The Art of SL Photography

When I was in college, like 100 years ago, my photography teacher told me that all of my photographs looked the same.  I was annoyed at the time, because I really liked photography, but over the years I've come to understand that she was right.  My pictures do tend to all have the same composition, no matter what I'm shooting.  For me, the person in the picture (because I like pictures of people more than scenery or objects most of the time) and their expression is what's most important, and my composition tends to be an afterthought.  As a bad photographer, I'm ok with that.

But, as a writer, I'm all about composition.  It's not just about expression or emotion or plot or whatever, it's about how all of those things combine into the perfect whole.  So why is my photography so limited?

I want to open this up to you guys.  What do you think about when composing a photo, whether in SL or RL?  What are you trying to capture?  What's your intention and do you feel satisfied that the finished product reflects that?

At the top, my latest photo, just to share.

Details: 
Skin: Nylon Outfitters
Hair: Armidi
Coat: Refuge
Shirt: Armidi
Skirt: Armidi
Socks: Maitreya
Shoes: Pornstars
Nails: Bijou 
Necklace: Shiny Things

Dot Lane Goes On Hiatus

Dear Readers,

I will be on hiatus for the next week or so as I settle into a new/old job. I will try to check in with you all now and again, but I make no promises about fabulous new blog posts. For those, you will have to read Sephie and Flanner, who are more than capable of taking up the slack.

Love,

Dot

What's In A Name

Every now and again, I get asked where my name comes from. It's simple really. I have a role model, Dot Warner, so I took her name. Here she is singing my theme song:

Dot Lane Falls In Love

Sometimes love finds you when you're not looking for it. I walked into Hanauta and there she was--hot, stacked, buttery. What more could a girl like me want out of life? I especially love our height difference. She's a tall stack and my nickname, for the last twenty seconds, has been short stack. How could we not get along? She's not exclusive: you can get her for yourself by doing the hunt currently going on at Cioccolata where you will find the hotcake chair and other great gifts. Thanks to Poohta Bailey for IMing me and telling me about the hunt!

p.s. I'm not sure why, but when I got my hotcakes home, I ended up sitting on them rather than hugging them. I guess once you commit to something, they start holding out on you. I'm sooooo sad.

The End of the World as We Know It...

Well, considering my RL town is being innundated with floodwater as I type this, I thought I'd dress up and take some underwater pictures in SL.  Let's pretend that RL is just like SL, and I can breathe and live just as easily in 40 feet of water as I can in zero feet of water.  Can someone send me a boat, please?

A number of bloggers have mentioned this shirt from Aoharu lately, but I had to wear it because the sleeves are awesome in their puffiness.  And the pants are in my top five all-time favorite pants in SL because they're wide leg and go with everything.  Perhaps this is not the best outfit to wear while doing my civic duty and shoveling sand into plastic bags to protect the university library and, oh you know, the rest of town, but one needn't be underdressed to be a model citizen.  Accessorize, people! Your government will thank you.

What I'm Wearing:
Shirt: Aoharu
Pants: Frozen Turquoise Valentine
Shoes: Armidi
Hair: Celestial Studios
Skin: Nylon Outiftters
Bracelet: Shiny Things
Gloves: Sn@tch
Glasses: Last Call

Dot Lane Is Deeply Honored

Sometimes the nicest things happen when one least expects it. Yesterday was a blah day, the kind of day where you sit at your lousy SL job tapping the desk, praying for the clock to move. It doesn't of course, because maintenance hasn't changed the battery and even if they had, they still wouldn't have moved it forward for daylight savings time. So, the clock wasn't going tick tick tick and the FashCon notices were dribbling in drip drip drip. It was a slow day in the newsroom of Dot Lane, Girl Reporter. And then, suddenly, a FashCon notice from Plurabelle Laszlo of Bliensen+MaiTai shot in over the transom. You will remember that Plurabelle made the awesome bottle cap necklace I posted about last week. I sat up straight in my chair, thrilled that there would be new goodness at her store. Then I read the notecard and noticed this:

New for sale : Dedicated to Achariya Maktoum und Dot Lane - for the first two reviews I ever got - you both made me blush :) - Shooting Stars - Earrings and Necklace

Dot Lane? That's me! I rushed off to Bliensen+MaiTai to see the new goodies in full size. A few seconds after I rezzed, Plurabelle tped in and I said hello and quickly bought the Shooting Stars Necklace and it is awesome:

The Shooting Stars Necklace from Bliensen+MaiTai

Plurabelle said that she knew I liked stars so she made this. I can't tell you how flattering that is! Who's blushing now? I teamed up Shooting Stars with star earrings made for me by my friend the lovely and talented Val Kendal of Valhalla Beach Designs, which are available at SLX and Onrez. Val made me a mismtached pair of green and red stars, the same as my belly tattoos. She's a sweetheart. The dress is "My Little Black Dress" from Goth1c0, the hair is booN's KAR07 in black, and the skin is Fleur's Vivant Blush Dig Ophelia 3.

Shooting Stars should be on special sale for $200L for at least six or seven more hours after this is posted--jet on over to Bliensen and check it out along with other tempting merchandise.

There was one piece of business left unfinished: I had to meet Achariya Maktoum, who, after all, shares co-muse honors with yours truly. I sent her an IM and suggested we meet to take of few pictures of us wearing our necklaces. She hadn't seen the FashCon notice, so she immediately jumped to buy it and I met her outside the store to take a few pics. Achariya writes a blog which you all should read (you can get all the details of her outfit) and is sweet as pie. Aren't we quite the pair? We look a little stand-offish in the pics, but that's not the case at all. We're both thrilled to be honored in such a way. Thank you again Plurabelle!

Dot Lane Admiring Achariya Maktoum's New Shooting Stars Necklace above and below

/me Sighs, She Won't Even Look At Me!

Sephie Geest to Blogosphere: "Heyas!"

Special Guest Contributor Sephie Geest interviews interweb sensation Sephie Geest about her favorite subject: Sephie Geest.

I think it was the political philosopher Thomas Paine who said in his less-well-known pamphlet Common Sense 2: Common Sense In Da Hood: "I have no idea what I am supposed to do here. Oh my dear and fluffy lord, Dot - what were you thinking?"

At the risk of repeating what the oh-so-attractive Flanner March said earlier, I am completely unsure as to why darling Dot has chosen to muddy the crystal waters of her wonderful blog with my mundane little comments. Much like my fellow contributatrix Flanner, I have been in SL since late 2006 and my primary skill is dressing myself - to that, I add a healthy dose of barely contained geekiness and hair that is always black (or pink - if you see blonde, run). My primary joys in SL are exploring interesting sims, telling people that I am either a fashion model or blogista, and helping newbie girls by inflicting my own sense of fashion upon them before they have a chance to develop their own.

This is my first foray into the world of SL blogging, though I do plan to decide on the color scheme and font for my own nonexistent blog any decade now. I'm totally excited to be Dot's newest, biggest mistake, and I look forward to meeting all of you when, pitchforks and torches in hand, you all band together to run me off of the blog.

Why Dot Lane Shouldn't Have A Job

Yet Another Accident In The Work Place

It's expensive living in SL, so occasionally I try to find gainful employment suitable for my talents. As a writer with an advanced university degree, this means low-wage jobs like working at Flop Dog, selling donuts , doing community service work, cooking at an Asian food stand, or holding down the frozen lemonade stand, (the cooking at the Asian food stand post is my favorite job--be sure to check it out) while trying to write the Great Second Life® novel. What you see above is my latest job, packing boxes at a factory. Unfortunately, as you can see, it didn't work out. First, I don't think Maitreya stilettos are OSHA approved for the factory floor, nor is my fab red dress from CKS Designs. Second, Dot Lane shouldn't be allowed near machinery of any kind because, well, just because. If there had been security video at the factory I think it would have looked something like this:



Speaking of work, I visited my friend Trinny Mizin a few days ago (Trinny makes awesome sexy shoes--go to her store Hmmm......New Shoes and find out for yourself) and hopped up on a dance pole in her studio--chatting with someone while pole dancing is better than just standing around, in my opinion, especially when one is trying to figure out what to wear to audition as an exotic dancer. That's right: Dot Lane is going to be taking off her clothes for money. I've been told that improving one's asset allocation is one key to making money. What's that? Asset allocation doesn't mean showing off your assets in the right locations? Oh...ummm....never mind. No stripping for me. Still, you can enjoy the picture that Trinny took of me. Since my sugar mama hasn't materialized, I'm still looking for gainful employment in-world. If anyone knows good places to take pics of myself working awful jobs, leave a comment.

Would You Tip That A**? Hey! I Said Tip, Not Hit!

Sunflowers Shine

Dot Lane, Feeling Girlish in Mayuki Nozaki's Flower Dress Himawari

Close Up, Showing My Tan and Freckles

Lace Detail on the Glitch Pants

If it weren't for the kindness of various people, Dot Lane would long ago have been eaten by wolves, or, at the very least, be walking around naked. A case in point is my recent trip to see Mayuki Nozaki's new dress at her store in the Happy Style Mall. I showed up, hunting for the Flower Dress Himawari which I had seen in a recent FashCon notecard. I looked throughout the store, no dress. I read the notecard again, which said the dress would be available for 48 hours, and looked some more. No dress. I thought perhaps it would be at another Mayuki Nozaki store. No dress. So I headed back to the main store and there was Mayuki Nozaki herself. Since at heart I'm a blithering fangirl and because we had chatted via IM a few times previously, I said hello, told her how much I loved her clothes, and asked her about the dress. She told me that the 48 hours had gone by, but kindly gave me the dress anyway. Yay dress! Now, this may sound like a small thing to you, but to a girl like me who can't tell time, well, I thought it was sweet and beyond the call of duty.

The Flower Dress Himawari is another in Mayuiki's line of beautifully textured dresses, this time with spaghetti straps and a sunflower applique which make me feel girlish and feminine at the same time. The little lace trim on the glitch pants is the type of thoughtful touch I've come to expect from Mayuki. This is one dress you will see me in again and again as the mercury climbs in the RL thermometer--I just feel cool looking at it. Head over to her mainstore in Sokri at the Happy Style Mall and prepare to be charmed. Arigato Mayuki!

My readers will also notice that I'm sporting some blonde tresses. This is due to a combination of factors: first, I blame Kit Maitland. I know what you're saying. You're saying, "Dot, how can you possibly blame Kit for you being blonde? After all, she's not the one who spent hours putting Sun In in your hair." And you're right, she didn't. But Kit did go off and make the most awesome bikinis I have seen in months and she included a pic of herself as a blonde in the ad for them. I saw the pic, said "OMG! OMG! I *need* to be blonde too!" and promptly headed to the medicine cabinet and found the Sun In, hiding behind the horse tranquilizers and dental dams (Hey! When did you start to care about how I spend my weekends?) When the Sun In failed to work on my black hair, I went to my inventory and found a perfect blonde-but-not-too-blonde style from Philotic Energy. Of course, being in the sun for hours gave me a little tan and brought out my freckles, courtesy of Fleur's Strawberry Parfait Deux 2 skin, so Roslin Petion gets her props for making a beautiful skin which lets me go blonde with ease.

Details, details (slurls to be added later, when I get back in-world)

Mayuki Nozaki Flower Dress Himawari in Yellow
Fleur Boutique Strawberry Deux Parfait 2
Gracile's "Mediterranean" Dress Sandals
Ink Stain"Multi Star" tattoo
Philotic Energy "Nat" in sandy blonde

Introducing Flanner March

For some reason, Dot has very graciously opened up her blog to a new guest poster: me! I'm 95% certain she'll come to regret it, but until then, I thought I'd introduce myself to her lovely readers.

I've been in SL since late 2006 and have absolutely no skills beyond dressing myself and decorating my house. If you don't believe me, I made a hideous, monstrous couch-like thing I'd be willing to show you. I'm interested in things that are a little out of the ordinary, that are unique and well-made. My style (and my hair color) changes with my mood, and I'm constantly in search of that perfect piece. I also love unique poses - I like the poses in my photographs to be slightly awkward, slightly wrong.

(OMG there's a commercial on right now for a show about puppy weddings. Is that not the sickest thing you've ever heard?)

I have a blog that I never update and a small but growing collection of photographs on Flickr. I'm looking forward to meeting you all and seeing what I can contribute to this awesome blog.

Flanner March

**********************

I'm so thrilled Flanner has agreed to be an occasional contributor (and by occasional I mean I hope she posts as often as she can): she's here because she has a wonderful sense of style and a point of view I wanted more people to read. I met her months ago, and was immediately struck by her name, influenced as it is by the idea of the flaneur, and our first conversation revealed her to be intellectually stimulating in addition to her cute-as-a-buttoness. I'm glad she's here, and we look forward to presenting more of our wanderings to you in coming months.

Dot Lane

You Post One Nude Photo Of Yourself.....

I am a little taken aback by how much of a response there was to my post about body image and SL a few days ago. I suppose one shouldn't write when angry but I spent five minutes writing that post and suddenly felt much better. What I wasn't prepared for were the IMs and emails and comments I received. While almost all of them were supportive (thanks Cen and Chestnut) I actually received a few negative comments about my decision to show myself naked. You think blogging is all sweetness and light? There is a *reason* I moderate comments. Perhaps the worst was "If you were actually hot I might listen to you." The internet brings out the worst in people it seems, and one can say virtually anything without consequence, but one wonders exactly how immature someone has to be to say something like that and how petty one has to be to get a little transgressive thrill from anonymously posting an insult, and not a very good one at that.

I've read about the studies which look at the advancement opportunities for "pretty" and "ugly" women and the bias towards youth and looks is evident in our culture so I know that anonymous comment has more than a little truth to it. It certainly is replicated in SL: be sure to look at Marissa's post about her experiment with different size AVs.

This is all part of a larger pattern evident in our highly sexualized culture (and, sorry to everyone else from around the world, but I'm talking about the United States), a culture which wants women to be sexy and erotic yet pure and chaste while refusing to talk about birth control and sexual habits, a culture which treats women as second class sexual citizens when it isn't putting the pretty ones up on a pedestal to alternate between being worshipped and starring in erotic fantasies. You don't think pretty girls get listened to more? Ever noticed the female sideline reporters for sporting events? Who reads the evening news? Who the UN chooses to be spokespersons on various issues?

In many ways SL is sexually liberating, allowing us to try new things, play new roles, experiment with things we fantasize about in RL but which aren't practical (or even possible). But even as we transcend our RL limitations, we're still ultimately constrained by our human nature. That anonymous comment I received is the flipside internet equivalent of the subway rides I take with a guy trying to look down my shirt. As much as I want to say "Fuck you!", part of me is resigned to knowing that this is just the way it is going to be until I'm no longer 25, when gravity has taken its toll on my tits and ass, and no one says anything to me at all.

Sasy Make Me Pretty!

This is another blog post being released from the backlog queue, this time from 5/21/2008. No slurls, of course, since the grid is down but if you really really really can't find something, just IM me. Hell, IM me anyway. I'm probably just sitting in my ice cream chair (really--it is chair that seats four that is a big bowl of ice cream) in my apartment at Extropia and would welcome someone actually talking to me.

Dot Lane, Dressed For Action!

Dot Lane, Dressed For Car Washing!

Dot Lane, Ready For Her Close Up!

Sasy Scarborough gave me a gift yesterday, the "Determined" outfit from Digit Darkes, which is perfect for a dramatic entrance into the boudoir or just wearing around town to wash your car. Okay, it's perfect for enticing some poor sap to wash your car for you, not that I would ever use my feminine wiles to get anyone to do anything for me, unless you feel like giving me a shoebox full of lindens in which case I just loosened the robe and leaned in a little towards you so you can smell my perfume. /me coos sweetly and bats her eyelashes at you, then promptly trips over the train and falls down. I'm just not a very convincing femme fatale am I? Still, since I know my readers are full of femmeness and fataleness, there are going to be lot of guys (and girls) succumbing to the charms of this outfit. Head over and check it out and tell them Dot Lane sent you!

Dressed For Action!

Outfit: Digit Darkes "Determined"
Ring: Hanauta Kiwi Ring
Shoes: Minx "Sweet as Sin" stilettos
Collar: Eat Rice Charm Collar 2
Skin: Fleur Boutique Lily Shoujo Lady Edwina
Hair: booN KRCO2 in black
Tattoos: Belly stars, custom; chest tattoo, Ink Stain "Multi Star"

Dressed for washing the car:

Shirt: Sheer Shift Plain Black Top
Pants: CKS Designs Beat trousers
Hanauta Kiwi Ring
Minx Sweet as Sin Stilettos
Eat Rice Charm Collar 2
Fleur Boutique Lily Shoujo Lady Edwina
booN KRCO2 in black
custom belly tattoo
Chest Tattoo: Ink Stain "Multi Star"

Slow Day, Brief Post

The grid is down, so I'm taking the opportunity to go through half finished blog posts and try to get them out of the queue. According to Blogger, I started this one on May 16th. Usually I try to fit some theme to the pictures, but in this case, I've nothing witty to add (yes, even my well runs dry sometimes), so you're just left to bask in my beauty. Now bask damn it! I'm wearing some bikinis and lingerie from Coquette and the last picture is of a recent (as of 5/16/2008) group gift from DPS.

Coquette Flower Power

Coquette Cutie Baby

Coquette Candy Striper

DPS Candy Peony (DPS group gift) and showing off Hanauta's Silver Kiwi Ring

The skin in each photo is Fleur's Boutique Lily Shoujo Florence, the hair is from booN.

I Totally Dig It

If you love me and worship the ground I walk on, you will remember my trip to dot.land. Since I only know of one person who meets that description (and I think she is crazy, to be honest, so she can't really be held accountable for her actions*) you can refresh your memories here.

What I didn't realize when I visited dot.land was that there was also a flea market going on just across the street. Now, the Mobile Factory flea market actually may have been put up after my visit since usually I can smell a freebie a sim away--I'm not quite sure how I would have missed a giant outdoor market with tables labeled "free". In any case, I poked around the flea market. So what did I find? Well, I found the lovely freebie floral shirt from fashion brand QueenQueen that you see below paired with the awesome new Fleur Vivant Dig Ophelia Skin. How sweet is the beauty dot on my cheek? Okay, okay, beauty mark. I'm also wearing some booN hair and that too cute bottletop necklace from Bliensen in the bottom pic. I also found a number of other freebies, mostly objects that no doubt will appear in future blog posts after I figure out what they hell they are--I really need to change the Japanese names on these things to English so I can find them again.

QueenQueen Kimono Tops Green and Fleur's Vivant Blush Dig Ophelia 1

QueenQueen Black High Neck Tops and Fleur's Vivant Blush Dig Ophelia 3

*Ahem. As a note to all my friends, I should state that this sentence is what is known as comic exaggeration, so don't try to figure out if you're that friend. You all love me, and you're all crazy.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What Is The Meaning Of This?

If you want to know the story, click here.

You Can't Handle The Cute!

Aoharu "Brilliant Fairy" Skirt and acetone "mutual liberty" tank

Bliensen + Mai Tai "Bliensen + Stars Bottletop Earrings and Bottletop Necklace"

Bliensen + Mai Tai "Bliensen + Stars Choker"

So I haven't written a post since showing my naked AV to the world a few days ago (and thanks everyone for your kind comments) but I've felt the need to get back to my roots. That's right--it's time for a heaping helping of cute! I haven't been shopping much of late but I found myself at Aoharu the day their recent sale ended (and by "found myself", I mean teleported as quickly as possible when I suddenly realized the sale was going to end and I HADN'T BOUGHT ANYTHING) where these "Brilliant Fairy" skirts called out to me, saying how much they longed to caress my thighs. Wait. That was that creepy guy at the sex mall. But anyway, the skirts called out to me saying "Buy us Dot! Buy us!". Now this presented a dilemma, because after my recent post about body image, it was very difficult to bring myself to buy a "fatpack" of anything. Perhaps designers who refuse to take the "Dot Lane Design Challenge" will start referring to them as "dotpacks", which gets the point across but also honors my awesomeness. If not dotpacks, "junk-in-the-trunk-packs," "chunkpacks," and "wide load packs" may also work. If the packs are really big, like those from a certain designer friend of mine whose name I won't mention because I love her to death, you could call them "morbidly obese packs", which is how someone referred to the package containing her entire fall collection. Anyway, long story short, I'm wearing an Aoharu Brilliant Fairy skirt in the pics above.

Now, despite what you may have seen in this very blog, a girl can't just wear a skirt, so I dug out one of my favorite tanktops from acetone. But something was missing.....accessories!

Earlier today I received a FashCon notice from Bliensen + MaiTai. Now I don't know about you, but the FashCon notices have been coming in too fast and furious for poor Dot Lane to keep up, and, as such, I'm usually about a week behind the SL style curve which is like being stuck in the 1970s in RL--time moves just that fast in SL. Still, I opened this notice and when I saw the word "bottletop" I clicked the link to the pic, because ever since she was a young girl Dot Lane has been a habitual collector of small things she found on the ground like buttons, pennies, bottle caps, bits of wire. I blame my mother, who introduced me to the works of Joseph Cornell when I was young, and I always thought I could do one of his collage boxes. I can't. In any case, I saw the pic of the bottletop necklace and fell into immediate lust. I hopped over to the store where I met the charming owner/designer, Plurabelle Laszlo. Let me just tell you that this is some of the cutest jewelry you will find in SL. It is beautifully detailed, whimsical, and it just satisfies Dot Lane's inner child, who would otherwise be stuffing herself with ice cream. I'm wearing the bottletop earrings and necklace and I just love them. Plurabelle also has chokers and various other bits and bobs that just scream "cute" especially if you squeeze them really hard. If you're feeling skint, pick up the star choker you see in the bottom pic for 1L. As I'm sure you've noticed, I love me some stars. In any case, be sure to check out Plurabelle's store!

Dot Lane is also wearing:

Hair: booN's KAR07 in black
Skin: Fleur Boutique Vanilla Parfait 2
Shoes: Tesla "Leather Vixens" in cherry