My Abandoned Project 365 & Ciara Fae of Love

By melanie, on August 1st, 2010

Have you ever heard of Project 365? The way it works is you basically take a photo every day for a year, and maybe all of that picture-taking will pay off and by the end of that year you’ll have learned and improved. I’d tried my hand at a first life Project 365 years ago, and lost steam about 20 days into it, lol. It’s not easy to do a photo everyday, especially on the days when you seem to have to take care of a bazillion chores.

Despite this previous failure, I thought I could sustain an SL version of this. At the beginning of 2010, I was totally gung ho about taking at least one SL snapshot each day. Even on the days when I was really busy, I would cheat and grab my “last_screen” and maybe tinker with it a bit in Photoshop.

Did I learn anything from it? Yeah, now that I think about it, I did. I learned a little bit about lighting. I learned how you can use Windlight to create a duotone image yet still have one object in the shot retain it’s color, without ever having to Photoshop anything. I learned how to look for photo opportunities, and how to use props to make my shots more interesting (my Zooby baby was a favorite, ha).

Doing my SL Project 365 was fun because I learned a little bit from it, but at some point around mid-February I lost steam. It wasn’t because I’d lost interest in the 365 thing; it was more a loss of interest in SL itself. I can’t really explain it, other than say I was a little bit “bored” with SL at the time, although I think that isn’t the exact right flavor of word I’m looking for. Burn-out? Stagnation? I dunno. I’m the type of person who needs to keep doing new things, otherwise I will lose interest quickly and I think that’s what happened.

Well, now that I’ve started blogging again (this time on my own domain, yay!), and I own a sim, and POSEUR has been revived, and my duties at LAQ have morphed a bit, my zeal for all things SL has been renewed. I’m considering restarting my SL 365. Should I?! Or would I be spreading myself too thin? Maybe a test run is in order.

And speaking of losing interest in SL back in February, there’s a post I meant to do right around that time but never got around to doing, and it’s been really bugging me ever since. ~.~ So here it is!!!

I took a bunch of photos in Sparkle Skye‘s Ciara gown, and it’s beautiful. She packs a crazy amount of options in with the gown, so much that it could overwhelm you if you’re the indecisive type, lol. There’s a small train, long train, short skirt, wrist sleeves, upper sleeves, sleeves that are semi-sheer, skirts with sparkle, a long veil… there’s even a wand! The whole package comes with a handy style notecard and texture which you can reference when building your particular look.

It’s such a gorgeous gown! I played with one of my snapshots in PS; I was trying to go for a dreamy, surreal feel… well, I tried anyway.

Alienbear Gupte had collaborated with Sparkle and released her Princess Venus jewelry sets to coordinate with the various Ciara gown colors. I’m wearing the Princess Venus set in red: