Photo Diary: February 8, 2025 / On the Subject of Distance
Recently, while I was thinking about the sense of distance with my girls while taking photos, my friend Nyure-san shared this article with me, so I've decided to write about the concept of distance.
To begin with, since around last year, I had been thinking about what I could do to help them exist there. Since I started photography in VRC, the mainstream methods for avatar photography were using world-fixed cameras or drones. In other words, I had been taking photos by deciding on the composition and framing on the camera's display. However, that alone felt insufficient, and since I don't necessarily want to create beautiful images or express something through art, I wondered what to do, and decided to capture the experience of them existing.
To emphasize the presence of the character, I used a fisheye lens and realistic worlds to make Anomea-chan, whose design is close to an illustration, stand out.
I take these photos with the feeling that I want them to exist there when I see the scenery, but I felt I hadn't escaped from the idea of 'creating an image' and that it was just emphasizing presence, so I wanted to take photos in a more natural way. I especially felt that my own perspective as an observer was missing, so I did this photo to include that.
I utilized Integral to create an atmosphere close to a real-life photograph while having Grus-chan walk around as a person who is actually there. It created a strong sense of a world existing beyond the viewfinder. However, the main focus of this photo was
there are people, there is light, and the city is alive so it wasn't about the character.
I was quite troubled from this point on, as I could only take photos in a way that acknowledged the world and their existence within it. Then,
Avatar Pose System (APS) appeared. APS not only made photography more convenient but also allowed them to exist in that space (by being able to place avatars in the world), separating the photographer and the model, who had previously been one and the same. Though, I suppose it's rare to have so many situations where the photographer and model are the same person in a selfie... This has led to an '
era of distance
,' where I can search for the right spacing, such as distance and relationship, while looking directly at them as they exist before my eyes. No, sorry, I just wanted to say 'era of distance.' It's a term Nyure-san coined, but I want to make it popular. Only after being able to do this did I realize that people who are good at capturing existence are good at gauging the distance between them.
That aside, by being able to consider not just the image composition but also the relationship between the model and the photographer who isn't in the frame, I can now differentiate between how they look to the naked eye and how they look through the viewfinder, and even capture 'expressions that only emerge because of this specific distance.' I've become able to capture their existence more strongly. I think I can still refine this, so I'll keep at it.
I want to continue capturing the simple fact of their existence.
