We enjoyed our trip to the Baja Coast so much, we decided we’d check out Baja Coast 2. We were straight away struck by the more built-up feel of the place, but also by it’s decidedly post-societal-collapse vibe…

… we love this vibe! Not an ‘end of civilisation as we know it’ kind of thing, but a sense of civilisational ennui, everything shabby and running down, but no-one has resorted to cannibalism… yet…

… but it was the wonderful coast that we came to see. This proved harder to access than at Baja Coast, due to the greater number of rentals, and running into shitty security that not only doesn’t give you time to walk away, but actually evicts you into the ocean, rather than back to the landing point, which I found pretty petty/nasty…

… I even considered renting a place, so I could get better access, but at nearly L$900 a week, I gave that idea a miss! Then I realised I could safely access the unrented sections, so I wouldn’t need to pay for decent images, so that was all good…

… once again, it’s the gorgeous sky that, for me, makes these images. The light, here, is constantly changing, something I’ve not really seen in other sims, but I really like it… you just have to wait a few seconds, and it usually gives an even deeper/darker/brighter/richer/whatever-it-is-you-want variation…

… I love clouds! I am absolutely not a clear-blue-sky photographer, I consider clouds to be at least a 25% major component in my photography… they create depth and perspective that just doesn’t exist with a clear, blue sky…

… the clouds, here, are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen in a sim… I love their almost oil-painted look…

… so, apart from the crap eviction experience, our visit here was just as fruitful as our visit to Baja number one (:

Flutter and I visited the Baja Coast, today…

… we are totally smitten with the sky, here!…

… what a beautiful beach destination this is…

… we love the light…

… we had a lovely stroll on the beach…

… beneath this stunningly photogenic sky.

I liked the ruined gallery building I saw at the Gallery Asaki Yume Mishi so much that I tracked down where to get one for myself, and whether it was editable, which it was…

… as soon as I saw it, I’d thought ‘Hmmm, that would look great as an extension for my gallery…’…

… I had to move my fibreglass Brontosaurus, plus some smaller things…

… but I’m really pleased with the result…

… it creates a perfect transition from the back of my gallery (just had to remove a wall panel) to the area behind it, which was kinda removed from the gallery, till now… more part of the garden… now it’s more part of the gallery.

I was thinking of somewhere suitable to use as a backdrop for some pictures of myself in my new bikini, when I read about an exhibition of golden architectural models…

… I thought they’d make a gorgeous backdrop…

… with their golden light and the beautiful, golden-brown/chocolatey-black shadows against which they are set…

… the models/sculptures are exquisite…

… and the space in which they are set is perfect for displaying their golden splendour…

… I think I picked a pretty sweet setting…

… in which to model my new swimwear (:

We discovered the Gallery Asaki Yume Mishi, today…

… I don’t know how old it is, obviously it’s been here for a while, judging from the exhibition poster that’s here…

… but we really like it!…

… it is showing SL photography… this was our fave…

… but it’s all good…

… the gallery is under water, but it’s not an aquatic-themed build…

… we think it’s a very pretty…

… stylish little slice of elegance (:

It’s a few years since I was last in Elvion. Of course, it’s all different, now, but just as meticulously crafted…

… given the hyper-realism of Elvion’s flora and fauna, I doubt the creator/s had post-apocalyptic in mind, but I can’t help feeling that, here; like this is the world after some soft-apocalypse has wiped out 90% of the worlds population, leaving all the infrastructure to slowly decay, quite and empty, the animals slowing taking over the human spaces, the plants invading every surface…

… this is, and has always been, a very bucolic build, though there are modern buildings in this one, it still feels quite medieval…

… our favourite places were the coast…

… and, of course, the sky…

… wonderful places…

… to just be.

Flutter and I went back to Natthimmel… and found it entirely different! Like, totally different from our last few visits. From the landing point, you have to wade through a shallow sea to get to distant, forbidding-looking peaks rising out of the equally forbidding-looking ocean. Psychologically, we found the whole experience (getting to the islands) quite uncomfortable… you are wading through what looks like deep, dark ocean, feeling like, at any moment, you will fall into the depths; the colours are dark and cold, the island ahead looks quite grim…

… when you get to the island, the grimness continues… this looks like the last place any shipwrecked survivor would want to wash up…

… you climb up and up on very steep steps. Everything is dark and claustrophobic, most of the time you are pushing through tangles of roots. Every now and then the gloom is punctured by flickering stone lanterns…

… and you sometimes get a glimpse out over the ocean. The steps will eventually lead you to a pretty little room with a central statue of cuddling otters, all very vague and esoteric…

… we spent several hours, over two days, here. We discovered there is a lot more than the creepy stairway to the otter shrine. There are actually open spaces…

… above us, here, is a swing bridge between the two main islands, itself one of the most unsettling bridges I’ve ever experienced in SL… but it was from that bridge that we noticed how much open land was between the islands…

… when you regularly visit as many different builds as we do, you start to see familiar components in their construction… we have never seen these crystal trees, before! They are gorgeous…

… even the pretty, open spaces are filled with mist, and dark…

… but dark in a beautiful, pre-Raphaelite, Ophelia kind of way, not an ‘Island of Doctor Moreau’ kind of way…

… we even found what passes, here, for a vast, open space. We had to literally walk around the islands, in that scary sea, waves washing over us, to find it, though…

… there were several deer, just chilling in the foggy grass.

We recently visited Morris Code Studios…

… we instantly loved the lighting, and the wonderful, hand-crafted, organic feel of all the objects…

… there are amoeboid-like things flying around. They are playing wonderful music, and they emit light. I describe their flight paths as ‘cruising/loitering/zooming’… that’s what they do. Their passage is constantly lighting up different facets of the sculptural shapes in the environment, showing dimensions and perspectives that weren’t there a second before, and their music builds and recedes with their idiosyncratic perambulations…

… there are strange little critters…

… I liked these little penguin-birds, with their gently glowing eyes…

… but I loved these soulful, confused-looking dog-things… I just wanted to take them home and protect them (and I did!)…

… the plants are gorgeous, too…

… if you know me, you know I am proudly low-brow in my art appreciation, I tend to find ‘big-meaning, deep and serious’ art with a capital ‘A’ to be, well, bullshit, to be blunt. I never read the artists statement until after I’ve looked at the work, and I generally find the capital ‘A’ artist’s statements to be rubbish spun out of self-importance, then tacked on to their ‘art’ to give it ‘superior’ meaning. Generally I like art that has an obvious meaning, even if that meaning is just beautiful design. I loved everything I saw, here, just for itself, or, as with the critters, because of their cuteness/whimsy. I instantly identified these three woman as ‘muses’ of some kind, engaged in something to do with thread, so, also instantly, made the association of the ‘fabric of reality’, something the human, so, therefore, I, have been interested in for a very long time…

… there are lengths of woven fabric, and a loom…

… which, on closer inspection, we could see was hooked up to what looked like recording gear. We suddenly realised that the music the amoeboids were playing could quite possibly be the sound of a shuttle being drawn through the strands of a loom… which we thought was pretty damned beautiful, and totally relevant to the whole ‘strands of reality’, or ‘fabric of reality’ thing we had identified.

So we went and read Poppy Morris’s artist’s statement, and we had basically nailed it! Poppy is interested in the fabric of life, which is pretty close to being interested in ‘what is reality?’ The woman are ‘Fates’, not muses, but we are pretty sure she says she created the music from a weaving loom and a spinning wheel, which we just love the idea of, and the result is truely beautiful. The whole thing is beautiful, and totally appealed to our lowbrow comprehension (:

We visited ‘The Core‘, today. The landing point put us on a dark plane, in front of a dark pyramid with a neon door frame. There are large, black spheres rolling down the front of it at intervals… the spheres have physics, and shunt you sideways if you get in their way…

… inside, another sphere is discharging electricity into a neon pattern on the floor. You are prompted to ‘sit’ on the sphere, which takes you to the next level…

… which is dramatically more colourful than the entrance level. There is wonderful 1950’s scifi music playing…

… from there, you ‘sit’, again, to go to the next level, which is just as colourful, but the patterns are different…

… this level is like a 1960’s oil-wheel trip…

… there are particle geysers…

… we liked this level the most…

… the fourth level is pretty sweet, too…

… we don’t know what the deep, serious ‘art’ meaning of all this is…

… but we thought it was fun and beautiful, and we loved the music (:

I hadn’t realised it had been nearly 5 years since I last visited Serendipitous Sands!…

… well before Flutter, and even before I grew my horns out…

… I think there’s been quite a bit of tinkering, though the basics remain the same…

… the thing I loved most is the same, though, and that’s the gorgeous light, here… it’s so beautiful I don’t need to do any post-photo tweaks…

… I think a bit more of it is ‘private’, now, I don’t ever remember being threatened for ‘trespassing’, before, but it happened, this time, on what looked like a perfect little sand island, only a few meters across, kinda left a nasty taste…

… but I couldn’t stay miffed, it’s so pretty, here…

… and Flutter was having a great time…

… yelling at the seagulls in her tiny little psychic voice, that only I can hear… she knows that, which I think is why she was having so much fun doing it (: