, similar to a texture organizer. Click one and it becomes the backdrop. It’s the one thing missing here, but that aside, I love these systems.

And both of them together, with the textures purchased, was waaay cheaper than my original studio system.