MinecraftPhotography

I got a confusing e-mail today.

It looks like someone tried to buy a print of one of my most cherished images, but they weren't able to because of dA's fanart prints rules. DeviantART can't print fanart images because of trademarks and copyrights on the content. I had never thought of it that way because I come from a photography background where if you take an image, you own that image. Thought that probably doesn't mean I could just sell a print of a photograph of someone else's work, (for example: if I took a picture of someone's painting, I couldn't sell that picture because it shows someone else's work that belongs to them), it's still came as a surprise.

It's not like I could ever make any tangible money through deviantART (I don't believe you can exchange points for cash-monies), but I did have a dream of making points by selling prints and then using those points to buy my own prints to cover my wall in the images I worked so hard to create. Dreams don't always work out, and that's fine, I'm not too annoyed.

I think my remaining option is to continue to develop my fan-base on dA to leverage it elsewhere, such as on YouTube. I started MinecraftPhotography because it was a different way to do photography, where I could actually get noticed for my efforts (regular photography is an incredibly over-saturated market). But to my surprise MPDB developed into something I had never anticipated and something beautiful. I love making this content, and I love exercising my talents for creating it.

So here we go, continuing on the same path, albeit without one of my dreams. I have dreams for days, though, so it's chill.

Hello Minecrafterers,


Declan here.

I've been playing on a towny server, as you may have seen form my recent journal. The server is about to have a war, and I have decided that after the war (war is this Sat. 1/31) I will be inviting anyone from deviant who is interested, to join my town. I hope I can get to interact with some of my long-term watchers and get to know them better, I think that'd be super awesome sauce, but you know, I'd be happy to talk with anyone.

I did a little poll a while ago to try to get an idea of the interest out there. 25 people wanted to play Minecraft with me, and 15 people were a maybe. THAT'S A LOT.

Anyway, I can't possibly keep track of that many people at once, so I've decided to streamline things a little.

Joining Instructions
If you are interested in playing towny with me, comment on this journal that you are interested. After this weekend I will sends notes to all of the interested people that will give some basic information about my town and how you can join. I will want to know your MC name, or have you know mine so that we can recognize each other on the server.

What is towny? I don't have time to explain it in my own words, so here is a link: Towny Wiki

I hope to get to play with all of you. My town will be focusing on creating awesome buildings and spaces. My town is already the largest on the server, but it needs a lot more work before I am satisfied.

See you around!


Take care,


Declan (RIVANE in Minecraft)

Hello dear deviants,


A lot has been going on for me in the Minecraft world. It's mainly been Towny (A plugin similar to Factions PvP). I have been applying my knowledge gained from playing Factions PvP for two years, to creating a great town in Towny.

I've realized a few things: I can interact and get to know some of my dA followers; perhaps speed up some of my projects; and possibly grow my town and nation (which are both tree-themed) if I were to try to involve my deviantART watchers.

The current plan is for me to set up a Twitch.tv account then stream to my dA watchers, and whoever else decides to pop in. My goals are to teach what I know about towny, to help new players learn the basic and more advanced commands; to communicate to a large number of people to direct large projects; and to entertain whoever stops by.

What needs to happen before I can get this all going would probably be, in no particular order: a second monitor (for monitoring chats and looking things up), the setting up of a Twitch account, and the development of interest for the stream.

Oh! I was also thinking that after certain streams, I would have a "posting party" where I would post an image to deviant art live, and then everyone can look at the image and have a discussion with me about it. I would answer questions, listen to or give advise, and explain the creation of the image.


I leave you with a few questions,

How interested are you in what I have listed above? I.e. Would you tune in for the content I have described?

Would you like to play Towny with me and or be in my tree-themed town?

Would you like to help with projects on the Towny server?

It's very nearly the new year, here in central U.S. I've had many exciting things happen with MinecraftPhotography in 2014 and I can't wait to share those things with you, but for now, I am going to give you a glimpse at what might be on it's way.

The story of how my art got published in the fan-art section of a Minecraft-themed crafts book.

The mod that has a couple of my images as Minecraft paintings.

World downloads of builds or maps created by me may become optional downloads.

I will be looking into collaborations with other deviants.

A new look for MinecraftPhotography's main page.

Perhaps a video-format series of tutorials going over how I make images; how to use the rendering program, how to compose the image, and then the final touches.

Possible Twitch streams.


So far it's been a blast, and I'm curious to see what 2015 will bring! Let's do it!


HAPPY NEW YEAR!

^{What are you excited for in this list?
Do you have any New Year's resolutions?}

Several months ago a fellow deviant contacted me and was interested in me checking out the server he plays on.
A little while later I had gone crazy and taken close to two hundred images. I gave some of the images to Concept-Junky, and I kept a few for posting to MinecraftPhotography.

I have been focusing more on making renders, versus taking screenshots, simply because making a render is more fun. That's why there haven't been many postings from me of non-rendered images.

I didn't go on the server to build anything, so I can't tell you much about the game-play of the server, but I can tell you it has a cool spawn area!


Here is the server IP:108.170.5.66:25645 If you want to see some of these builds for yourself, a lot of them a very near the server spawn.

Below are some of the images I took. Click on any of them to go to Concept-Junky's deviant page for the image.



Just a quick note about the above image: I will be posting a pretty sweet image I took from the crow's nest of this ship.