New World: Aeternum has many key locations and a wide variety of locales that can be photogenic. I took this photo in the newly updated Cutlass Keys zone The water, the grass, the nightly blue illuminated by a moon partially hidden by clouds. There are many things that poke out like the front of a boat sticking out of the water, the way the 'mountain' lingers in the background, and just the general vibe of the photo. The location is not in an area that has any real importance to the game besides being a place to walk through and many players run past it without a second glance as they are moving from quest to quest or zone to zone.

To get such an angle to capture this photo I had to actually finagle the camera a bit as New World has no 'Photo Mode' or 'Character Hide' button. It does have a 'Hide UI' key (f10) which is nice but the rest is me trying to get my character out of the shot in a game where the camera is character focused. Quite a conundrum! It didn't help that this spot in particular was near an NPC spawn that I kept aggroing and they would get in the shot

Ghostly apparition captured on camera!

Eventually I managed to get good enough angle and captured that first photo when my character suddenly died! How could I have died? Well, I had to make my character prone in the water to get the angle and it turns out that there was an oxygen timer... I would've seen it but I turned off the UI to take the photo. Goof on my part!

But one advantage of my character dying was that now the camera was 'unlocked' and I could swivel the camera in any direction. I used it to my advantage and captured this second photo of the view I worked so hard to get while my character was still alive.

All in all a victory but also a harsh lesson: Always be aware of the surroundings when trying to capture a photo. It could save a virtual life!