Virtual photography, also known as game photography, screenshot photography, or putsovagery, is a form of new media art which consists of taking screenshots of video game worlds.
In 2020, after a particularly troubling year, Horizon Zero Dawn released for the PC during late August. The game was honestly a godsend for me, and helped me cope through some troubling times, quickly becoming my favourite game. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the game would later after a few playthroughs end up sparking what would come to be a great interest for me, in virtual photography. It all started with Zero Dawn’s photo mode.
While making this website, one thing I wanted to incorporate more than anything else save for my videos was a way to show off photos I’ve taken in games, and this is the start of that!
I figured for a starting post, I may as well go right back to the start, thus Zero Dawn comes in.
WARNING: Location spoilers for Horizon Zero Dawn are of course ahead. If you do plan on playing the game sometime, I’d suggest skipping for now, as it has one of the best worlds I’ve ever seen in a game no lie.
The Beginning
Here you can see the very first photos I took in any game ever. They’re all in chronological order, and for reference, any later photos will be too. I took them all in September 2020.
Honestly speaking, for first time ever, these are still really pretty to me. Although considering how beautiful the game itself is, that comes as no surprise.
Nonetheless, when you look at the difference over time, you can definitely see a rise in quality. Especially moving on to Zero Dawn’s sequel, Forbidden West, but that’s another article in itself.
Fittingly, I would say the very first one feels the weakest of them all, and the one with the clock tower feels the strongest to me. I’m not really sure what it is about that one, but it just gives off the right atmosphere to me.
The Frozen Wilds
My next foray into the world of virtual photography came 8 months later (for the most part anyway).
I was replaying Zero Dawn for the 3rd time and upon reaching the DLC area, ‘The Frozen Wilds’, the view greeting me was just so pretty that I had to take a picture to share on discord.
Taking this photo almost flicked a switch inside of me, as come the next day I went on a spree, taking photo after photo.
The photos below started during me playing the final quest of the DLC, but by the end of it things had just reached the point of me playing for the sake of taking photos.
In these photos I started to play around with the depth of field and the lighting a lot more.
You can definitely tell this, as in some of them it’s executed really well and looks amazing, but in others it creates weird blurs or shadows on Aloy’s face.
Although some of these photos aren’t the best, I feel like without these I wouldn’t have gotten into virtual photography as much as I have, so I look back quite fondly on them.
Into the Future!
I haven’t taken too many photos Zero Dawn since then, instead opting for just taking a few over a longer period of time. However, I feel like all of these are of greater quality compared to the first ones, and really show how far I’ve come - all within one game.
That’s it for my first photography post, and all of my photos from Zero Dawn, however there is more to come.
I’ll be looking to make some posts on Genshin Impact and Horizon Forbidden West, which I’ll include here when they’re up!