Kat Eye Studio

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A View of Dublin

  
Last week was a whirlwind trip to Dublin, Ireland for my corporate job. The week was busy with meetings and dinners and travel, but I did manage to squeeze in a day and a half of exploring the city over the weekend before heading home. Here are a few images of this great city. I hope to get back very soon!

I started out wandering the streets… Yes, Starbucks is everywhere.

  
My favorite thing is finding interesting scenes on streets and back alleys. Oh, and bicycles. Mission accomplished in the Temple Bar area!
  
  
Wandering into Trinity College is like pausing for a deep breath in the middle of the busy city.

  
I saw the Book of Kells (no pictures allowed) and the amazing old library. A true book lover’s dream, that library. I stayed in there for a while, just soaking up the feel and the smell of the place.

  
  
Midday I met up with my friend Tom who recently moved from Corvallis to Ireland. Together we wandered some more, me always looking for interesting scenes, sometimes dragging Tom across streets and down alleys. 

   
   
Eventually we found our way to the National Gallery to take in a Turner exhibition, and then met up with some other new friends from work. We went to this amazing Italian restaurant, where I had the best gnocchi since living in Italy. Mmmmm.

Meeting and connecting with people through work is one of the more wonderful parts of business travel. While I often don’t have much time for outside exploring and socialization, the connections with the people I work with, sometimes extending to their families and friends, makes the experience of the place so much richer than when you visit solely as a tourist. I’ve learned to always take up offers to meet for a meal, or a walk, or to see a sight that is important to the culture or a shared interest. My experience of a place is so, so much richer. 

Before heading out to the airport, I managed to squeeze in a visit to Kilmainham Gaol, learning more about the history of Ireland in the process.

  
And a quick visit to the Irish Museum of Modern Art as well. This 1937 Salvador Dali painting, Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds, was part of a temporary exhibition on love. Not a big fan of surrealism, this is one of the few Dali paintings I have ever liked.

  

My favorite exhibition was Nick Miller and the studio of Edward McGuire. In 2009, Irish painter Edward McGuire’s widow donated 130 items from his studio to the museum. To “avoid a detached, museological approach” of displaying and explained the studio contents, artist Nick Miller researched and reinterpreted the items through his own work. It was exceptionally interesting and well done. I don’t have any good pictures of this exhibition unfortunately, but there is some additional information you can explore online.

Then it was off to the airport to discover one of my flights had been cancelled due to the weather on the east coast, and to be rerouted I would have to leave the following day. A small glitch in plans, an extra night in an airport hotel, and I made it home safe and sound.

  
And speaking of safe and sound… Patrick and Brandon were in a car accident while I was gone. It was a hit and run, the other drivers fault. They walked away without a scratch, but my car is likely totaled. 

  
Scary all around, but makes you realize what is truly important in life: It’s people, always people. Everything else is secondary.

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Popping Over to Paris

I thought I would pop over to Paris this morning. Unfortunately I can’t take an hour flight to pop over there anymore, but it’s nice that I can do it anytime in my photos! We’re “Exploring Icons” this week in A Sense of Place, so I thought I would share this image of the Eiffel Tower, one of the world’s most famous icons. Do you see it in shadow?

I have to share how much I am loving this class! It’s so much fun to get to know the participants and explore the Photography of Place – one of my favorite subjects. I love learning about myself and my photography through the creation and teaching of the course.

Sometimes I wonder why I do the things I do… Why I am compelled to add things like this course on to my already busy schedule of my corporate job, my family, my friends, my travels, my photography. But this reminds me – it’s because I love it. I absolutely love it. This is who I am, how I need to express and process and share my world. It’s an integral part of me now, and I don’t think I could shut it off if I tried.

So even though my ideas sometimes add a layer of craziness to my life, and I wonder if I’m just making my life more complicated than it needs to be, I remember my love for what I do here. I am lucky to have found this part of myself, and to have a venue to share it with all of you.

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Six Days of Night: London

Oh, the lights at night in the city! Can this shot be any more London? We’ve got a double-decker bus, taxis, Big Ben, and, if you look closely off to the left, a red phone booth and the underground sign. Can you imagine this shot during the day? Boring!

Looking at my photos of London at night, I just want to go back, and shoot and shoot and shoot… Every city has a different energy. And that energy changes between the day and the night. London’s hustle and bustle doesn’t stop when the sun goes down, it just gets lit up. And beautifully too, the city seems to celebrate the night with its lights.

For all of my UK readers, I will definitely be coming back to London. We have friends there to visit the next time we come and now, after going through my photos, I’m itching to do a photowalk at night too. I’ll let you know when, so you can join me. Probably early 2011!

So, are you ready to get out and capture your own night shots? Tomorrow I’ll finish up the “Six Days of Night” with an Exploring with a Camera post on Night Photography. And after that, you’ll have everything you need to try it out for yourself. I can’t wait to see what you capture of the night!

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Six Days of Night: Croatia

Night is a time of contrasts. Light and dark. Busy and quiet. Wandering the old town of Split, I found this lonely little table in a back alley. By day, you would probably find someone drinking a coffee here. By night, it was silent and empty. The security lights are stark and unforgiving.

Contrast that with this main street in Dubrovnik, where the night is a gathering time. Warm light spills out of the doors and the restaurants, to reflect on the marble-paved streets. Artistic lights highlight the architectural details of buildings. You can almost hear the murmur of conversation, the clank of utensils on plates, drifting laughter.

Both Croatia, both historic city centers, both night. Yet so different.

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The Story in the Rooftops

There is a story in the rooftops of Dubrovnik. A history, there for the eyes to see. Not the history of hundreds of years ago, but of less than two decades. A story from the Croat-Serb conflict of 20 years ago.

Shortly after Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, Dubrovnik was beseiged for seven months as part of the conflict, in 1991-1992. The idea was that breaking Dubrovnik would break the spirit of the Croatian conflict. But Dubrovnik was never broken, and neither was the spirit of the Croats. This city survived, as it has survived for centuries, even against major powers like the Venetians. And now it is rebuilt, the damaged rooftops and streets repaired to invite visitors once again.
So Dubrovnik has an interesting look, because of all of this, with most of the centuries-old buildings sporting new rooftops. You can see the difference between the ones from long ago and the ones that are brand new. You can see the spirit of the people who survived and defended their city in modern times. You can hear it in the stories of the people you talk to… from the restaurant owner who tried to teach us to make a whistle with our hands “like they used to communicate in the war” to the owner of the apartment we rented who told us how the old aqueduct system bringing water to the town worked even during the conflict.

There is pride in these stories, pride in the rooftops. They respect the history of the town, and it becomes intertwined with these recent histories and experiences. In some places, you see where they tried to repair the roofs with as many old tiles as possible, combining them with new. It all becomes one continuous history.
And when you look out over the town, you get a visible reminder that conflict is not gone from our world. But it can end, people can rebuild and in the course of less than a lifetime go from besieged town to thriving tourist destination. Dubrovnik was a beautiful city, well worth the visit. But I think what I liked best, was hearing the story of the people who live there and reading the story in the rooftops.

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Great Expectations

What a find this morning! I love this photo from Dubrovnik, Croatia. I love the amazing texture and range of subtle colors. I love all of the layers and angles. I could look at this photo for hours and continue to discover new things.

I began working with my Dubrovnik photos this morning with the idea that I wanted to let myself be surprised. To see what images would pop out that I did not expect, did not plan. There are times I create my art at the moment of taking the photos with intention and foresight, lining up a composition just so, taking multiple exposures and compositions to study and see which I like best. When one of these comes out the way I visualized it, I am satisfied, but not necessarily overjoyed. Why? Because, with the work and intention I set at the time of creation, I expected at least one of those images to come out well.

But the images that often fill me with joy and excitement are the surprise ones. Like this one. Where my inner eye saw something in the moment, caught a frame or two but didn’t dwell on it. I don’t even remember capturing this image, and so to find it so wonderful now is a joyful surprise, a little gift in my day.

I worked with a guy that said, “Expectations are premeditated disappointment.” And there is some truth to that statement. When we expect something to happen and attach to specific outcome, we can be satisfied when it does turn out but when it doesn’t happen we are disappointed. But, what if we create without any expectations for the end result – the specifics of how it looks or how it will be received? What if we let loose our inner eye and detach from the outcome? Every image can become a surprise, every outcome positive – wonderful no matter what the specific details – because we didn’t set up any expectations. By letting go of those expectations, which are all about what our minds can envision at that moment, we allow space for other new and wonderful things to happen which are beyond our current vision.

This doesn’t just apply to creating art, but all aspects of our life, our work and our relationships as well. In her book Simple Abundance, Sarah Ban Breathnach says, “I approach my work with a passionate intensity, acting as if its success depends entirely on me. But once I’ve done my best, I try to let go as much as possible and have no expectations about how my work will be received by the world. I have consciously chose to be surprised by joy. It’s a choice you can make as well.”

I’m making that same choice to be joyfully surprised by the outcome of my work, my art. From the creation of it in-camera to the reception of it by the world around me. That doesn’t mean I won’t be intentional about creation anymore, that I’ll stop visualizing an outcome and seeking to achieve it, but it does mean detaching from the end result. Because I’ve found it’s a lot more fun to be surprised than to be disappointed.

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