As an student photography hobbyist in real life (the one other than Minecraft/Boderlands). I learnt that producing good pictures for the display and showcasing your Minecraft structure has a huge influence on people's first impression on your work. A good picture and a boring picture can make the difference of download or no download, favourite or no favourite, and most importantly, diamond or no diamond - in turns it can make or break and affect the popularity of your project. Here I would like to share some of my personal experience photographing my own work in Minecraft:

1. Angle
Angle is perhaps the most important thing to consider when photographing in Minecraft after composition. Depending on the types of photography you are doing (architectural, people, landscape, wildlife etc.) it is always good to use the correct angle to photograph your subject. This is the same principle as having to use different lenses in real life, taking photo of an eagle on the tree on an African plain requires a different lens than taking a picture of a large suspension bridge.

The equivalence of lenses in Minecraft is the FOV setting in the Options menu. You will be able to slide between the different options available. From the most narrow "Normal" setting to the widest "Quake Pro" setting. This is similar to the terminology normally used the photography. For example, "Normal" setting mean that the view of field (diagonal angle of the frame) is roughly the same as "normal" lenses in real life, which in turns mimics the view of field of the human eye, thus they are called "normal".

Along the slider you will find other options, most of them will be in the form of a number. These numbers denotes the diagonal view of field. In Minecraft, the "normal" view of field is 70 degree diagonally, and as the number gets bigger, the wider the scene gets. Until the slider reaches the Quake Pro option which is the widest of all. This is equivalent to an ultra wide angle lens in real life. For instance, if you take two picture standing in the exact position each with the two opposing options, you will find that the one taken with the Quake Pro option on squeeze in loads more than the one taken with the Normal setting on. You will also find that under comparison, objects appears much smaller in the Quake Pro photo than the Normal photo, that is because the angle of view increased dramatically, but the size of the frame stays the same.

Currently I am working on my entry for the Sky Limit contest, and I find myself photographing with the Quake Pro setting option, simply because it offers the ultra wide angle I need to fit everything in the frame and achieve an optical distortion that emphasises the scale and magnitude of my building, thus the Quake Pro option is highly recommended for anyone who do architectural photography in Minecraft.

However, if you are doing other types of photography in Minecraft such as wildlife photography (photographing creepers anyone?), you should use a narrower, "Normal" setting as you can stand further away from your subject and optical distortion might not be the best in a wildlife photo.

2. Composition
Composition is the most important aspect of photography. Given you have a single object against a white background, having a good and a bad composition sets the difference between a good picture and a boring picture. One of the golden rule of photography is "the rule of thirds". In the rule of thirds the frame of the photo is perfectly divided into 9 portions, and to make a picture look good, simply put your main subject on one of the line that divides these 9 portions.

You can also achieve a good composition by analysing the scene and separating the different portions of the scene through colour. For example when you take a photo of a large landscape at sunset, you can mentally divide the picture into three different portions based on the colour, tone and temperature of the area. One part will be warm orange and red, where the sun is, you will also have a second part with a blue or green tint, the other half of the sky less affected by the orange glow of the sun. And a third part which is your landscape. You can then find the point in your scene where these three areas meet; and place that point roughly at the centre of your frame.

A third way to achieve a good composition is simply through the use of symmetry, when you are taking a photo standing at the middle of the road, you can use the white lines of the road to be the line of symmetry. By placing that line at the horizontal middle of your image, the two sides of the road will mirror each other.

3. Lighting
Photography is the combination of two words: photo and graphy. Photo means light and graphy is the recording of another medium. Undoubtably light is extremely crucial in photography. Because of the irregular nature of the real life, lighting can be difficult at times. However in the realm of virtual photography, the perfect lighting can be obtained using just a simple command. Lighting is relatively well done natively in Minecraft. However you can still enhance the lighting of your photo by shooting at specific time such as sunrise and sunset. In real life these time periods of the day are called the "Golden Hour" the first hour after daybreak and the final hour before the sky turns dark, the lighting in Minecraft is also the best at these Golden Hours.

Furthermore, if you demand even better lighting, you can use various mods available on the web to enhance the lighting in Minecraft. I use the Sonic Ethers Unbelievable Shader mod to dramatically enhance the lighting in Minecraft, it also offers loads of other features that can greatly benefit your Minecraft experience.

4. Colour and Post Editing
An important part of modern photography is the editing of the raw image, this is usually called post editing by hobbyists and professionals. The same is for photos taken in a virtual world. Simply a picture is not enough, and definitely not enough when you are putting it up for display to promote your work. This is where bit map photo editing software like PhotoShop (I use Pixelmator) comes in handy.

Colour is the first (or most important) thing to tackle once you have loaded your photo into your photo editing software. Usually two colour management tools are used to correct the colour of your image and make them look more attractive: Level and Curve tool. The Level tool allows you to control the brightness of various tones (amount of black or white, i.e. how dark or how light it is). This is useful to increase tonal contrast in your image. The curve functionality is also crucial, it allows you to increase colour contrast and make the colour "pop" without the trouble of false colour when using the saturation tool.

Usually you take a photo in Minecraft by using the screenshot functionality of your computer, however at times your may not be in fullscreen mode or cannot turn Minecraft into full screen mode. This might result in excess graphical elements in your photo that you don't want. Simply use the Crop tool in your photo editing software to crop out the excess pixels.

Four simple (or perhaps not so simple) ways to approach your photos in Minecraft and make your project more presentable here on Planet Miencraft.

Thanks.

Damon.