Photography in Physical and Virtual Worlds

This is my second entry for the Last Words Single Frames Stories challenge. Since all the submissions we've received so far were shot in Second Life,  I decided to add one that was photographed in the physical world to encourage others to give it a try.

Until I started dabbling with dolls and toys a couple of years ago, I had little experience doing atomic world photography outside of birthday and vacation photos. It's been very satisfying, but also very frustrating.

Gravity is a bitch. So is Mother Nature. So is my physical coordination. The wind and I knocked over one or more of the figures in this image dozens of times over the course of a half hour shoot. My view of the image on the camera screen was almost completely washed out by the angle of the sun which beat down on my back and neck on a 95 degree afternoon. Here's how it went:

• Take a few shots. 
• Turn around to get the screen dark enough to review how they came out. 
• Realize a piece of grass obscured something important, a zombie was out of frame or the angle of the sun was slightly off. 
• Rearrange the little set, knocking one or more pieces over in the process. 
• Kneel down and guess how to frame the photo again (often knocking over more zombies)
• Repeat

But it was worth it. And fun, despite the heat and clumsiness. The final image has a look and feel that is very different than a similar shot from a virtual world. I plan to keep bouncing back between the physical and virtual for the foreseeable future.