Often the most difficult part of improving as a photographer has less to do with equipment, and more with finding the time and opportunities to take photos in new places and expand your skills at pressing the shutter. What are the best settings for your camera? How does the aperture and lens focal length impact the bokeh? How should you frame a shot in order to best capture the emotions and beauty of a location, not just what you can see?
Which is why, for all it can’t entirely replace the feeling of using a real camera, Lushfoil Photography Sim does a great job of allowing experts and newcomers alike a chance to relax and hone their photography skills in some of the world’s most beautiful landscapes.
From Italy to Iceland, Australia to Japan, and so many places in between, only you and your virtual camera sit between a chance to explore painstakingly-recreated iconic touristy and visually-stunning locations, devoid of people and with as much time to explore and photograph as you could ever desire. It’s freeing, calming at times of stress, but it’s the benefits this game offers as a learning tool that make it such an appealing proposition.
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Every frame a painting
On the surface, Lushfoil Photography Sim is exactly what it claims to be. There’s a serenity that comes when launching the title for the first time and being thrown immediately into the gorgeous Southern Italian mountainous landscapes of Lago di Braies.
Ironically, a place I personally have admired in photos but had never visited, I could now explore with a camera in hand. The music is minimal-lo-fi, and other than a few basic introductions to the controls and how to use your SLR camera, you’re left to it.
The goal is to experiment. There are some tutorials to teach you the basics of how to focus, how to adjust your flash settings and things like that, but the goal is to simply explore these locations and take photos.
Compared to the gamified photo modes of typical games, Lushfoil replicates the controls of any modern DSLR or mirrorless camera with intense attention to detail. It’s more than just ISO and aperture, or even the ability to switch between zoom, fisheye and prime lenses from 14mm to 100mm. You have exposure compensation tools, filters, an adjustable flash, white balance tools, manual or autofocus, and anything you could need to frame a shot.
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(Image credit: Future / Alicia Haddick)(Image credit: Future / Alicia Haddick)(Image credit: Future / Alicia Haddick)(Image credit: Future / Alicia Haddick)
It’s not cheap to buy a (real) top-of-the-line camera and all these lens options, either! Never mind the travel, and you certainly won’t get the luxury of what feels like a private tour devoid of strangers blocking your perfect shot. More than that though, these environments offer so much variety. Beyond the Italian mountains you have the glaciers of Iceland, Fushimi Inari Shrine’s many torii gates in Kyoto, Japan, the beaches of Castle Rock in Australia, plus locations in France, Nepal, China, and England!
After adjusting the mental memory of my camera tools to the buttons of a controller, I found myself tracing a slow, methodical journey around these locations. In Lago di Braies, the environment begs to be explored for a new vantage point of the miniature churches and vistas, but also the little details that provide their own beauty. Of course, you want to photograph the lake and mountains, but I was just as inclined to crouch and adjust my angle to capture the endless forests, or the posts in the road that gave a focal point to the winding hiking paths.
In a place I was intimately familiar with, such as the Kyoto where I regularly visit to meet friends and occasionally see the exact shrine that was on screen, I found myself gaining a new perspective devoid of the usual hordes of tourists and locals in their thousands, the streets serene and calm.
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The thousands of torii gates hold spiritual significance that can be felt intensely when examining the age and importance they bear in the environment in real life, but also hold a beauty that the game successfully replicates. A number of smaller shrines amidst these gates can be found, accompanied by kitsune statues that act as guardians. In some locations, like Castle Rock, you can take to the water on a paddleboard to take photos from an aquatic point of view.
And it all can be done with minimal disturbance and ample time.
Photography Beyond the Guidelines
Sometimes, however, it’s hard not to wish Lushfoil Photography Sim did have more disturbances. These environments are large and open, but empty. Which can be great for perfecting landscape photography, and the fact you can export photos to edit them further is nice. But you can only take this style of photo.
There’s no way to photograph people, not even a posed mannequin, that could allow for portrait photography practice. As a result, I found I rarely used some lenses like the 85mm prime, because I would consider this for its bokeh alongside a more typical 50mm, but found it relatively useless here, similarly to the fisheye which only came out once or twice.
Some locations also feel eerie without other patrons. I’ve visited Fushimi Inari Shrine, Japan, both in times of minimal domestic and international tourism during COVID, and more recently, and compared to those newer occasions it’s wonderful to visit it without the overwhelming crowds. Storefronts and streets without people feel a little post-apocalyptic, though, and actually make some shots I think would be framed well with a physical presence feel empty.
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(Image credit: Future / Alicia Haddick)(Image credit: Future / Alicia Haddick)(Image credit: Future / Alicia Haddick)(Image credit: Future / Alicia Haddick)(Image credit: Future / Alicia Haddick)(Image credit: Future / Alicia Haddick)(Image credit: Future / Alicia Haddick)
This little bit of flexibility to allow it to replicate more real-world scenarios with people and more variance within the environments is the main thing holding back this experience. I appreciate the game isn’t limited to a DSLR by allowing players to find older camcorders and digicams that replicate the characterful analog photography styles people are increasingly embracing in a digital age, but these lack the flexibility to even zoom at times, have watermarks, and can only be used in the level they’re found.
There’s a chance to use drones and change weather which gives environments much-needed variance, but only after finding collectibles and shooting particular photos gaining certain skill levels. This is the same for unlocking new environments. While it can be nice for this to act as a incentive for less-experienced photographers as they can learn how to frame a photo, it can feel like an annoying holdback if you’re more experienced.
There’s still enough to recommend Lushfoil Photography Sim to anyone. For me, I can think of friends who want to get into photography, but struggle to use a camera and what to look for to elevate a good photo into a great one, for whom it’s a great game. Want to buy a real lens for your real camera? The varied in-game lens options give hands-on experience of sorts, before you spend a lot of money.
It is also calming, enlightening, and fun beyond its educational value. I would feel comfortable telling a new photographer to play this game to learn about photography because it replicates not just the tools but the feeling, and served as inspiration for what to capture when I visited Mount Fuji recently with friends on a road trip.
Where gaming photo modes are often flexible, I’ve often found them unengaging because the tools they offer and the way they’re created to be used by all players divorces them from this photography experience I adore so much.
Lushfoil Photography Sim is the first time I feel I’ve found a game that truly captures the photography experience and, even if it has flaws, it’s a tool for self-improvement worth the price for its potential to bring transferrable skills to your next real-world shoot. Few games can promise something like that.
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