Venus Albums

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Venus Albums
Senior staff
FounderJohngi
CEOJohngi
Facts and figures
Founded09/12/2018 (DD/MM/YYYY)


Venus Albums is a photographer company owned by IOI which makes pictures for towns, companies or the MRTvision Screenshot Contest (as Johngi). The company was founded on the 9th of December 2018, when it released its first album of Sunshine Coast. The company then progressed to be a general place for getting cheap, good shader photos for anything from adverts to logos.

City Albums

The company, as expressed above, has made many albums for cities and towns.

Please click on the photos to be taken to the main album page.

Sunshine Coast

Venus Albums SSC.png

Woodsdale

Venus Albums Woodsdale.png

Carnoustie

Carnoustie has had several albums taken, and more to be made later, according to the seasonal change of Carnoustie. Here are the albums in the order presented below.

  1. Winter Carnoustie
  2. Spring Carnoustie

Venus Albums Carnoustie Winter.png
Venus Albums Carnoustie Spring.png

Prices

Venus Albums make picture albums depending on the size of your town and how many pictures it finally takes. Companies are not subject to the former rule, and only pay for the pictures they choose to use from Venus Albums.

Cities

Depending on the size of your city, you may be charged separate amounts. This slight discount for smaller cities is to allow members who may not have much money to buy an album to publicise their small town:

Recommended Rank Price Description
Councillor/Mayor $1 per picture Expect up to 10 pictures taken.
Senator/Governor $2 per picture Expect between 10 to 20 pictures taken.
Premier $3 per picture. Expect between 25 and 35 pictures taken.

These ranks do not mean that you can only get the pack your town falls in to! If you have a sufficiently large town, you can apply for the next higher package, but it will be up to the photographer to accept the package or only do a smaller one.

MRTvision 7 Semi Final 2 Opinion List

REMEMBER, THIS IS A STRICTLY OPINIONATED, BIASED AND UNOFFICIAL LIST
Also, if you are the owner of one these pictures and would like a statement, please contact Johngi

A little announcement for this time round: as I'm most familiar with Semi-Final 2, since I'm running in it, I thought it would be fair to do the list for Semi-Final 2. I'm still going to do a combined list when we get to the final, of course.

The reasoning behind this is that I make this list as an interest to the voter - public or private - and give my considerations for why some pictures may be considered, as well as general food for thought when looking at the pictures in general. It wouldn't make sense to make a combined list for Semi Finals 1 & 2, as the voter groups for those groups are separate and it won't be much of an interest for both of them to have a separate list, and some of them may be gone by the time we get to the finals anyways. Nor do I have time to do one for both Semi-Finals - the picture I made burned me out enough. So I've decided to do the one for the semi-final I'm in - The 2nd one for the... 3rd time in a row.

Venus Albums Picture: "The Massed Bands of the Royal Marines"

MRTV7 The Massed Bands of the Royal Marines.png

This picture was created with one goal in mind: Make something human scale - that is, alive. These days most pictures are landscape shots or rather empty cities - I've done this before and I think you can get some rather nice pictures out of it but I wanted to do something with a bit more people in it. And I don't mean things like MRTvision 4's "Early Arrival" which was nice but only had 3 or 4 people in it. I wanted... just a bit more.

The picture is head on view of the Massed Bands of the Royal Marines - as its name suggests - which isn't any specific band but rather a collection of bands from various regiments playing together. I've tried to make them semi-accurate - you can see a comparison if you look up a Beating Retreat video on youtube with the royal marines - as well as making them detailed enough that it doesn't look like something I just copied and pasted everywhere but rather a real uniform with plenty of detail.

Another thing I've always been a fan of is sharp, vibrant pictures - default shader LUTs tend to be a bit soft around the edges, and their colours are a bit soft too - which is why I really like the shaders I use.

#5 "And she's buying a stairway to heaven" by cal76

10 And She's Buying A Stairway To Heaven - cal76 (Waverly).png

I don't like the idea that some things - such as lens flares - are bad. Everything is a tool, and everything can be used in some way to at least do something interesting. That is not to say overuse is good - nor is it to say that all tools have a wide range of situations where they might be useful - and not even that they will be useful - just interesting. But this is a situation where lens flare is not only interesting but works in this picture.

I've covered a similar photo back in MRTvision 4 called "After a Rainy Night" by autobus22, and I've said some similar things back then. The lens flare is an interesting feature that adds a lot to a boring picture - and so are cloud patterns. I also really like how the trees on the right side are bounded on the top by a lit up strip of leaves - ostensibly as a result of "Fancy" quality graphics and a low density of leaves - but still an impressive effect caused by two easy to use factors. This is a good all-round picture.

#4 "Kolpino City Light" by Echohue

01 Kolpino City Light - Echohue (Bahia).png

Unlike the previous picture, which was higher than some people might have put it because I think it's interesting, this picture is lower than it might be because of some things in it I feel don't work - but still a great picture. First of all, while I don't usually take notice to it, there is a noticeable lack of smooth lighting which is compounded by the darkness of the picture. Secondly, the sky is quite bright and the clouds, especially, are out of place - the transition from a night city to a late evening with quite bright clouds is a bit jarring. Thirdly, the water... I'm not sure what happened with the water. It looks like mercury rather than water.

These things by themselves would be perfectly fine, but when combined I feel like it lowers it in the rankings. All of this adds to the fact that Echohue has made some great pictures before, especially of SSC, but this one is noticeably less interesting - I would have rather had another excellent picture from Sunshine Coast, but that may just be my taste.

I'd like to note - I'm not against experimentation, in fact it has produced many interesting works. But I feel like this picture specifically is a bit of a step backwards compared to the many interesting and different pictures of Bahia Echo has been making. This just seems notably normal compared to those.

#3 "Heart of the City" by lil_shadow59

The picture is such high resolution the wiki doesn't want to show it here....

Another lovely picture from lil, who has had something of a running streak in recent contests. Sharp, simple and good looking, it's really just a good picture. It captures the business of a city - the train in the background, the streets to the left - in a calm garden; it has sharp colours and a very well lit up pool - it's a good picture.

The reasoning behind #3 is that it's a rather neutral picture - it doesn't really capture any emotion in it - and it relies a lot on the excellent textures and good camera work to make the picture interesting. That can't carry a picture alone, especially in such a complicated setting.

#2 "A morning up high" - frogggggg

07 A Morning Up High - frogggggg (Titsensaki).png

While #3 didn't really capture emotion in such a complicated setting, this picture took simplicity and ran with it. This just works. It's simple, it's good looking, and it does all of this with a shader that doesn't usually produce the best photos - which makes it particularly impressive. Add that to the fact that it's by a contestant who hasn't seen much success (they have only participated in one contest where they got 4 points and failed to qualify) and it just adds that little bit to the picture to push it up to 2nd.

I would also like to point out that "Everything will be Alright in the End", a similar picture, would have made it here in the top five almost certainly... If it wasn't for the massive FOV. The mountain is reduced to a small speck in the middle, the leaves are stretched to cover most of the picture - the picture as a whole has a fish-eye effect - all things that really don't work in screenshots, which is why it's not included in this list.

#1 "City of the Crags" by Moj1014

17 City of the Crags - Moj1014 (Deadbush).png

This is a picture similar to Kolpino City Light that uses its shaders to a lot more potential by a participant with less experience in the contest - which is why I put it up at first. Kolpino City Light has a dark sky with bright clouds sharply contrasting jarringly with the city - while this uses what appears to be very similar shaders but with dark, fog like clouds and a dimmer skyline - both of which work well together to produce a foggy, but busy, city.