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Making Things Look Good

A thought for the day --

As bloggers and "press", part of our jobs -- for some of us anyway -- is to bring attention to new products. They might be free. They might be new releases. We want to present items in their best light. Looking good is part of the package.

But where does the line get crossed? Recently I have seen posts that looked beautiful, arty, enticing. They were of items that I knew weren't up to standards. I am guessing from the artistic license of these posts that the bloggers realized the products had issues and featured them anyway.

To my mind, this is not fair to our readers. Many of our followers expect us to show things we love, like, appreciate -- or at least feel are good design. If our readers go out and buy things or even hunt for them and find that there are giant issues that were swept under the rug, we lose their trust.

And trust is difficult to gain back.

Comments

Dawn Bohemian said…
Exactly the same as I think.
I have a blog about free skins in SL and I would love to put a lot of decoration and photoshop effects to my pictures, but at the same time, I hate it when my readers go to the shop and discover the product is nothing similar to the picture I made.

So I always keep the skins and shapes clean, with some light effects as a marquee, but nothing that changes or interferes with the real nature of the screenshot. :)
Chic Aeon said…
Blogger not happy with comments today. It "ate" someone's before I could even view it and then just deleted MY comment on THEIR possible comment. So if you don't see your ideas appear here, it is most likely because of a technical issue. Trying AGAIN.
Dawn Bohemian said…
Reposting the comments, lol.

I said that I totally agreed with what you were stating in your post.
I have a blog where i mainly write about the free skins I find in SL, and I would LOVE to decorate my pictures with all sorts of photoshop effects, but I simply don't. If I were one of my readers, I'd hate to see a beautiful picture, then go to the shop and found nothing similar to the one I saw in my blog.
I simply create a nice marquee around the picture, position the avatar, etc. but never, ever retouch the avatar itself (skin, shape, hair, clothes...).
Whenever I want to post a piece of art, I'll do it on flickr or deviantart, not on a blog dedicated to help people finding nice "real" things in SL, not illusionary ones.

Hope this gets posted now, lol :D
Thanks for your work, Chic ;)
Yeah I get what you mean. I saw a well known blogger last week take a beautiful shot of herself in a dress that to me looked plasticy.

I personally think it's really can be a personal choice when it comes to quality. And honestly even some prim attachments on some beautiful textured shirt can throw off the the look of the design, I may still blog it. There are limitations in matching prims to say a system shirt texture but I may love the idea of the design or concept so I do my best to adjust.

And it may be a matter of taste as well. I doubt I would ever blog a skirt barely covering my pixel bits mixed with Stilettos and no leggings. But some people want to look like walking sex in their blog and it makes them happy. Quality to me is very subjective. Good post, it made me think. Hugs.
Shelby Rasmuson said…
It's hard to know what you're referring to without knowing which items are in question.. You know I'm always happy to know if there is an issue with any items I blog...and thanks for doing that. Sometimes we miss things but also there are a lot of newer bloggers out there who may not know what to look for. (and some who just aren't looking, or miss issues..)
Chic Aeon said…
Thanks for all your comments and I totally agree about the style point of view and the attachments that might not work for everyone.

I was referring to things such as seams being mismatched by what would be inches in RL *wink*, poses that completely cut an arm off down to less than a bone width could possibly be -- things like that. BIG things :D. And of course I didn't (and will not) point fingers; that wasn't the point.

And no it wasn't you Shelby. I love your posts.

We all make errors in judgment from time to time. I know I certainly have, and we learn from those mistakes. I just wanted to point out that our decision to post an item (without a caveat if needed) may have bigger repercussions that we expect. Art is good. I like arty things -- just not when they are used to cover up major flaws.

Just so you know I took a screenshot of your comments before I hit "OK" - LOL. Glad Blogger is working again. Yeah! And your original note came through AGAIN Dawn, I just didn't post both as they said the same thing. And then there it is like it should have been in the beginning - LOL.

Again, thanks to all.
Anonymous said…
I agree, very much. That is why on my own blog, I only take time to change the color of the backdrops and soften edges a little bit.

When I blog on the Freebie Telegraph, I take and display the pictures as they would look in world. If I'm given something that I don't like or has a big problem or even if I'm unsure about said item(s), I don't blog them. I see that as purposefully misleading people, and I hate to be mislead so why would I want to do that to someone else?
I appreciate what you are saying completely, and I personally never go out of my way to hide a flaw in an item I'm blogging. In fact, will rarely blog an item that I think has a substantial flaw unless it's really special for some other reason. For example, I'm much less critical of a designer's first offerings if I'm impressed with the creativity and originality of the design. It takes time to for most people to learn the technical side of producing garments in SL, and I want to encourage them along their learning curve.
Pink Sommerfeld said…
Yes, once that trust is lost, it can be a very difficult thing to get back.

I purchased a designer couture dress several months ago -- paid 600L for it -- based on a post by a well known fashion blogger. I can say with all honesty, it is the most poorly crafted item in my inventory and it irritates me to no end that it was misrepresented to people this way. The problems? It's a backless dress and there are huge splotches that show on my avatar's skin where the designer failed to clean up the alpha areas. The skirt is so thrown together it looks like a chimpanzee constructed it. It's ridiculous!

To this day, I can't read that particular fashion blogger's website without wondering if she is misrepresenting something for her numerous friends who give her clothes for promotion... or if she is so ego-centered that she doesn't care if she is misrepresenting something -- it looks good in the post, right? Grrr.

Furthermore, I can't shop at that particular designer's boutique, because I don't trust that what I see on the wall of the shop is worthy of my time, energy and money.

Makes me wish there was a Consumer Reports or Better Business Bureau blog for Second Life. ;)

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