Virtual World Photoreportages Virtual World Photoreportages

Study Cases

Marco Cadioli, Arenae, 2005

"Arenae [...] is the title of Marco Cadioli's photographic reportages from the virtual battlefields scattered across the net. Cadioli investigates the notion of simulated combat in online multiplayer games such as Counter-Strike, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and Quake III: Arena. As the title itself suggests, Cadioli sees today's ludic arenae as an extension of the traditional arena, where gladiators fought for their lives to entertain a blood-thirsty audience. Multiplayer first-person shooters allow thousands of players to engage in a violent game of cat-and-mouse. These virtual spaces have their own rules, conventions, and limitations: one must search and destroy, kill or be killed, fight or be finished, hide and seek. Cadioli joins the servers, but only to play a peculiar role. He shoots, but does not kill. His weapon is a (virtual) camera. Like a modern-day Robert Capa, the Milanese photographer gets knee-deep in the trenches to capture the intensity of the fights. Under the guidance of an expert player, Gnj, Cadioli takes pictures of the soldiers. [...] He is using a virtual zoom, specifically designed for the job. The resulting 35mm black and white digital photographs evoke the look-and-feel of the "real" war stock photos. The collusion between memory and media is striking. All images are staged and fabricated, Cadioli implicitly suggests, so there seems to be not a significant difference between the photographs of a "real" war and screenshots take during gameplay. Our notions of past, conflict, and violence are made up of images. Arenae exemplifies Cadioli's fascination for what he calls "Internet Landscapes", the vistas and panorama that modern day explorers encounter on the net. Cadioli's goal is to document the transient, preserving these ephemeral moments form disappearing into oblivion. But the enclosed areas in which the fight takes place are also spaces of experimentation, interstitial zones between different planes of reality. Shooting avatars online becomes a pretext to socialize and interact." – Matteo Bittanti, 2005 – quoted on [artist website](https://marcocadioli.com/arenae/)

More about Arenae: marcocadioli.com/arenae

Roc Herms, Postcards from Home, 2016

"With Second Life and virtual reality platforms like PlayStation Home, the world has split in two. In it we have total freedom to invent our own personality and choose any lifestyle we want; on screen we can continue our everyday tedium or we can embark on intrepid adventures. We can decide which virtual urban tribes we want to subscribe to, and, logically, in this world of possibilities, we can become photographers and choose between creating reports in the style of Cartier-Bresson or Robert Frank, or styling portraits like Richard Avedon or Diane Arbus. These dilemmas are some that Barcelonan Roc Herms faces with his project "Postcards from Home". In his virtual life, Herms is always there, camera at the ready, seeking out defining moments that celebrate diversity, in both thematic fixations and stylistic approaches." – Joan Fontcuberta, 2013 – quoted on [*artist website*](https://www.rocherms.com/projects/postcards-from-home/?lang=en)

• More about Postcards from Home: rocherms.com/projects/postcards-from-home
• Screen Walk with Roc Herms: youtube.com/watch?v=_T8ytKjhk1o

Cao Fei, RMB City, 2007–2011

"Cao Fei's RMB City was a fictional Chinese city constructed in the online virtual world Second Life. RMB City opened to the public in 2009 and remained active until 2011, when Cao Fei ended the project. During its time in operation, the city attracted users from the art world as well as a broader virtual community within the Second Life platform, particularly for its events, which included artist projects, contests, and mayoral inaugurations. Over the course of the project, Cao Fei realized a number of installations and video works based on RMB City. She also catalogued RMB City and life within it via an extensive blog and several video works, which reflect the vast scale of the undertaking. Taking place at a time of rapid transformation of Chinese urban space, Cao Fei’s project of producing, maintaining, and inhabiting RMB City was a massive experiment in avant-garde urban planning, and in testing the relationship between the virtual and the real." – Michael Connor, Aria Dean, Dragan Espenschied (eds), The Art Happens Here: Net Art Anthology, Rhizome, New York 2019.

• More about RMB City: caofei.com
• Art21 artist profile: art21.org/artist/cao-fei

Tutorial

Virtual Cameras in VRChat

VRChat offers a full-featured camera simulation that mirrors many concepts from real-world photography. Here’s how to access and use it.

Opening the Camera

Open the Quick Menu and click on the Camera tab at the bottom. You can also open the Action Menu, select Tools, and then select Camera. Double-clicking the Camera button will quickly toggle the camera on and off.

Camera Modes

• Photo Camera — The standard mode for taking pictures. Works like a point-and-shoot: aim and capture.
• Stream Camera — Shows the camera’s perspective in your desktop window instead of your point of view. Useful for composing shots externally or streaming.
• Print Camera — Takes a photo and “prints” it as a physical object in the world that you and others can see. A fun way to share images in real time with other players.
• Camera Drone (VRC+ only) — A fully pilotable drone you can fly around the world, detaching the camera from your avatar entirely. This opens up angles and perspectives impossible with the handheld camera.

Anchor Modes

Where the camera is “attached” changes how it behaves:

• Default — The camera follows your avatar.
• Local — The camera follows your body movement but not your head. Useful for stable compositions while looking around.
• World — The camera is fixed in world space. Place it, walk away, and it stays put — like setting up a tripod.

Focus and Depth of Field

VRChat’s camera includes depth of field controls:

• Full Auto — The camera sets aperture and focal distance automatically.
• Semi Auto — You control the aperture (how blurry the background is), the camera handles focal distance.
• Manual — Full control over both aperture and focal distance, like a real manual lens.

You can click on the camera’s preview screen to move the focus point to a specific area.

Zoom, Filters, and Resolution

• Use the zoom slider on the right side of the camera UI to go from wide-angle (fisheye) to telephoto.
• Apply visual filters (only one at a time) for different color grading effects.
• Adjust the photo resolution for higher quality captures — but be aware that higher resolutions may cause frame lag.

Masks and Layers

The camera lets you choose which elements to include in your shot:

• Local User — Your own avatar.
• Remote Users — Other players.
• Environment — The world itself.
• Green Screen — Replaces the environment with a green screen for compositing.

The Multi-Layer mode captures separate images for each layer, which you can later combine in image editing software — similar to how professional compositing works.

Advanced Camera Tools

The VRChat community has developed more advanced camera systems that can be embedded in avatars:

• VRCLens by Hirabiki — Mimics a real camera interface with advanced controls for aperture, shutter speed, and more.
• VirtualLens2 — Another advanced camera system with a simpler interface.
• Camera Path — An addon that lets you set up predefined camera paths for smooth dolly-like movements.

Where Are Photos Saved?

On Windows, VRChat saves photos to C:/Users/[YourName]/Pictures/VRChat, organized in folders by year and month. You can also open this folder directly from the Camera tab in the Quick Menu.

Other Accessible Virtual Worlds for Photography

Beyond VRChat, several other virtual platforms offer opportunities for photographic exploration:

• Second Life — The original social virtual world, still active with a photography community. It has a built-in snapshot tool with depth of field, lighting controls, and customizable resolution. Many of the artists discussed in this lesson worked extensively in Second Life.
• **IMVU
• Rec Room — A free, cross-platform social game with simpler graphics but easy accessibility. Its camera tool allows basic photo capture in a wide variety of user-created environments.
• Hubs (previously Mozilla Hubs) — A web-based virtual world that runs directly in your browser. The service has been discontinued by the Mozilla Foundation but the Hubs Foundation has taken over. Setting up a new Hub requires time and resources, but joining an existing Hub is easy (try https://hubs.hominidsoftware.com/ or check the Hubs Foundation Discord). Screenshots can be taken with standard screen capture tools. Its accessibility makes it a low-barrier entry point for virtual world exploration.

Assignment

Choose a virtual world — VRChat, Second Life, Rec Room, Mozilla Hubs, or another platform — and produce a photoreportage that documents a community, event, or aspect of daily life within it.

Your reportage should go beyond simply capturing scenic environments. Approach the virtual world as a photojournalist would approach a physical location: observe how people behave, identify stories or social dynamics, and build a visual narrative around what you find.

Specifically, your project should include:

• A series of 8–12 images that together tell a coherent story or convey a specific theme.
• At least 2–3 images that include other avatars/users, showing social interaction, gatherings, or individual portraits (with their permission when possible).
• A short written text (200–300 words) that accompanies the images, contextualizing your reportage: Where did you go? What did you find? What story are you telling, and why?

Think about the photographic decisions you’re making: framing, timing, point of view, proximity to subjects. Consider how the conventions of documentary photography translate — or fail to translate — into a virtual context. What can you show in a virtual world that you couldn’t in the physical one? What is lost?

Look at the study cases above for inspiration: Cadioli embedded himself in war games as a non-combatant; Herms roamed Playstation Home like a street photographer; Cao Fei built an entire city and documented the society that formed within it. Find your own approach.