There would have been a time when teaching photography without a camera would make no sense. We can talk about theory and look at examples all we want. But at some point, being a practical skill, we need to actually shoot to start learning by doing. On the other hand, I have discovered that there are times when a camera sometimes gets in the way of the learning process. This is yet another thing that doesn’t necessarily make sense at face value. Or maybe there are other issues at play.
Teaching photography online can already be frustrating enough as it is. Lessons that should’ve been over in a day or two can take weeks to facilitate. And even then, I wouldn’t really know if I’ve gotten through to my students. I know there’s no guarantees either when teaching face to face, but at least you have facial expressions and body language to go by. And you can corner students a little bit if needed. Once they stop responding to you through discussion forums or whatever online tool you’re using, there’s hardly anything you can do. There is a social aspect to teaching and learning photography which you can’t really online, at least not anywhere near the same pace as being physically being at the same place.
This has led me to be perpetually on the lookout for anything I can use or leverage to help me and my students to somehow make the most of the rather short time allotted for the class. I’m tired of cutting corners. There has to be something I can actually add that doesn’t make it seem like I’m overloading the students.
I did find something.
The game photography activity of MMS 173 is meant to provide an alternate means of learning photography without a physical camera. On top of constantly improving visuals and virtual environments, games have started featuring in-game photo modes, or at least make it easier to take screenshots using third party tools and even the operating system’s print screen function. As someone who used to write game reviews, I knew first-hand that it was not always this convenient in the past.
Even though they will not always be playing the same ones that I did, there will be some in each class who will be attracted to the idea of taking game photos, being gamers themselves. It might even attract non-gamers, whether it be due to the extra credit or simple curiosity.
The current format of this optional assignment consists of three parts — pre-production, the photoset, and self-reflection. Let this article serve as an example for my students that have opted to do this activity.
Pre-production
The activity starts by choosing a game. Only one game should be used for the activity and the submission. I have an older sample of this activity where I used The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Even being a 10 year old game at this stage, it remains a fantastic game for this activity. For this sample, I wanted to use something that looks drastically different.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a first person role playing game from CD Projekt RED based on the Cyberpunk pen and paper table top RPGs from the 1980s created by Mike Pondsmith. As backdrop, the game is set in a futuristic alternate reality where the Soviet Union did not collapse, while at the same time, Europe and Japan emerged as superpowers, all the while the United States faced collapse thanks to war and economic decline. Both the tabletop and CRPG is primarily set in the fictitious Night City, an area supposedly situated in the US West Coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco, but remains independent from the rest of the country. You play as V, a mercenary trying to make a name for himself (or herself, if you play the female version) by taking all sorts of jobs throughout Night City.
Unlike the fellow CDPR-developed The Witcher 3, this game is almost bereft of the greens and blues of pristine natural landscapes. Instead, CP2077 is predominantly made up of sprawling urban areas and high rise buildings, much of which are in varying stages of decay. Outside the city is a large desolate desert area that can be even more dangerous than the city itself.
There is certainly a look to the game that is reminiscent of aesthetics in post-apocalyptic movies from the 1980s. Based on how I’m describing the game, so far, I can understand if it seems like I am not selling this well as a great venue for virtual photography. But there are compelling reasons for me to argue that it actually is. First, is that while doom, gloom and nihilism abound, Night City is almost paradoxically teeming with life and vibrance. It is interesting how the game’s aesthetics meld 20th century sensibilities with how Pondsmith and CDPR envisioned future technology based on divergent world events. Even the badlands outside Night City has a certain beauty to it despite the sparseness. Second, the game has a sophisticated in-game camera that’s fantastic for various types of photography. Lastly, the game is supported by a large dedicated contingent of the modding community. Since the game’s release, the community has created high quality mods, not just for enhancing gameplay, but also the visuals, thereby providing even more capabilities and possibilities for virtual photography.
It had actually been a while since I last played this game. I have old virtual photos from the last four years that I could use for this article, but I chose to start over with the most recent updates for both the game and the mods, of which there are many. Nexus Mods is the go-to repository for a huge amount of mods for so many games. Their Vortex application made the process easy, allowing me to collect dozens of mods mainly for enhancing the visuals and new weapons and outfits. I’m not really that particular with how the male V looks. But for the female V, there are just way too many options for dolling her up that it’s impossible for me to ignore and not try them out. And this is just perfect. Based on what I have seen so far, CP2077 has always had a huge potential for portrait and action photography. The only problem I experienced in the past is that, at least with my rig, the photo mode seems to have trouble with focus and sharpness, especially when I try to go for shallow depth of field. Fortunately, my most recent tests have shown that it those problems have been solved, either through the recent game updates or a few of the mods I installed.
The locations in CP2077 isn’t nearly as diverse as The Witcher 3. Come to think of it, any AAA game with a fairly epic scale will have more variety in terms of landscapes. But the sheer size of the setting provides plenty of both indoor and outdoor locations. It is a matter of careful exploration to look for details big and small that can capture my imagination and spark some idea of what I can do. Fortunately, having played the game for hundreds of hours does give me the advantage of familiarity, lessening the need to scour Night City.
Action shots are surprisingly difficult to take in-game. Unlike 3rd person action games, CP2077 does not render V’s animation in photo mode. So I couldn’t capture V’s motion while slashing with a katana, or reloading a shotgun. The photo mode allows for action-oriented poses to compensate for this shortcoming. But it’s not the same. It’s a bit disappointing, considering all the possibilities with all the slick-looking melee weapons. I’ll have to make do with what other options are available.
The game’s strength lies in staged shoots, portraiture and street photography, of which I could easily get lost into, spending hours I do not have, fussing over V’s appearance and outfits, vehicles and even the virtual world’s ephemeris and weather. And so these are what I focused on for this mock exercise.
Photoset
I did get lost into the game. I like to think of myself as someone who has the discipline to follow rules and instructions. But I have to admit that I had a hard time narrowing down the set to 5 photos – a rule I made up myself. But here we are.
Lazing (Glen Apartment, The Glen)
During early mornings, sunlight comes through the large windows of the Glen Apartment, potentially allowing for many possibilities for portraiture. I can easily complete this sample assignment on this location alone and still have plenty of shots to spare. And that is not necessarily a good thing. A message I repeatedly tell students is that narrowing a photoset down to a small number might sound easy. But it can just as easily become an excruciating process requiring a high level of emotional intelligence. This was my first virtual location and I was already faltering in the face of my own rule.
After pondering over it, I settled with a shot of my female V sitting on her bedroom floor while I shot against the light from the windows at the background. This was actually my first idea and among my first shots. I had starting to lean towards a different picture, but eventually came back to this one. I took this shot just before I started installing the mods, so in this photoset, this is the only one using stock appearances. The only mod used here was extra lighting as fill light to compensate for the shadows the intense sunlight coming from behind. Yes, I did try replicating this shot after I installed all those mods. But for some reason, I couldn’t capture the exact vibe as this one. The only explanation I can come up with is that, aside from these sunrises feeling like they’re not quite the same each passing day, this not-so-feminine pose works well with this tomboyish vanilla version of my female V. The clothing also helped. It was an interesting experience because the same thing happens to me in the real world.
Despite being a bit unsatisfied, this one eventually won me over because the sunshine hit just in the right place, lining up for the rule of thirds, opposite V’s head and upper body. The frame is also filled with a lot of lines following different rhythmic patterns, with V not aligning with most of them. The fairly subdued background blur thanks to the rendered depth of field augmented the sense of space already evoked by the diagonal lines of the floor and bed.
Critical Hit (Impala Automatics, North Oak)
While I already had a feeling that this photoset will likely be dominated by my female V. I wanted to make it a point to include at least one photo of my male V… the one I actually consider canon, at least in my playthroughs.
As mentioned earlier, action shots are tricky to take in this game. V’s body movement while fighting isn’t really rendered in third person point of view. While not really the same, this is compensated for by making use of pre-rendered action poses available in photo mode. Some staging would also be necessary to make the scene up. The Short Circuit quick hack provides some flashy effects when used on a robot. With some luck, I got the timing right for activating photo mode as the sparks flew from the enemy. I didn’t have a pose available for such an action, so I had to improvise. There’s a pose with V in the air while shooting, a la Max Payne in Bullet Time. The scene doesn’t quite make sense in the context of an actual combat scene in CP2077. But it makes for a decent action shot. I also had to add just enough lighting aimed at V’s hair to add some highlights and show some texture. Fortunately, aside from the subtle reflection on V’s right shoulder, the extra light had no effect on any other part of the frame.
This photo does follow the golden spiral, as well as the rule of thirds (albeit weakly). I also sacrificed depth of field to keep the short circuited robot’s image sharp and clear. What the photo does have strongly, however, is a radial composition, with the sparks, bolts and V himself flying away from the robot. The photo mode’s chromatic aberration slider subtly stretched out the edges of the image, accentuating the sparks’ perceived motion. Reciprocally, the direction V is looking at and how the pistol is aimed creates a leading line, the presumed path of a bullet, back to the robot. It’s too bad there was no good way to show V’s face here, which I had set an aggressive expression to evoke tension or desperation as he tries to avoid getting hurt or killed.
Recon the Bar (Black Sapphire, Dogtown)
The uninitiated can look at Keanu Reeves’s Johnny Silverhand like V’s imaginary friend. To put it with a little bit more accuracy, he is a digitized human consciousness downloaded to his cybernetics-implanted brain.
into V’s cybernetics-implanted brain who shows up from time to time for conversation across the game’s plot. And once again, I had to deal with the dilemma of choosing which scene to capture that’s not part of a cutscene. I settled with this one, at a bar in Black Sapphire, the stronghold of the de facto ruler of Dogtown. This is part of a key plot point where V is supposed to gather intel on two people, one of whom is the lady sitting at the bar behind Sllverhand.
Two things are most obvious here to me. One, I really like the warm lighting here. Second, this shot obviously follows the rule of thirds. But more importantly, it also follows the golden spiral whose path hits Silverhand’s face, the bottles of liquor, the bar and the lady. The depth of field not only creates a better sense of space and distance, but also creates a play of perspective and emphasis. This shot just as easily could’ve focused on the lady instead and have Silverhand as part of a blurred foreground rather than the main subject. This is an exercise I used to practice back when I was still learning to be more deliberate with my composition.
The only thing I wish I could change here is the presence of that man further away in the background. It won’t be so easy, though, as this not a staged shot and there are a lot of NPCs in this area. If not that man, then there’s another one that will probably be in the way, too.
Focus (Chram Denya Jinja, North Oak)
The number of possibilities for shooting my female V skyrocketed after installing all the mods I have in the game now. She transformed from the tomboy that I had in the first photo to someone more… feminine. There was definitely no shortage of racy and erotic outfits and poses in the mods. But believe it or not, I wasn’t too interested in those, at least for this photoset. I’m not above teasing, but I prefer to keep things relatively clean and wholesome here… for now.
My original plan was to include a photo of my male V with a sniper rifle, and then have my female V with a pistol. But the availability of several poses with a sword changed things.
This is probably the simplest, most straightforward shot I have in this photoset. Out of all the poses with a katana that was available, this was the one that I liked at that moment. But finding a good angle while keeping the katana whole in the frame was tricky. My initial intention was to have V in the middle of the frame, even though I was not a big fan of that, or subjects in the middle of the frame in general. After thinking about it some more, I decided I wasn’t going to settle for that. The adjustment was simple, and should’ve been obvious. But I got too precious with a few self-imposed restrictions, namely avoiding the rule of thirds and keeping the background free of man-made structures. After letting go of those, I was able to come up with a composition which I feel is superior to my previous attempts.
This retake lines up V’s dominant eye, and along with it were her head and upper body to follow the rule of thirds. There are a lot of overlapping objects in the frame. Fortunately, the combination of the relatively thin depth of field and the building in the background allowed for a clearer separation from the subject. The building also contextualizes the picture. This version of my V is definitely Caucasian, but the katana and the Japan-inspired landscape and architecture gives the picture a more oriental theme. The pose and orientation of both V and the katana builds some tension, as if she’s ready to slash diagonally at you at any given moment. And if that were the case, of course you’d want her in full view front and center. The depth of field further increases that emphasis on V, creating substantial background blur and isolating the subject. As additional cosmetic touch, it is worth noting how the virtual morning sun from the right of the frame creates some play of shadow on V’s front and back, highlighting the skin tone and texture of the fabric of her crop top.
Car Mag Shoot (Kerry Eurodyne Residence, North Oak)
For something that’s more akin to what people do in the real world, I thought of doing a model shot starring none other than my freshly modified female V. I did some close up shots, but subsequently decided to include something else here. I thought it might be a good idea to have a model and a product in one shot. A car was an obvious choice. I had initially wanted to photograph a car as I would have in Forza Horizon 4 or 5, but was underwhelmed with the results. So, the next best thing would be to just shoot a car with the model.
The Quadra Avenger isn’t exactly the best car in CP2077. But as far as looks go, it’s one of my favorites. I mean, I did try shooting the Rayfield Caliburn, what I think is the actual best car in the game. But the Avenger has a lot more character to it. It’s a fairly straightforward shot, as well == the car at a diagonal with V at the right side of the frame to follow the rule of thirds, and provide some balance with respect to the car. There is only a hint of background blur – a tradeoff to keep most of the car sharp and in focus. In tandem with the short black Cheongsam dress whose color complements V’s complexion, the photo was also taken from a slightly lower perspective, accentuating her legs and making her look more statuesque. Even I was surprised.
Reflections
There are just so many things I can say about the game and the shoot.
The stock photo mode was already quite capable. The only thing I did in post using a third party software was to reduce file size. There are limits to the distance from which you can shoot, but a lot of controls you would see from a real camera can be found here. Aside from the depth field parameters, of particular importance is the ability to adjust field of view. I did not realize it early on, but the game’s photo mode also simulates lens distortion, which is something that cannot be ignored, especially when shooting subjects up close. This is key to great portrait photos. The mods, however, took things to a whole new level. They offered extra lighting options, more poses and facial expressions, control over weather, more filters and LUTs, adding more NPCs… it’s just amazing. Part of me feels a little bad that I can only highlight this in a limited capacity.
Together with the core graphics, the mods can also help create spectacular visuals approaching realism. The problem is that you need really good hardware to allow for it. My Even back when both were still new, my Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060Ti already had trouble running Cyberpunk 2077. The most recent updates and mods only makes rendering more difficult for the hardware. This is a problem I have always experienced since my very first PC back in the 1980s. Every PC gamer and enthusiast who’s been around long enough have lived through the reality of the arms race – the cycle of upgrades and squeezing every bit of performance you can from what you already have. This comes as no surprise at all.
The real challenge for me was dealing with the option paralysis when shooting photos in this game. It is easy to lose yourself in the game while doing this activity. At some point I just had to stop and write down my general ideas just to keep myself in line. Despite that, I still spent hours trying to decide which appearances, outfits, weapons and locations to use. And then I’d spend even more hours taking shot after shot until I got something I liked. And when I was done, I’d have no idea how I was going to narrow my selection down. The class activity which this sample article was written for restricts the participant to submit 5 and only 5 game photos. I’m not even going to allow the inclusion of an appendix in the article that would include extra takes. I have full knowledge of how hard it is to follow this rule. It demands discipline and high emotional intelligence. And that is exactly why I insist.
Early on in MMS 173, despite my interest and outward advocacy for this activity, I was on the fence about having it permanently as a class activity. Only a minority of students had the interest or the equipment to do this activity well. There were also relatively few good options as far as the games were concerned. It’s a little different now, though. While by no means of equal quality, there are so many great-looking games now that has photo modes. A digital divide yet remains, though. My outlook has improved a bit. I would like to keep having this as part of MMS 173, but I don’t think we’re anywhere close to elevating it to being more than a bonus activity.
That being said, I firmly believe that games are not just an exciting, but also powerful tools for learning photography. It won’t help to committing how to operate your real camera to muscle memory. You can only achieve that by putting in the time for that particular camera. But game photography is fantastic for the methodical practice of composition and getting more familiar with a lot of the rules and effects of different exposure settings. You can practice repeatedly for countless hours, testing only your own patience. No need to worry about your human subjects getting bored and tired. No need to be shy when shooting subjects up close and personal. So, when the time comes for you to go out and practice what your learned in-game in the real world, you can presumably go about it in a more purposeful and deliberate manner. You’ll be more efficient and less reliant on trial and error.
Perhaps the only thing I feel that’s left unfinished in this trial of mine is that I didn’t satiate my urge to go all out and do more advanced or more intricate shots with Cyberpunk 2077. I’m kind of envious of some of the stuff I’ve seen from other people. It’s not that I was holding back. Or perhaps I did, due to time constraints. I needed to put this out quick enough in order for it to have some chance to be of benefit to my students for their own submissions. And now I have to focus on other things, as well. I’ll probably go back to the game to do just that at some point. There will likely be more enhancements to come for this game to come. And who knows… maybe I’ll have a better graphics card by then.