Thanks for the tags everyone: @optimisticgrey @carnivaley @arlynx @gortashsrighthand @the-shadowfell-darkroom and @lucretiouswept💕
You know, I don’t usually talk much about myself, but I started putting my thoughts together on this, and somehow it ended up way longer than I expected. So I'm putting it under the cut for those who like to read. And those who don't, just take a look at the photos! Or not, you decide
Gentle tags for @onlytavs @thecampjuicebox @bhaal-battle-beer-bard @perpetualmaladaptivedaydream @monrayne @purpleasters-inseptember @michanvalentine @ratchsellsfornax and anyone else who wants to join in, consider yourself tagged 💕
The F12 Goblin Era
I'm the kind of person who happily spends half their life in the character creator, so it was only a matter of time before I started capturing absolutely everything my characters did. (Oh, no! I made them too pretty! Now I must stare at them from every angle.) At the time, I had absolutely no technical knowledge, so "documenting" was actually just hitting the screenshot button like a madman. I wouldn't call it virtual photography yet, but it was the beginning of the obsession and the reason I wanted to learn more.
Fun fact: I've just checked and apparently I have more than 3000 screenshots from this period.
New addiction Era
With Patch 8 Photo Mode came, and my screenshot-addicted self obviously had to give it a try. I won't lie, my first shots were pretty rough. Even with some experience in traditional photography, I couldn't quite figure out what all the sliders did. But there's this thing that happens when you pick up a new hobby: when you're starting from zero, it's easy to improve fast. That quick progress is addictive, and it makes you want to keep going. Maybe I finally found something I'm actually good at?
"New Screen, who this?" Era
One thing I haven't mentioned yet: I'm broke. Like, "my gaming setup is a laptop that crashes if you breath the wrong way" broke. And as you may have guessed from the previous screenshots that tiny laptop came with an equally tiny screen. Then my partner noticed my completely reasonable and definitely not concerning Virtual Photography obsession, and he was like, "Why not push her even deeper?" So in October, for my birthday, he bought me a proper monitor.
I still love it to this day… but the moment I turned it on, I realized everything I'd made before looked like absolute garbage. The colors were off, the quality was off, everything looked awful. So this was also the Great Remake Era. Luckily, I have the terrible habit of letting my shots rot in drafts for months before posting them. So I convinced myself I had to recreate most of them (and also some already posted works) with my now better setup for the perfect quality.
Around that time, I also started using watermark too! Not because I needed one, but because it just seemed like a very artist thing to do. It somehow tricked my brain into thinking I could actually make something out of this.
I also started using Lighty Lights! I had been against it for the longest time, because to be honest, I’ve got the soul and brain of a boomer when it comes to learning new things. I tried it a few times, got overwhelmed, quit, and then immediately tried again the next day. It was a long process, but now I can hardly imagine taking screenshots without them. The secret, though, is that I still only know how to use the basic functions. Haha.
This era lasted quite a while, and it's the one where I finally started creating shots that I proudly called VPs, and I still do. Something else changed during this time, too. You might've noticed the beginning of it at the end of the previous era: I finally let my muse go. It happened after a disappointing experience with some people in the fandom, but looking back, it was probably for the best. It pushed me to start photographing other characters instead, and I'm really happy with how diverse my portfolio has become.
Paint it Black Era
This isn’t exactly an era that’s over, in fact, it’s still very much ongoing. But around this time, I accidentally discovered that I’m kinda good at making black and white shots. They’ve basically become my go-to whenever I don’t really have inspiration… to, well, inspire myself. If they turn out good, it usually does the trick and makes me want to create even more.
Current Era
I count this era from this February, when I was asked to take shots for an upcoming pose pack. That was when I really wanted to learn hotsampling, mostly out of laziness, if I’m honest. The shots had to be vertical, and I couldn’t be bothered to rotate my screen every time. So I figured, if the source image is big enough, I can just crop out what I don’t need, and still have the right quality.
Not exactly the most professional approach, but at least it made me learn something new and useful.
Current+
Not sure if it should call it a new period, because it's not my accomplishment that Bone Zone exists. But I started to use it and build poses for my shots!
I was tagged by @optimisticgrey @cinder-rellish181 @gortashsrighthand @deianestormborn - thank you all, I'll share a lot of pain and suffering. If you don't like heavy angst, run for your life.
So...
It started with simple photomode. No LL, no fancy outfits, just a couple of pose packs. The same moment I tried to take a photo of Halsin and Ethery together, the hell itself opened before me. And the hell was...
BT1/BT4
I know I could have learned a lot more during this time. Better composition. Better editing. Better lighting effects. But for months and months all my being was consumed with two things: aligning and cropping. I could waste an hour on positioning just to realize that the pose wouldn't work.
Eventually, and unavoidably, Lighty Lights came into my life. Not that it became easier (no), but it became much more interesting. I also switched to editing in Lightroom and started using Otis and Reshade (yes, I know how this sounds).
Almost all pose packs I had to use were made for BT1/BT2, and photography started taking even more time. I told you this would hurt. Bear with me. Speaking of bears...
All this time, up to today, I've been maintaining Daily Halsin tag. I came up with the idea basically out of spite - I wanted to make negativity in Halsin tag less visible. It gave me a lot of experience in portraits, although I've been fearing of becoming repetitive all this time.
At some point I got some new gear for better graphics, started using QSAT... and then @rdekarios happend to me. And her incredible pose packs aligned for different body types And then... then... Bonezone.
Still in the stone age. One of those beautiful moments when a pose aligned...
And behold, Nature's Guardian. This pack will always be special...
Bonezone meant that I could make any pose work - no matter the body types.
My favorite Halsin shots (only fully dressed, I got flagged for the previous version of this post).
My best and loveliest Ethery.
The best of them together.
And last but not least...
As you can see, I haven't developed any particular style, but I haven't aimed to - first of all because I'm fascinated with colors and the modders provide more and more custom maps. Plus some zones in the vanilla world need love too...
I still hope to become better. To take better shots. To squeeze more out of Reshade. To edit better... There's much, much to learn (Blender, please don't look at me, I'm still employed).
Well… what can I say? I’m honestly embarrassed, because I don’t have anything to show that’s even remotely comparable to my favorite virtual photographers.
I don’t really have a style of my own yet, and I’m constantly messing around with every tool I can get my hands on.
Basically, I have no method whatsoever—I just go entirely by instinct, lol.
…Hey, maybe that is my style after all: pure entropy. xD
These are the very first screenshots I ever took. They’re nothing fancy—just pose and click. No editing of any kind.
My Mac was pretty old back then and didn’t have a particularly good graphics card, so the image quality left a lot to be desired. Not to mention it kept throwing all the colors completely out of whack for some mysterious reason.
This is where I first tried experimenting with the Photo Mode camera focus… and, well, let’s just say it didn’t exactly go according to plan. Everything’s blurry—even the characters! xD
At least I’d finally downloaded the Get a Room mod (or whatever it was called) for the poses.
This was the stage where I finally started getting the hang of the camera focus, experimenting with atmosphere, and editing my screenshots in Affinity Photo.
I still didn’t have any extra pose mods, though, and my Mac continued to wreak havoc on the colors. Karlach’s skin tone was especially impossible to get right—it never looked the way it was supposed to. Lol.
In the meantime, I started taking a few screenshots of Astarion and the others straight from the game, without using Freecam. Simple, clean shots with only minimal editing in Affinity Photo to fix the perpetually messed-up colors and tidy up the background.
I’d also just upgraded to a new computer… another damned Mac. 😂 But at least this one was far more powerful than the first, so the screenshots were finally much sharper and more detailed.
And then, finally, the breakthrough: a remote Windows PC!
More mods, more poses, ReShade, Freecam, Tiny Lights… yeah!
Followed by an endless stream of swearing at every single command I didn’t understand in the slightest!
Pure, frantic joy.
And pure frustration, too, because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and the entropy only kept increasing exponentially.
Meanwhile, I still hadn’t figured out how to balance the lighting, so Astarion looked less like a vampire and more like a star.
A falling star, probably.
And here we are at last—my current level!
This is where I am now when it comes to Freecam screenshots and the editing process afterwards, which I genuinely love doing.
And this is where I am with Photo Mode and posing, too.
But the biggest achievement of all… they finally have the right colors!
I’m crying.
Well… I still have a lot to learn, but we’ll see where my entropy takes me! xD
For now, I’m still trying to truly master the basics and explore everything my current tools have to offer, because saying I’ve actually learned how to use them would be a bit of an overstatement! xD
No pressure tags: @litsenn, @oonalovesastarionssimpleplan, @baelthi, @mercymaker, @lenorevp, @burnt-by-marigolds, @missfortunetherogue.
And then, one fine day, it happened.
An official Photo Mod appeared in the game.
Photos from patch 8 tests.
The first 15 mods quickly grew to 150, including armor, hairstyles, new locations, effects, items, and a bunch of technical mods for staging scenes, changing props, and most importantly, controlling the light!
The era of Lighty Lights began.
Photo Mode, Lighty Lights and Staged Photos.
The two main criteria for photography—angle and light—were now in my hands.
And that completely changed the game.
Some of my photos for Tavtober 2025
Considering that by this time about a dozen custom locations had been released, and eventually, the Bone Zone appeared—the mere discussion of which not so long ago caused nothing but jokes and giggles in the modding Discord.
We got a full set of tools to create any scene, starting from a dot on an empty map that gradually turned into a scene filled with meaningful objects and light, where the characters could do whatever we wanted.
Photos 2026
BG3 Mighty Nine series | #bg3 mighty nine
To be continued...
What about now?
Strangely enough, I would like to move away from the visual clutter and special effects (which have become so numerous and tempting) and focus on the essence of the captured moment. I want to understand anatomy so that the poses look natural, rather than like broken dolls. I want to learn how to set up lighting correctly. In short, there is plenty of room to grow :)
As for the technical side.
Mmm… I touch up a lot of things in Photoshop, especially everything related to "flaws" in the frames. Sometimes I literally have to draw on missing eyelashes, or fix awkward, unnatural bends in joints, flaws in clothing textures, etc. These things really catch my eye, and I wouldn't want others to see them either. And considering all this editing, I completely abandoned color correction in Reshade; it is rarely successful, cannot be applied to specific zones, and often creates completely unnatural tones or color bleeding in the photo. All color correction is done strictly in Photoshop.
Though I recently bought Regrade, the full module, but haven't had time to master it yet. Maybe one day I'll change my mind. 😉
I wonder what part 4 of this post will be?..
Part I - First Mods and Otis.
Part II - Otis and Game Exploration.
Part III - Photo Mode, Lighty Lights and Staged Photos.
Big thanks to @shkura2011 (view post) and @aristenfromwarsaw (view post) for the interesting tag and equally interesting posts.
As for me, I got into virtual photography even before PM, LL, Otis, MoveHere, and other unique things appeared—the things that made this art (yes, I consider virtual photography an art, no less than traditional photography) accessible to many. Back then, the very concept of a "mod" was something completely magical and inexplicable to me.
When I first started playing, I wanted to capture certain scenes for myself, especially scenes from the cinematics. But the only way to do that was through a regular screenshot.
Some of my first screenshots, 2024.
And I kept seeing similar things from other players, which made me look for new opportunities and angles. I wanted something more, but the game heavily limited my options.
Mods became that "something more."
Mods.
The first serious step was mastering the "Ring of Metamorphs" and writing my own character's preset for it. I went a little crazy at that moment, but I began to understand how the game's script language actually works.
You have changed, Astarion...
More convenient modifications appeared later, but this specific mod became the key that allowed me to "break" the game. I immediately created a few scenes for myself that couldn't exist in the game, and I was very happy with that :)
Otis and Game Exploration.
But an even bigger step was the release of the Otis camera mod—it simply allowed me to rediscover the game.
My first shots with Otis cam.
Now, instead of moving along fixed tracks, I could literally reach any locked area and even go beyond cinematic scenes.
Ring of Metamorphs + Otis.
Otis cam.
Ok, ok, I stop it! :) Let's visit the Underdark!
More Otis cam.
At that moment, I realized that I was truly interested in what was there on the other side of the camera. What is hidden from the game scenes, and what the action looks like from the opposite angle. I dug through literally everything, building myself a 50-gigabyte library of work shots. And I realized that I would have staged many of these scenes differently, with a different camera angle and different lighting.
For example, do you remember the Dream Visitor's story about saving you? The game shows a small snippet where he approaches an open pod aboard the nautiloid, followed by video footage from his hideout. But that snippet on board is much longer.
Wow. He found me!
And if you don't let the cinematic switch you to the next scene, you will see the Dream Visitor looking for you on the burning nautiloid, and… finding you! Damn. When I saw this for the first time, I literally jumped in my chair! :)
But in the official cinematic, this is the scene you actually see:
And this is what the burning nautiloid looks like from the outside...😶
Nautiloid from the outside.
But I've reached my photo limit for this post, so I'll continue in the next one.
Part I - First Mods and Otis.
Part II - Otis and Game Exploration.
Part III - Photo Mode, Lighty Lights and Staged Photos.
The beginning of this post can be found here.
We left off with the burning nautiloid scene and exploring the game using Otis cam. Let's move on.
Otis and Game Exploration.
Rosymorn Abbey.
A very "dangerous" location. You can get lost there for dozens of hours.
What else can two people do in Rosymorn?
And you know, I did end up taking the chest away from the githyanki children and returning the gremishka to its own kind. :)
She was glad to be home.
Last Night Alive.
As for this scene, I think many people know it.
But have you seen it from the other side?
Many of these screenshots are presented with minimal editing, since they are essentially working material for me.
Honestly, I like the reverse angle much more. Even though it is dark, because the game camera is on the other side at that moment, and that's exactly where the light source is attached. But one day I will reshoot this :)
And this is far from everything. There is so MUCH hidden in this game! Otis gives you the opportunity not just to shoot, but to explore.
Some other scenes.
And finally, back to the party.
Traditional test, but with a new experience.
New shots of party.
And yet, it wasn't enough.
These are the first attempts at creating my own scene.
Photomod doesn't exist yet.
Don't ask why they're dressed like that. They're both weird...
Okay, okay. That was a story about a masquerade that I never wrote :)
But more on that in the next part.
Part I - First Mods and Otis.
Part II - Otis and Game Exploration.
Part III - Photo Mode, Lighty Lights and Staged Photos.
