Screenshot deluxe: Fimbulvintern
Screenshot deluxe ist zurück für den Sommer! Wie letztes Jahr soll in dieser Serie in (un)regelmäßigen Intervallen bemerkenswerte In-Game-Fotografie vorgestellt werden - man könnte das vielleicht auch Videogame-Tourismus nennen. Diese Woche, frisch aus dem Flickr-Pool: Fimbulvintern.
Der Schwede Ronny Jakobsson alias Fimbulvintern hat ein Auge für Hochglanz. Seine Panoramen und Actionszenen aus verschiedenen aktuellen und älteren Titeln erinnern wie jene von Duncan Harris an "still photography" an Filmsets. Mit ihm ist nach langem wieder einmal ein Verfechter des Grafiktunings am Wort - und zwar einer, der weiß, was er tut.
At first there where never any real thoughts behind my shoots. My main purpose for screenshotting was purely to share landmarks on a map or to showcase my character in the game, purely functional before anything "artistic". The big change came with Skyrim, where I came to realize the true potential of using games as a platform to shot serious photography.
Using games to shot photos gave me the unique opportunity to quickly travel and explore strange and beautiful new worlds all within a second's notice. Its a bit suprising how in-game photography and real-world pictures come to share so much of the same core principles and philosophy.
One might say it all began as early as the 90's on my Atari ST and the infamous phrase "Punish your machine" coined by Delta Force. I punish my machine pretty much the same way Midhras described in one of your earlier Interviews. In brief: I enhance my games using tweaks, game hacks, colour correction, HD texturepacks, new meshs and basically anything along the road as long as it helps me improve the game in some Visual or technical way. No doubt I'm a game Graphic Junkie, but modding is also fun to do, especially when your getting god at it.
There's always a few exceptions to where I might feel that mods are unnecessary, but I can't stand idly by and watch porly ported games going to squander, just because developers got lazy or didn't have time to fine tune the game before release.
I personally don't approve of the idea to manipulate screenshots beyond the use of cropping and photomerge really, just like Midhras (And i'm sure many others agree). I like to point to one of my pictures and say "Yepp, that's how good it can look".
Since I hail from the northern parts of Sweden it's hard not to take a strong interest in the surrounding landscapes. Romanticism has always been one of my strongest influences, with painters like Arnold Böcklin and Caspar David Friedrich as my favourites. Nature is the one thing you find in all my works. Although I always found post-apocalyptic settings fascinating - perhaps thats the reason i'm so found of Fallout 3.