Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Gabriel Chamberlain’s “Road to Witherwood Keep” is delightfully balanced on the highwire between cozy and creepy. The path is clear and well-lit, the houses are occupied with welcoming lights in the windows, but the clouds are heavy and close with a misty brume obscuring the Keep in the distance. It will be dark before you get there and who knows what lurks in the dark?
Witherwood Thicket looks and sounds like a likely place for some Halloween pictures. [Click here to visit]
The Thicket is part of the Frogmore Region so I did a search within the Frogmore Flickr Group which has nearly 1300 members and 5,000 photos. I was eager to see what folks got up to at Witherwood.
For more from Witherwood Thicket, click here:
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Shou Masuda captures a single detail, an abandoned baby carriage. The stories that can conjure up. Why is it empty? Was the infant stolen by fairies or trolls? Were the parents neglectful or feckless? Did the baby simply outgrow it? Why is it out there to rust away? I love how the tree bends toward the carriage as though trying to shelter it.
JiJi Vandervoort’s abandoned tricycle coupled with the baby carriage above makes me think there are some serious abandonment themes running through the Thicket. The picture is sad and a little bit frightening. Is there the ghost of a lost child haunting this place. I love the intensity of the black in this picture, how it dominates but does not overwhelm the few spots of color.
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Pippa Laurie’s picture captures the gloominess of the radiation fog rising amid a dense forest of withered trees that give the sim its name. There’s a few leaves hanging to testify that life remains in these blackened tree trunks in a thicket that looks to have been burned or beset by a blight.
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Marci Masala’s Midnight Guardian gives us the guardian against evil, the gargoyle. They were often put on churches to ward away evil. They are supposed to scare us into being good. It’s odd to see one guarding a thicket instead of a house, but maybe the thicket needs it.
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Christian Carter gives us a black and white gothic scene. Could you see Edgar Allen Poe writing one of his stories here? I am sure there are ravens and hearts buried under the floorboards and be advised to stay out of the wine cellar. I love how stark this is.
It reminds me of this forest where my grandparents homesteaded. There was a forest fire several years ago. About two years after the fire we went there to pick blueberries. (Helpful hint: Wild blueberries love burned-over forests and are among the first to grow. Wild blueberries taste 1150 times better than cultivated berries.) The trees were still blackened sentinels. The forest didn’t have that chatter you hear in a healthy, living forest. It was a bit spooky even on a bright sunny day. This takes me right back there – even to Uncle Art’s cabin decaying after decades of abandonment.
There are more scary vistas, more gargoyles, and surprises to inspire your spooktacular pics. I also learned there is a photo contest that ends promptly on November 1. So get your pics in before October ends.
You can enter Witherwood Thicket and find the contest rules if you teleport by clicking this SLURL.
See all of Cajsa's Choices here. Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter, on her blog, and on her Ko-Fi.
All images copyright their creator
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Suggest images and Flickr feeds to Cajsa: Cajsa’s Choices is devoted to unique, artistic, and innovative virtual world-based images and screenshots that showcase the medium as an art form and Second Life as a creative platform. (Generally not images that fit on this Bingo card.) To recommend the best in virtual world imagery, tag the picture with #CasjaNWN or tag Cajsa Lilliehook by adding her to the photo.
Cajsa Lilliehook is a sixteen year resident of Second Life, where she owned a photo studio, spent several years as a DJ at The Velvet, and for her first SL job, cleaned up prim trash. She co-founded and runs the It’s Only Fashion blog with her best friend Gidge Uriza. She also has a book review blog, Tonstant Weader Reviews and a cooking blog, Single Serving Recipes. She spends a lot of time researching and reporting on Republican sexual predators. In her first life, she is a retired grassroots leader who has worked for economic and social justice issues most of her life. She is also the minion of a cat named Nora.
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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