Author Archives: Cajsa Lilliehook

About Cajsa Lilliehook

Santino Rice's little ditty "It's only fashion" seems a perfect title for my little fashion blog as you and i know that fashion means the world to him. Co-founder of It's Only Fashion and Blogging Second Life.

A litte R&R after dying

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So I went exploring, looking for a place to shoot and was wandering around this fair when suddenly I fell to my death and was teleported back home. Not one to argue with the SL gods, I decided I would just settle my poor bruised bones on the couch and shoot at home. Besides, I wanted to get this outfit shot for the Same Damn Thing Challenge celebrating Achariya’s contributions to the Second Life fashion/blogging community,

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I shot this to show you my favorite feature about my house – the swimming pool. The house is placed in the water naturally, avoiding the use of prim water and sounds. It gives it so much more life and the walkway down to the water is a masterpiece of perspective.
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Spooky

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I went to the atmospheric haunted sim Innsmouth to shoot this lovely gown from MiaMai. The layered full skirt, the pouf of fabric on the shoulder, the filigree adornment at the neck all seemed perfect for a noir shoot. Add the hot fishnet gloves from Adore & Abhor and I am ready for noir.

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Spooky!
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I went through the desert

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Dress is from Peqe for Project Fur Japan raising money for relief efforts.

I went through the desert on a horse with no name. (He was a freebie at the entrance)
It felt good to be out of the rain. (Portland broke its wettest March record.)
There were plants and birds and rocks and things (and things?)
There was sand and hills and rings (rings, really?)
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz (what was he smoking?)
And the sky with no clouds (what do you expect, it’s the desert)
The heat was hot and the ground was dry (hot heat is hot)
But the air was full of sound (only if you brought your ipod)

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The shoes are from Peqe - the Dark Leopard Wedges

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain
La, la …
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Cherry Blossom Dance

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The Cherry Blossom Petals from RunoRuno for the Help Japan fundraiser has seduced dozens of bloggers and photographer to take more than one shot at capturing the lyrical beauty of the petals. Here is my attempt.

[vodpod id=Video.5915069&w=425&h=350&fv=]

RunoRuno , posted with vodpod
***STYLE NOTES******

  • Poses: RunoRuno – pose hud comes with cherry blossoms
  • Skin: Redgrave Alie Fairy Skin
  • Eyes: Poetic Colors
  • Lashes: Lelutka
  • Hair: Exile Breeze
  • Nails: PXL Creations
  • Outfit: RunoRuno Cherry Blossoms for Help Japan Fundraiser
  • Location: Deviant Girls

Emerald Green Squared

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It’s certainly not original to wear an emerald green dress like Jeanie from Azul at the Emerald Green sim, but I had to do it anyway. The dress is stunning with layers of soft, sheer and ethereal panels that give flirtatious glimpses of the legs. Boldly bedazzled with silver roses, it is a stand-out-in-the-crows sort of dress. I shot it on the forest floor, a beautiful setting.

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Trees in the garden

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I am stealing a segment and the title from D. H. Lawrence’s poem. You know, for all his notoriety for Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sons and Lovers and Women In Love, I always thought he wrote most passionately about nature. He wrote as though he wanted to strip and roll around naked in the grass and describe all the pokes and prickles, the fresh scents and the soft springiness.

And the ghostly, creamy coloured little tree of leaves
white, ivory white among the rambling greens
how evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates on the green grass
as if, in another moment, she would disappear
with all her grace of foam!

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This was shot at Emerald Green where little surprises like this lovely garden are hidden around every corner.
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Deviant Girls

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Deviant Girls is a legitimate title for this post as that is the store where I bought this dress. However, I admit I am giggling at the thought of porn surfers getting a little disappointment as they land here. Deviance is such a nebulous concept. After all it merely means turning off from the main road, so to speak. Who wants to always drive the main road? Those blue lines on the map are always more interesting and prettier than the red highways. On the other hand, I do love the red lines in this dress – the fabulous ribbons that elevate this from a nice gown to fabulous fashion!

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The skirt on this dress is magic. It floats and waves in the wind. It’s a bit tricky to photograph with all the alphas in it, but anytime alphas drive you batty, just look from another angle and voila!

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What if we all wore the Same Damn Thing?

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Image from Achariya's Original Challenge

It occurred to me that one way all of us could wave a blogger’s goodbye to Achariya while she moves on to her first life writing career was to replay one of her best Blogger Challenges, the Same Damn Thing Challenge. I enlisted her aid in selecting the clothing that we would all blog to show how we all can wear the same damn thing and still look very different and she chose the Oxford Shirt from Shadenfreude. It comes in 30 colors, has three degrees of tucked-in-ness and should spark your creative neurons easily.

Post links to your stylish posts highlighting your styling efforts with the Oxford shirt below. In mid-April, I will post a followup with everyone’s stylings. Have fun with this!

The Burlington Northern Don't Stop Here Anymore

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As soon as I played this pose animation from Status, I was reminded of countless weekend afternoons spent playing with my nieces down in the pasture. We would ride horses or walk down to Ruffy Brook and after semi-swimming (the deepest spot was about 4 feet deep) we would walk the rails. There was a railroad trestle that crossed a deep ravine over the brook and we would put our ears down and listen for trains. If we heard nothing, we would walk across the trestle. It was always exciting because you could see through the railroad ties and could scare yourself with thoughts of stepping wrong and having one leg fall through the ties or with thoughts of oncoming trains or even of slipping off the rails and falling down into the ravine. Of course, none of those things ever happened. As we got older, we got bolder and would ride horse across the trestle which goes to show that a well-trained horse can be just as idiotic as the person riding him.

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Sadly, my nieces children won’t get that same visceral thrill of imminent, but unlikely, death by train as Burlington Northern closed that line. Of course, that makes me think of Jean Richie’s mournful song, The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore, that tells how the loss of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad closed the mines and impoverished the people of Hazard, Kentucky. When the Burlington Northern shut down jobs were lost throughout the northern counties of Minnesota. Thanks to the stimulus, unemployment is at a 10 year low of 17%. I know that’s much higher than most places but it was near 30% when I still lived there. It sounds dire, but country folk have more ways to make do than people in cities. And to be completely honest, wild asparagus is much tastier than regular asparagus.

Never thought I’d live to lean to love the coaldust
Never thought I’d pray to hear those temples roar
But God I wish the grass would turn to money
And then them greenbacks would fill my pockets once more
I was born and raised at the mouth of the Hazard Holler
Where the coal cars rolled and rumbled past my door
But now they stand in a rusty road of all empties
Because the L & N don’t stop here anymore

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The Checklist

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Talk to any Second Life® photographer or blogger and they will confess to committing multiple mistakes. Anyone who says otherwise is either annoyingly perfect or blindingly unobservant. Just the other day I had to reshoot my entire blog post because I left the camera set to show the User Interface – an elementary error that could have been prevented with a simple checklist. I notice simple errors in others’ photos as well. A prim is missing from a gown or is only partially rezzed, so the full beauty of the gown is lost. An earring floats in space. Hands are eaten by body parts. Mistakes happen to all of us. However, I am the type of person that likes to problem solve so after having to reshoot my entire blog post, I thought about making a checklist that might help me avoid making these sorts of mistakes. I asked for help on plurk and got lots of suggestions for the checklist – and of course, readers are encouraged to add their own items. So here it is:

Check Your Pose:
Check your pose from multiple angles. There are so many poses that if the pose causes intersections, just keep looking until you find one that works with what you are wearing.

  • Are you hands in your skirt?
  • Are your feet touching the ground or are you floating above/below it?
  • Are your ribs eating the pattern of the top?
  • Are you legs sticking out of your prim skirt?
  • Does the pose send your prim nails flying?
  • Are your eyes focused properly?
  • Are you wearing an alpha texture and standing in front of an alpha texture? Make sure they don’t make parts of your clothing or hair disappear.
  • Can minor adjustments make the pose work? You can make small shape adjustments or use Avimote to make a pose work.

The Clothing & Prims
Make sure everything is rezzed and fitted. Use rebake if necessary. You might even need to relog, but it’s essential that your clothes and skin are fully rezzed. Fuzzy is not lovely. Also take the time to check the fit. Not all avatars are the same size, so prims may  need adjustment. There are links to many tutorials on the bottom of my sidebar in case you want additional help.

  • Have you properly fitted all prim attachments?
  • Are you wearing both right and left jacket cuffs and shoulder pieces? Sometimes adding accessories and jewelry, prims are detached without our noticing.
  • Is your hair in your shoulders/breasts/chest? You can change your pose or you can use the Hide Edited option to derender individual hair prims.
  • Are there gaps around your hair at hairline? Does it need to be resized?
  • Are your layers worn properly? Tattoo under the shirt, wearing the entire shirt including bottom?
  • Are all textures and prims rezzed completely?
  • Are you wearing the correct shape? Skirt shape with system skirts and NOT with pants.
  • Are the prim feet/hands tinted for your windlight settings
  • Are there stray alpha layers that should not be on?
  • Is the hair base visible and is it the right color?
  • Are there bits and pieces on full bright that should be turned off?
  • Do you have prim nails on both hands?
  • Did you fit your earrings for the closeup?
  • Did you check the photo from the store to verify that things fit and are sized as intended?
  • Did you write down the clothing details before removing clothes?

The Camera
There’s nothing more frustrating than doing all the work to select a perfect pose, fit all the prims and get your windlight settings perfect and then leave Second Life to discover your pictures are unusable. Check your camera settings and check one of the pics you have saved to disk so your hard work is not wasted.

  • Do you have it set to the right resolution?
  • Did you check your graphic settings?
  • Is anti-aliasing on?
  • Did you use Ctl-0 (zero) to shoot your close-ups?
  • While focusing on the face, are you making sure that the rest of your body and clothing is rezzed?
  • Do you have the camera set to show the interface or HUD?
  • Did you look at one of the saved pics before breaking down any set, poses or settings?
  • If your viewer has a mosaic bug with your video card and there is water in the picture, have you set your photo size to no larger than the screen size?

In addition to this checklist, there are many great tutorials to help you be a better photographer and/or blogger. There’s a section of my blogroll called Tutorials, you can find many good resources there.