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May 29, 2015 by Kat

Looking for Art in Oregon? Got you Covered…

Oregon is wonderful in the summer. Sunny days, cool nights, low humidity, few bugs. And lots of art! Last week I finalized my art fair schedule so I can finally share it here with you. I’d love to meet you at an art fair this summer, share my work (it looks even better in person), and chat about art, photography, creativity… or life in general. Mark your calendars!

KatSloma_2015NewWotk_Postcard_Front

Lake Oswego Art in the Park
June 26 – 28
George Rogers Park, Lake Oswego, OR
More Info

Salem Art Fair & Festival
July 17 – 19
Bush’s Pasture Park, Salem, OR
More Info

54th Annual Clothesline Sale of Art
August 1
Benton County Courthouse, Corvallis, OR
More Info

Northwest Art & Air Festival
August 21 – 23
Timber Linn Park, Albany, OR
More Info

Corvallis Fall Festival
September 26 – 27
Central Park, Corvallis, OR
More Info

Philomath Open Studios Tour
October 24, 25, 31 and November 1
My Studio, Corvallis, OR
More Info

Kat-Sloma-Photography-5093

You can always see a current listing of my events and workshops on the calendar on my website. Fall workshop dates are posted now too!

PS – If you’d like to get a copy of my 2015 schedule postcard (shown at the top of the post), email me your address. I’ll add you to the list!

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: Albany, art fair, Corvallis, Lake Oswego, Oregon, Salem

August 29, 2013 by Kat

Lighter than Air (Mobile Tutorial & Giveaway)

The hot air balloon fun continues today! I’m having such a good time with these images from the balloon festival last weekend, I thought I would share a bit more with you today: A mobile tutorial of my latest piece and a print giveaway! Isn’t that a perfect way to kick off a holiday weekend and Paint Party Friday?

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment and tell me which image you would like to receive if you win (images shown at bottom of post). Of course I’d love it if you subscribe to my newsletter, or like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter or Instagram… but none of that is required for entry. Just leave a comment. I’ll draw and announce the winner on my blog on Tuesday, September 3rd. Easy!

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And now for the steps to create this piece, called “Lighter than Air”…

It starts with the image captured Saturday morning, using Slow Shutter Cam to provide me with some motion blur:

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I’ve learned enough playing with balloon images this week to know that those little smears of balloons in the distance would be distracting in a final piece, so I removed them with the Retouch feature of Handy Photo:

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Now into Snapseed to brighten the exposure up. I could have done this in Handy Photo too, but I prefer Snapseed for basic adjustments:

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Next I started playing with textures. I decided that this one, out of Handy Photo, was starting to have the feel I wanted. Light, soft and bright!

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I also liked this texture, out of XnView FX, but the color was a little more yellow than desired:

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So I toned it down with a blend of the previous two images in Image Blender:

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Another texture of the original image I kind of liked was this one, out of Distressed FX:

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The “edginess” was great but the color was too strong and I didn’t like the way it created a bright hot spot in the middle, so… time to blend! Using my previously blended image (above) in Image Blender and the Luminosity blending mode I could get the edge effect without the distracting color. Be sure to play with your blending modes! You can do amazing things with modes like Luminosity at times.

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I decided I wanted to soften it up further, so I took the original adjusted image, and ran it through the chalk filter of Autopainter II:

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And then blended it with my image-in-progress. This not only provides softer edges, but shifts the color back toward neutral from the warmer tones it was starting to have.

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Looking good! It’s close now. I took this blended output and ran it through Distressed FX again. There were two versions I liked. The first one, for it’s crackly texture and the second one for the color.

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I brought these two into Image Blender for the final blend, and I’m done! The image met my desires… it’s soft and a bit dreamy, retains the brightness of the original color, and has warmth without an overall yellow cast. Here is the final image again:

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So much fun! I’ve soooo enjoyed editing these hot air balloon images this week. I like each new one I complete better than the last. Unfortunately, I’m nearing the end of hot air balloon images from the launch that I like enough to edit, so this could be the last. It’s too bad I can’t run out and take more starting images, since the festival is only once a year! đŸ™‚


Giveaway Time!!

Leave a comment on this post and tell me which of the following four images you would like to receive as a print if you win. I’ll draw and announce the winner here on the blog on Tuesday, September 3rd. Have a wonderful weekend!

Liftoff

Liftoff

Dream Flight

Dream Flight

Postcard from the Air

Postcard from the Air

Lighter than Air

Lighter than Air

Filed Under: Mobile Tutorial, The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: Albany, balloon, hot air balloon, mobile tutorial, Oregon

December 14, 2012 by Kat

Exploring with a Camera: The Lights of Night

Welcome to December’s Exploring with a Camera! This month we’re going to be exploring the Lights of Night. It’s the perfect time of year to get out and play around with some night photography, since there are such short hours of daylight here in the northern hemisphere and all of these extra holiday lights hanging around.

I’m going to do something a little different this month. Instead of having a whole new Exploring with a Camera topic, let’s refresh on a few oldies but goodies on the photography of night and lights. Be sure to read all the way to the end because I’ve got an extra-special bonus that I want to be sure you don’t miss!

December’s Fog, Benton County Courthouse in Corvallis, Oregon


Night Photography

Tony’s Studio, San Francisco, California

You can revisit Exploring with a Camera: Night Photography to take a look at the basics of night photography. In this article, you will find tips on everything from the blue hour, reflections, and color cast, to handholding your camera for good night shots without a tripod. It’s based on all of my “lessons learned” from wandering at night on our travels around Europe, where I discovered the fun and beauty of a city after dark. These tips are timeless… The techniques I share on getting good night/low light images while hand-holding the camera in this post are ones I still use today.


Holiday Lights

Tree Lights, Albany, Oregon

In Exploring with a Camera: Holiday Lights, I focused in on the specifics of capturing those holiday lights. Revisit this post to get some ideas and tips on capturing city lights, bokeh lights, and twinkle lights. I also take a look at capturing lights in a different way with reflections and shadows, and address the awful “ghost lights” you might sometimes find in your images upon review.


Creative Lights

Exploring with a Camera: Creative Lights will give you a few ideas beyond the basics! Visit this article to learn about layering in and out of focus lights for an interesting view, using zoom to create cool effects, and capturing the funky hologram effect I’ve shown above. These ideas lead you to more abstract creations with the lights of night.


An Added Bonus

I’ve got an added bonus for you too! In my next email newsletter, which should arrive in your inbox on Sunday, I’ll have a PDF with even more tips on night photography. One of the photographers in our local PhotoArts Guild, John Ritchie, is an accomplished night photographer. Take a look at this gallery to see his night photography work.

Last year, John combined his lessons learned on night photography with a tripod and my tips on handheld night photography to create a tip sheet for our guild. He’s graciously allowed me to share it with you all. It’s a fabulous resource! It will arrive with the next Kat Eye News so be sure that you are signed up.


Are you ready to get started? I am! I’m planning to go out in the early hours of the morning this weekend and capture the lights of night. I’ve just purchased a cable release this week and I’m ready to carry my tripod around to play with some new techniques I’ve learned from John.

You can share your explorations with us here through the end of December. Go through your archive, or go out and try something new. Share your city lights, home lights, indoors or out. It doesn’t have to be holiday-related, anything goes as long as it’s the Lights of Night!


Filed Under: Exploring with a Camera, The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: Albany, California, Corvallis, Exploring with a Camera, holiday, lights of night, night photography, Oregon, San Francisco

September 20, 2012 by Kat

Message Received

To put our art, our writing, our photography, our ideas out into the world with no assurance of acceptance or appreciation – that’s also vulnerability.
— — BrenĂ© Brown in Daring Greatly

I now know why I needed to hear the message from the universe yesterday. Why I started reading Daring Greatly this week. I’m having one hell of a vulnerability attack at the moment.

Let me explain…

This weekend is the Corvallis Fall Festival. After months of planning and preparing, I’ll be putting my art out there in the public eye, for sale, in a completely new way for me. It’s from the safety of a shared booth (4 other photographers along with me) and the safety of being close to home, but as I wrote out the email last night inviting friends and neighbors to visit me in the booth during the festival, I started to feel the fear. I started thinking, Why am I sending this? I don’t want to bother anyone with more emails. Will they even care? What if they don’t like my work? Maybe it’s better not to tell anyone. But I pressed send on the email anyway, despite my fears, because I know that most of these people want to see me succeed and will come by and support me even if it’s with a quick hi in the booth.

As I was reading this morning I realized where this feeling came from. I’m making myself vulnerable, by putting my art out there in a new way. And no matter how much I want and crave connection with people through my art, I also fear it. No amount of planning and preparing can eliminate that visceral response that comes from somewhere deep inside. The place that fears that I am not good enough. The place that fears rejection.

This vulnerability attack is made doubly strong by my trip to England next week. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been stressing over what to wear for my workshops. I’m realizing now this is just a substitute worry for the bigger fear of putting myself “out there” in such a spectacular way. Want to know how the workshops happened? Earlier this year I said to myself, “I want to go to England and visit my friends! It would be cool to teach a couple of photography workshops at the same time.” And then started working on it. Once again, the planning and the preparing are the easy parts. It’s so, so easy for me to create a plan, a list of things to do, and check them off one by one. It’s a lot harder to deal with the emotions that come along with the actual event. Here I am, travelling by myself, staying with friends I know mostly from online interactions, offering workshops in a foreign country. Vulnerable? You bet.

With every step I take outside of my comfort zone, I open myself up to uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. It just so happens that is exactly BrenĂ© Brown’s definition of vulnerability. I get it. I feel it, at my core, right now. Thankfully, these kinds of fears and emotions usually don’t come until I’m already committed, well down the road where it’s too late to turn back, so I keep putting myself out there in new and crazy ways. As I’ve said so many times in my writing here before, each little step you take expands your comfort zone. Whether it’s liberating your art as a postcard or in an art fair, it all takes courage and a willingness to be vulnerable.

I know intellectually that everything will be fine. Regardless of whether or not I sell a lot of my photographs at the festival, regardless of whether or not my workshops are full, I will have a good time. I will learn something in the process. I will grow.

Knowing it will all turn out ok doesn’t eliminate the feelings that exist today, right now, in my gut. But understanding where they are coming from, why being vulnerable has this impact on me, certainly helps. Thanks to the message from the universe yesterday, I was prepared for the panic attack of today. (Sort of. Talk to me about it tomorrow.)

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: Albany, allowing space, balloon, Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, Oregon, personal growth, risk, sky, vulnerability

August 30, 2012 by Kat

Let Your Dreams Soar

It’s amazing how much a day makes a difference. Even when we try to repeat the same thing, each day and each moment are different. It never comes out the same. As a photographer, I am constantly reminded of this. The camera captures the differences in light and shadow, in my point of view. Our brains adjust and accommodate and affect our perception, but the camera tells it true.

The second morning of the NW Art & Air Festival was completely different than the first. Where there were clear skies, no wind and sunshine on Saturday, Sunday’s launch was in cloudy skies and slight wind. No morning sun on the balloons, no mass launch. One at a time the balloons filled and drifted off quickly into the cloudy sky. It wasn’t as much fun to photograph and yet…

…here is this image. My heart leapt when I first saw it. I knew some dreamy editing would be perfect. I am so happy with it I find that I can’t edit any more photos this morning. I am done. Satisfied. The words “Let Your Dreams Soar” came to me as I edited it, so that’s the title.

Thank goodness I went back the second day. Thank goodness it was different than the first. The morning that seemed imperfect turned out the best image of all. The camera told it true.


Since I love how this image turned out I created a Lightroom preset called Let Your Dreams Soar and I find I can’t wait for the next newsletter to share it with you! You can download it here. This preset will work in Lightroom 3 or 4. I thought you might like to see the original image for comparison. Quite a bit different, huh?

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: Albany, balloon, lightroom, Oregon, preset, sky

December 28, 2011 by Kat

Variations on a Theme

Today I’m sharing an image I captured from the recent Christmas Parlour Tour I was privileged to photograph. I had fun capturing this image of a phonograph, with it’s interesting circles and lines. I had even more fun playing with the processing of it in Lightroom, and I couldn’t decide which version I liked more.

The warmer tones…

…or the dreamy black and white.

They each have a different feel. What’s your preference?

I’m off to the Portland Art Museum today, visiting their photography exhibition: Through the Looking Glass: Photography’s use of Windows, Doorways and Mirrors. It sounds perfect for me, does it not? I can’t wait!

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: Albany, black and white, Christmas Parlour Tour, Oregon, vintage

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