Archives for August 2012

August 23, 2012 by Kat

Today, in Color (+ a Giveaway!)

After sharing the dramatic black and white landscapes from Avalanche Lake yesterday, I thought I would share what the lake looked like in color. Aren’t those shades of green just amazing? I loved the subtle complementary color contrast of the greenery with the reddish lake bottom, visible through that amazingly clear water. The reflections are nice too!

With all of the postcards flying around the world for the Liberate Your Art postcard swap right now, I’ve been inspired to liberate some of my own art! I’m giving away a set of “Classic Italian Transportation” postcards to TWO lucky winners.

You can enter up to five times! You are eligible for one entry for each of the following:
1. Just because! Everyone can enter at least once.
2. You are a Kat Eye News subscriber
3. You follow me on Facebook
4. You follow me on twitter
5. You follow me on Google+
Please leave a separate comment on this post for each entry by the end of the day Monday, 27 August. Drawing will be done randomly from all comments on Tuesday morning, 28 August.

Yay! I can’t wait to give these babies away! Liberating art always feels good.

August 22, 2012 by Kat

The Black and White Landscape

We got up early. The clouds were low and the morning was quiet as we hiked to Avalanche Lake in Glacier National Park. We encountered a few photographers with their tripods at the bottom of the trail, photographing the falls, but there were few others around at that time of day. It had rained the night before and the trail was damp. The only noise was the sound of our bear bell and the rushing water, when we were near the stream flowing from the lake.

After a two mile hike, the valley opened up into glacier-fed Avalanche Lake. Amazing waterfalls crashed down cliffsides from the glacier invisible above. The clouds reached down and touched the mountainside around us, muting the colors. There were layers upon layers everywhere. In the rock…

…and the ridges…

…and the mountains themselves.

Many of the images from this morning’s hike seemed to call for black and white. I’m normally a fan of color, but I can see how landscapes like these are perfect for black and white. You see the texture and variations in light in a completely different way. I’m not sure that these images are “done” in terms of processing. I edited them a couple of weeks ago and I tweaked them again today. I think I still have much to learn about creating an effective black and white image, but recognizing the possibilities is a start.

Oh, and our quiet, misty morning hike? By the time we left the lake, the clouds were dissipating and the crowds had arrived. While we saw almost no one on the hike up to the lake, we saw a steady stream of people on the hike down. We had just beat the rush of people and just captured the clouds as they were lifting. Timing is everything.

August 21, 2012 by Kat

The Solution to “Overwhelm”

When you are overwhelmed by complexity, come back to the one thing you are doing. You can’t really do more than one thing at a time in any event. No matter how fast your mind is racing, there is just this present moment. There is no other time. There is no other place to be. There is nothing else to be doing. Just this. When this one thing is done, you will do the next thing, and that will be the only thing there is.
— The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes

So simple. So true, in both photography and in life. When the world threatens to overwhelm, focus in on one thing. This moment, this action, this detail, and the complexity collapses down.

I’m looking toward overwhelm. Not this very moment, but in September when I have some pretty big things all happening in less than two weeks of each other: My brother is getting married in Colorado on the 15th, I’m participating in the Corvallis Fall Festival on the 22nd-23rd, and then I leave for England to teach my on-location workshops on the 25th. Deep breath. OK, what to do? I take the advice I read in The Practice of Contemplative Photography and do one thing at a time. I have my list, I know what needs to get done. I can sit and worry, or I can focus on this moment and use it.

It’s amazing what focusing on one thing brings. My PrintMania! weekend is a good example. I focused on printing over the weekend, and wow, here I am pretty much ready for the festival. That doesn’t mean that’s all I did… I still went back-to-school shopping with my son, visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Gordon House (more on that later), enjoyed a nice afternoon on the deck of a Bavarian restaurant reminiscing about Oktoberfest with my family, and finished a book. But when I chose to focus on the “to do” list, I focused on one big thing and got an amazing amount done.

I think that’s really why I’m productive – I can focus. I don’t believe that “multitasking” makes us more productive. The idea that you can do more than one thing at once distracts us. How often do you stop doing something to read an email only to go back to your original task, trying to figure out where you were? Distractions and interruptions waste time, and ideas. If you start and stop, especially with creative projects, you lose the string of ideas and inspiration.

If you want to do something well, and quickly, you need to focus on that one thing. The better the focus, the better the outcome. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t do many very different things in the grand scheme. I certainly do! I just do them serially, one at a time. It’s how I manage to work at my corporate job as an engineer, create new classes for Kat Eye Studio, practice my own art and enjoy time with my family. I don’t try to do them all at once. I focus on the one thing that needs to be focused on, in that moment. It’s all I really can do anyway, as the quote above reminds me.

Are you struggling with overwhelm? Are you facing a crazy period of time, like my upcoming September, and wondering how you will manage? The answer really is as simple as this: Do one thing at a time, and focus on that one thing, until it is done. Then move on to the next thing.

August 20, 2012 by Kat

PrintMania!

What is PrintMania! you ask? It was my weekend! This weekend I printed my photographs. And printed. And printed some more. All to get ready for the Corvallis Fall Festival, an art fair I’m going to be participating in a few weeks from now. It’s all part of my great adventure to complete the circle of creating my art through print. This is my first art fair and thankfully I’m in a group booth for the PhotoArts Guild. I can’t imagine how much I would have to create to have a booth of my own!

My plan was to get ready over several weeks before the festival set up on 21-September but events conspired to push me to complete it all this weekend. My lovely brand new printer developed a problem, and so I got a replacement under warranty. I wanted to test the heck out of the replacement printer before I sent the original, intermittently working printer back. I figured an intermittently working printer was better than no working printer, when I had this looming deadline coming up. The replacement printer worked like a champ, so I’m happy with the printer and I’m now ready for the fair! Here’s what I’ve prepared: 40 greeting cards with envelopes, 25 prints matted to 8×10 inches, 10 prints matted to 11×14 inches, and 10 prints matted to 16×20 inches (4 of these are framed).

Having this art fair project also enabled me to really dig and learn a bit more about how I want to present my work. Remember when I talked about printed aspect ratios? Most standard mats in the US have 5×7, 8×10 or 11×14 inch openings. My 2:3 photos can survive the crop for a 5×7 format, but 8×10 or 11×14 doesn’t work for most of them. That means I have to order custom mats to maintain the right aspect ratio, so I tested three different mat opening/photo size combinations for a 16×20″ frame. They are shown below. On the left is an 8×12″ print, the center is a 9×13.5″ print, and the right is a 10×15″ print. All of these maintain the 2:3 aspect ratio of the print with different widths of mat. I could use your opinion, which one do you like best? (If you are interested in checking out the companies I use for ordering custom mats and other materials, see the “Online Services & Shops” link under Resources on the sidebar of the blog.)

I also learned a fabulous new feature in Lightroom 4: Soft Proofing. This feature simulates the effect of printing for the combination of printer and paper you are using, and will show you not only the shift in brightness and contrast but also which colors the printer can’t print. (Monitors can display more colors than printers can print.) This is incredibly helpful to adjust the photo before printing. Between this feature and significantly reducing my monitor brightness (it’s set at 3% for printing!), I get pretty close to what I want on the first print. Soft proofing is still not completely accurate, but it does save on test prints. And the beauty of Lightroom’s virtual copies is I can have a copy of the photo edited specifically for printing with almost no effort. In getting ready for this art fair, I now have “print ready” images that have been edited and tested available for print any time. Nice!

It takes a different kind of creativity for a project like this compared to creating and editing the images. It’s been frustrating at times but I’m learning something new for my art, and that’s the important thing. While it’s different than the feeling I get from capturing a great image, the satisfaction of seeing my images in print, all matted, signed and ready for someone to frame and hang in their home, is pretty amazing. It will be fun to interact with the people attending the art fair and see the reaction to my work in person. I can’t wait!

August 17, 2012 by Kat

Burst of Flavor

We continue to investigate Repetition in Exploring with a Camera this week. I was trying to decide what image to share when I realized I had the perfect repetition image staring me in the face! I have this image from a Venice market stall matted, framed and sitting in my dining room, ready to drop off to an exhibition. This image is all about repetition – with repeating shape, subject and color.

If you’re around Eugene, Oregon, you’ll be able to see this “Burst of Flavor” in the Taste and Flavor: Spicy exhibition at the David Joyce Gallery in Lane Community College from August 29 through January 1.

If not, you can enjoy it here along with some wonderful images featuring repetition from our participants. Visit them below, and link your exploration of repetition in too. We’d love to see how you repeat yourself!

August 16, 2012 by Kat

The Mail Room Flowers

It’s no secret, I love photographing potted flowers! The flowers at the Glacier National Park lodges were fabulous, especially at the park administrative offices, off to the side of the Glacier Park Lodge on the east side of the park. I made a beeline for the flowers as soon as I glimpsed them. Heaven!

This mail room scene was especially interesting to me. I love how you can see a bit of what’s going on inside through the open window.

I love the connections that come out of my photography. I chatted with someone who worked in the mail room, after he saw me taking pictures of the flowers, and he told me where I could find more beautiful arrangements. It was a nice exchange, adding a personal element to my memory of these flowers and this place.

Have you found the same? Does photography open doors for you?

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