flower

July 31, 2014 by Kat

Beauty in Repetition

As I photographed these flowers on my hike the other morning, I realized how much nature repeats itself. Just look at this field of flowers… Not one, not two, but flowers over and over again.

A field of flowers, repeated. Every year, at the same time. Every morning, the sun comes up again, repeating the cycle of night and day. It’s predictable, but always just a little bit different, and always beautiful.

So why do I, so much of the time, feel like I shouldn’t be repeating myself? The themes I write about, the subjects I photograph. There are times I think I should vary them more. That I’m not creative if it’s not entirely new every time.

But look at nature, it repeats. We rely on it.

It made me stop and realize: It’s a beautiful thing, when you repeat. If we did not repeat ourselves as artists, how would we find a voice and a style? If we did not revisit the same themes that inspire us, varying things a little bit every time, could we build a body of work that is cohesive? I’m not sure we could.

After spending the weekend at the art fair with my winter trees, I’ve started to create new work with summer trees. They are similar, yet different. I’m repeating myself, yet I’m not. It all works together.

Beauty in repetition. If nature can do it, so can I.

Tomorrow is the Photo-Heart Connection! Won’t you join us in finding your photograph with the strongest heart connection in July?

March 11, 2014 by Kat

Never the Same Place Twice

Some old friends visited me recently. These are mutual friends you and I have, I’m guessing. You probably know them too: Doubt and Fear. Do they ever visit you? I would bet they do.

For me, they show up anytime I’m doing something new. No matter how much I’ve already accomplished or become comfortable doing, they like to come and whisper in my ear, “What do you think you are doing? Who do you think you are?”

There is a difference in my response these days, though. Instead of stopping me in my tracks, or paralyzingly me in place, I wearily say, “Hello, guys. I should have known you’d be along anytime now. Why don’t you sit over there, in the corner? You can watch me work. I’m busy here and don’t have time for you.” I know I can’t get rid of them, at least until this new project is over. But I can acknowledge them, then ignore them and move ahead. There is no use paying attention to them. They sing the same tired song every time.

This part of growth is inevitable for me. The Doubt-and-Fear part. Just like spring comes around every year, doubt and fear will come along every time I stretch myself into something new.

There is that one big difference though… Now that I’ve been doing my art for a while, since I’ve stretched myself over and over by doing lots of uncomfortable, new things over the last few years, their impact is not as great. They don’t hold the power over me that they used to.

Inevitable, yes. Powerful, no.

That’s the amazing thing about growth. When the cycle comes around again, you aren’t in the same place. You can look back at where you’ve been, where you were the last time you heard those voices and say, “Huh, guess you weren’t so right after all. Why should I listen to you this time?” Your response and your capacity to manage the doubt and fear grows too.

Take a moment today and think about where you are now. Is there a direction you are going that is bringing up the doubts and the fears? Then look back a year, two years, five years. Look at how you’ve changed. The things you’ve done. How you’ve grown. So when our mutual friends of Doubt and Fear show up at your door, you can banish them into the corner too. Because you know you don’t have to allow them power over you.

You’ve done it before, you can do it again. With less doubt and fear, this time.

June 24, 2013 by Kat

Unraveling an Identity

I’ve started thinking about identity. What is it? How does it work? Is my identity me?

I’ve come to a conclusion as I’ve pondered the idea of “identity”… My identity is not me. My identity is something external to me. It’s everything I’ve picked up to define myself along the way. The views through others eyes and the shortcuts I use to describe myself. Where I spend my time and energy. What I create. All that is wrapped up in my identity. But it is not me.

I’ve come up with an analogy, explaining identity as a sweater, worn over the core of who we are. It is knit throughout our life by influential people in our lives and, eventually, by our selves. The sweater is started by our parents, who give it their best. As we get older teachers take on the task, and our friends join in too. There are threads of culture woven through, along with our interests, professions and important relationships. Our strengths and our weaknesses get in there, maybe out of proportion in places.

At some point in our lives, we might realize that we are wearing a sweater that no longer fits. For whatever reason, the identity that has grown up with us has become too big or too small, too long or too short. So we have to unravel, and reknit it for ourselves. We realize that we can adjust and shape it to better fit. Maybe we can even remove it altogether, but I think that must be much harder to do.

There are times in our unraveling, when it goes beautifully. Everything just comes apart easily and you can start to patch things together in a new way. I think this happened for me in Italy, as I rediscovered art and my creative side. After a couple of years of work I emerged with a new patch of my identity sweater, beautiful and colorful. These last couple of years I’ve worked to carefully knit the new and old patches together, finding a fit that works.

But there are other times in our reshaping, when you have multiple strands going at the same time – some unraveling, some knitting back up – and you get a knot. A snarly knot that doesn’t want to budge. All you can do is take some time to pick at it, work it loose. Figure out which strand goes where and how to integrate it.

I think that’s where I am right now, I’m working at a knot. Earlier this year I had multiple strands flying and all was going well. Then almost without me noticing, things started to get snarled up. The knot is a little too tight, and the only thing I can do is be careful and patient, wiggling it loose. Everything is at a standstill, until this knot is undone.

Somewhere on the other side of this knot is something new, I can feel it. A new patch to overlay and integrate with the rest of my identity sweater. But I have to work at this knot first. I’ll let you know when I’m done…

June 15, 2013 by Kat

unWasted Effort

Whew. Made it through a crazy week at work. It was one of those weeks that felt like Friday on Wednesday. By Friday it felt like three weeks had passed, so much had happened. It’s a tiring feeling but also a good feeling. We exited the week in a radically different place than we started. We learned a lot and made progress on the problem we were working on, so it wasn’t wasted effort.

If you’re like me, wasted effort is something I like to avoid. There is nothing worse than doing a lot of work to find it’s gone no where.

And yet…

I’ve had to revise that thought in my creative world. One of the things I love about mobile photography is that I can experiment. I throw out the rules and have no goals. Or if I have a goal, I’m willing to let the goal fall by the wayside if it’s not working. Often, I come up with nothing good. Downright horrific stuff. But sometimes things comes together, and it’s magical.

This flower is the result of a lot of experimentation. Trying to get an iPhone shot from below led to tons of thrown away files. But I got one. Even that one was a bit of a disaster, with my head partially in the frame. But it was enough to play with the processing. The end is not anywhere close to what I had in mind when I started. I saw some possibilities along the way and decided to let them flow. I love it.

So it makes me come back to this idea of wasted effort, and whether it really is something to avoid as fastidiously as I’ve always seemed to. If you learn something out of it, is any effort really wasted? Maybe in the end result, effort feels wasted when I’ve tried five different things until I finally got to something that worked. Why didn’t I start with this the first time, I might berate myself. But could I have gotten to the end result without the dead ends? Often, I think the answer is no.

The “wasted effort” is often really just learning. I have to go through it. It’s fodder for future creativity. It becomes the experience I can lean on in the future to get to a specific result, quicker.

I still think I want to be smart about where I’m putting my energy. Doing the same thing wrong the same way over and over again is probably not going to help me or anyone get very far. But if I’m not “wasting” some effort… running into some dead ends here and there… I wonder if I’m not playing it too safe. If everything is predictable, right the first time and wrapped up in a pretty bow, I’m probably not growing quite enough. That applies to my art and my engineering day job… pretty much everything in life.

As much as it pains me to say it, as much as it exhausts me to think about it after a week like this where I just want to curl up and read a good book, I know I want to be working right on that edge. I want to be pushing myself… because that’s when true creative breakthroughs and growth happen.

June 7, 2013 by Kat

Alone on the Hill

The wonderful thing about mobile photography is that it is, well, mobile. It’s with me anywhere I go. With a little downtime, I can create. Anywhere, anytime.

Exploring my sister’s back yard, a spot of bright color caught my eye. In the berm leading up the mountainside away from her yard, there was one lone poppy blooming. I climbed the steep hill and balanced precariously, trying to capture the flower while the breeze shifted it this way and that. After finally capturing a good image — nicely framed, in focus, without my shadow in it — I sat down in the Colorado sunshine and proceeded to mess it up, transforming it into something new. Something that expresses more than the original photograph. Something that gets to the essence of the poppy, instead of the poppy itself.

Later I was passing the image around the table, sharing with my family. It’s an interesting thing to share in person rather than on the internet. On the internet, people can quietly ignore something they don’t like. You only really hear from those who DO like it. So seeing someone view my work in person as it was passed around the table, I could tell if they liked it or not. I got the unfiltered responses.

I discovered that not everyone likes the new direction my work is taking. I discovered they were surprised by the abstract nature of the art I enjoy creating. I discovered that these changes, which seem obvious and natural to me, are not obvious or even explicable to those who are dearest to me.

It does make sense… They haven’t been around me on a regular basis for a long time. They didn’t see me in the museums of Europe, discovering my attraction to colorful abstract art. They didn’t see me falling in love with Vasily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko or Paul Delaunay. They haven’t seen my playing around with paints and trying to capture the emotion of pure color and movement on a canvas. All they saw was the photographs. And now all they see is this dramatic transition of the art I share, because I’ve finally found the medium that combines my love of photography and abstraction in one place.

Yeah, I can see how that would be surprising.

Another thing that I discovered, as I found out they don’t all like this new direction of my work, is that I don’t care. I love what I am creating now. I am confident and comfortable with it as my own personal expression. I am comfortable with the idea that others won’t like it. Some don’t like it because it’s perceived as easy: “All you do is push buttons in software, and that’s just wrong.” Some don’t like it because they prefer the more literal interpretation of a photograph, and don’t think it needs to be transformed in any way. They liked my old style better.

That’s ok, because I don’t create for anyone else, I create for me. Some people will connect with it, some people won’t. That’s just the way art works. I don’t have to be hemmed in by anyone else’s rules and opinions.

And one final discovery out of all of this… it doesn’t mean they love me or I love them any less. My work is an expression of me, but it is not me.

That’s just as important to realize, I think.

May 23, 2013 by Kat

Happiness is a Choice

I am often surprised by how the seemingly simple choices I make affect me in larger ways.

My choice to settle in to the place I live, instead of holding myself back. My choice to play around with mobile photography and see my everyday in new ways. My choice to spend less time on the computer and more time in the woods. All are simple choices, but they have come together in a profound way.

I didn’t quite realize it until my Mom emailed me with a comment this week after my Silent Communication blog post, and I wrote back, “I am falling in love with Corvallis all over again.” I am. I am seeing what this place has to offer me, as it is.

It was a choice. I could have continued to hold myself apart. I could have continued to wish I was somewhere else or that Corvallis was something other than it is. I could have continued to hang on to who I was in a previous time and place. But I would have missed what was right in front of me for the taking.

We have choices in how we approach our life, even if we don’t feel we do. A lot of that choice is around accepting where we are or how things are. And by accepting what is, you open yourself up to what could be. The phrase “bloom where you are planted” comes to mind.

We could be planted in the rockiest soil, but that may be exactly what we need to bloom. We just have to let our roots grow, and find the nourishment waiting for us in the earth below.

I’ve talked about this shift for me here on the blog often over the last six or eight months. I’m now realizing how deep this concept of choosing acceptance can go. It can mean the difference between dissatisfaction and happiness.

This doesn’t mean we need to stay in a place or a situation that doesn’t feed our soul. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make plans or strive for change. But having a measure of acceptance for what is can lead to greater appreciation and happiness of our current state. If you aren’t happy with where you are now, will you truly be happy in some new situation? We often think changing the place or the job or our body is the answer to our woes, when the answer truly lies within. It is available to us in the choices we make.

I choose to accept what is. I choose to be open to what is available to me right now. I choose happiness.