Kat Eye Studio

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Inspiration in the Air

After a long week last week, I really didn’t want to get up super early on a Saturday morning to watch a balloon launch. I really didn’t. I mean, I had photographed it last year with success but was I really going to get anything new? Wasn’t sleep more important? But my husband set his alarm, and I figured if he actually got up and ready then we would go. Well, he did. He got up and wrangled us all out of the house to the Albany Art and Air Festival in time for the launch.

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And guess what happened… the fun of photographing a new subject took over. Armed only with my iPhone this year, I set out to see what I could do. I started with the standard still photographs, but it was when the balloons started launching and I switched to the Slow Shutter Cam app that I really had some fun. I could see that I was capturing some great possibilities. I played with movement and timing and direction. With moving balloons and a moving camera there was no opportunity for retakes, so I just went with the flow. It doesn’t take long for all of the balloons to launch – maybe 15 or 20 minutes – so before I knew it, it was over and I had ~150 new photographs on my camera roll.

What next? See what I could do with them, editing with some apps, of course.

And wow, that’s where the fun really began… Starting with this one, where I worked and worked to get the color and brightness just right. Don’t you love how the balloon just pops off the rest of the image?

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I thought it couldn’t get any better, but then I worked on this one, which I call Liftoff. The photograph was captured with that double exposure, I didn’t layer that. LOVE!!

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I was so happy with those two, I thought I would be done. But no… Here’s the next one, Dream Flight. This one is a composite of two images, playing around with the placement of the balloons relative to each other within the frame. I love the colors, and how the balloons just blend away into the background. Dreamy…

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As of yesterday, this last one was my favorite. But we’ll see if that holds, because each time I touch these photographs more magic seems to happen.

And here I wanted to sleep in. Ha! This was a good reminder: When given the option, which is more important, sleep or photographs?

Photographs, of course!!

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The Beauty of Possibility

An open road. A blank canvas. A budding flower. All have one important thing in common – they are full of possibility.

Possibility is fun and open. Possibility is free and exciting. The delicious feeling of “possibility” happens whenever you stand on the precipice of something new and exciting. Something you don’t quite know the outcome, but you have hopes and dreams for what it may be. The hopes and dreams shape the possibilities that lay before you.

I used to be very goal-oriented. One of my favorite quotes was “A goal without a deadline is just a dream.” As if dreams were bad things. As if the only dreams that mattered were the ones accomplished.

Now I know better. Dreams are necessary. Dreams provide us with possibility, so that as our journey unfolds before us, we have a chance to see the branches and explore the options. We have the chance to say, “what if” and feel the possible outcomes.

A goal with a deadline is like marching down a path and not looking either way, at the branches and possibilities that become available. That’s not to say deadlines are bad things. I use them all the time to get things done. If you could see me working furiously behind the scenes to get ready for my trip to England in a few weeks, you would know I definitely use deadlines. But the whole trip started with a hope and a dream. Those dreams led to exploring possibilities. It’s not until you settle on one possibility that things can coalesce into a plan. A goal, if you wish.

We need possibility in our lives. It creates openness and space for new things to form. It keeps us fluid and adaptable, able to respond to what comes along. It allows us to see our dreams come true, because we didn’t decide the details on exactly how it might happen.

So dream. Hope. Allow the possibilities to unfold around you as you take a step into the unknown. Sooner or later, you might turn some of the dreams into goals. But for today, allow the dream and see the beauty of possibility.

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Dream More

Do you believe in messages from the universe? I do. Here’s one I saw on my Sunday excursion in Northwest Portland. I love the giant arrow pointing to the message, as if we wouldn’t see it otherwise. Which, given our busy lives and drifting thoughts, is probably true.

So here’s your message from the universe today, you can’t miss it: Dream More.

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Next step in the Dream

Ah, scooters. How do I love thee. I love the cute styling, how they look all parked in a row or against some wonderful European backdrop. I love the freedom they exude, as they zoom along the streets. I love to capture them as part of a scene. They scream “Italy” and “Europe” to me. I never had any desire to ride a motorcycle, but after living in Italy for two years, scooters captured my heart.

I wrote a few months ago about my scooter dream and how I signed up for Motorcycle Basic Rider Training through Team Oregon in July to help me along in my dream. The purpose of this course is to teach basic skills to make a motorcyclist safer on the road, and by 2015 anyone in Oregon who wants to ride a motorcycle will be required to take it. By the end of the course, if you pass, you have met all of the requirements to get your license and the class completion card waives any further testing.

The training was this weekend. It started with a classroom session on Thursday night for two and a half hours, followed by Saturday and Sunday classes which each had four hours on the riding range in the morning and then 2 to 3 hours in class in the afternoon. It included a skills test on the motorcycle and a written test that you had to pass.

Let me be honest – this was the most physically and mentally demanding thing I’ve done in a long time. (It took all of my energy this weekend, hence no blog posts!) Riding a motorcycle takes an enormous amount of skill and concentration, especially if you’re new to it. You have to do different things with both hands and feet at the same time. You have to pay attention to the world around you so much more than in a car, because the hazards are so much greater and you are less visible. You have to learn to trust the machine below you and how to react quickly and safely.

I am not the most physically coordinated of people. I was always last picked in gym class, being small and slow. I was the one who would go out for a sport and work super hard, practicing a ton, just to become mediocre. The athletic stars would come in with no practice and exceed my skills by a long shot. But what I have learned through all of that, is that I have the determination and persistence to learn just about anything when I set my mind to it. I’m not completely uncoordinated, it just takes me more time to get it and more practice to master it than some others. I kept that in mind as I struggled with the controls and getting the sequence right. My past experience has shown me that I could do it, if I really tried.

I have to say, that this course was amazing. It took me (and others) who had never driven a motorcycle before, didn’t even know the controls, to riding a motorcycle and passing a skills test in two days of range riding. That is just incredible. By the end, I was swerving around obstacles and taking corners at 15-20 miles per hour (24-32 km/hr), weaving through offset cones at low speed without putting my foot down, able to take sharp corners. Oh yeah, and all of this – in the rain! The second day of class it rained the whole time on the range, soaking us but showing us that we could do this in the rain as much as the sun.

And guess what – I passed! I am so excited. I am so proud. This gives me a bigger feeling of accomplishment than I ever, ever expected. I overcame my fears. I learned something that was hard for me but my persistence and determination paid off. And the good news, driving a scooter is much easier than a motorcycle! No clutch to worry about, no foot controls, yet I know how to do those too now.

Today, I will go down to the Department of Motor Vehicles with my class completion card and get the motorcycle endorsement added to my license. Here is one thing I know though – I am nowhere near riding on the road yet. I have a lot of practice to do, and skills to continue building, before I be-bop around town on a scooter. I have a little 50cc Honda Metropolitan scooter purchased from a friend to practice on though, and some great basic skills to help me progress.

Maybe you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but an old Kat? If she really wants to learn it, she can.

(Linking in to Creative Exchange and Creative Every Day today. Here’s a story where following my heart photographically has led to something wholly new and unexpected in my life. Isn’t that amazing?)

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It Takes Hard Work

Evening comes in to Riomaggiore, in the Cinque Terre of Italy. I love the colors and light in this photo. Not full dark, the “blue hour” as I’ve recently learned.

Since night photography has become a recent interest, I’ve had to practice. It’s hard to get a really good night shot. You take so many, playing with exposures and ISO and lenses and compositions… but it pays off when you get that one beautiful one.

It’s easy to dream about doing something, but the actual doing is always a lot harder. It takes hard work to improve, to get really good, to make a vision real. The beauty of it is, if it’s something you LOVE to do, it doesn’t feel like work.

Yesterday I spend the day learning things about XML and CSS code. A beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon in Italy and I was on the computer most of it. Why? Because I have a vision of what I want this blog to look like, where I want it to go, and I’m willing to put some work into getting there. I used to hate being on the computer when I wasn’t working at my corporate job, because I associated the computer with things I didn’t really have a passion for. Computer = work = not fun. The truth of it is, the computer is just a tool for whatever the job is. And now that what I’m doing on the computer is aligned to my passion, it’s totally different.

This is an amazing realization for me, that’s been slowly creeping up. My time here in Italy so far has been spent exploring my creativity and dreaming of possibilities. Now it’s time to continue the dream into reality. I look forward to sharing with you some of these things as I work on them, like the blog update, along with my view of the world through photography.

Thanks for participating in my journey! I love hearing from you in comments and emails and facebook posts. It’s such a fun thing, to be able to share my passion with the world in this way.

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