As my first article for the studio I had to think of a subject to write about. The inspiration came after remembering a comment from one of our members about my first shots ever on Simviation. It was a two shot set featuring an F-14 and a Lockheed Constellation. He said that my shots were so much better now. And me having just did a new thread featuring the Constellation had a look back and saw the huge difference. There was a huge amount of difference in how I could make the aircraft look. Back then I liked just about everything. I think my major spamming of the boards back then proved that. Nowadays I post less but better.

So what I want to write about is something I ended up calling home advantage. I think this thread is useful for beginning screenshots artists especially. I have a rather outdated system and instead of completely covering the Simulator in new scenery add-ons and such I concentrated most on specific areas. These areas are The Alps, the U.K. and British Columbia in Canada. Now I’m not telling you not to visually perfect the entire sim world if you have the system to run it and the time to do it. But because I have a select area of which I think it looked good, I usually ended up flying there. In time you increasingly learn how to perfectionize the use of the scenery. How to set-up the sim in terms of light and such. How high to fly and what angles look nice etc etc etc. I compared older shots and newer ones to see where I had improved and what still needed improving on. Now I am in no way an expert in screenshot taking such as Dave and Ramsa just to name two, but by comparing my shots in a rather similar setting I could see the difference and improve. The same thing goes for the choice of aircraft. There are always a few favorites in your aircraft folder and once you fly them more and take more screenshots of the subject, you learn how to optimize its strong point and how to eliminate the possible weak-points.

In the end my tip is reasonably simple. Instead of swarming the world in as much planes as possible. Try to focus your vision a bit more and specialize in a certain area first. Compare older shots with your newer shots. And when you have improved then try the techniques out in different area’s and with different aircraft. Slowly and steadily you’ll conquer the entire simulator world. Also do not be afraid to ask opinions. The Studio especially is the place where you can ask help and opinions. Eventually that is what will make you a better screenshot artist.

Cheers

Souichiro/Martijn