Kat Eye Studio

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Photo-Heart Connection: May

 
Shelter. That’s what I see here.

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In the chilly spring mist and rain, there is shelter here. The branches reach down to encircle and protect what’s below. The soft grass cushions the ground. The magical light filters through, bathing the scene in an otherworldly glow. I can stay here and be protected.

Hello, trees, I whisper, I’ve missed you. For me, you are hard to see when you put on your leaves. But this reminds me that your strength is still there beneath the summer finery.

And in addition to strength, you now offer shelter. Perhaps I need to sit beneath you for a while, and take what you offer.

The coming of the leaves has left me without one of my favorite subjects… bare trees. Oh, I haven’t missed them terribly. I love the sunny weather and the new growth of spring, so I’ve found many new things to photograph. Just not the trees, not quite as much. So it was kind of a surprise that a hike in inclement weather turned my eye back to the trees, revealing this month’s heart connection. It is kind of a surprise to realize that shelter is exactly what I need right now, as I try to remain in the space between. Shelter from my own self, if I’m truly honest, as my Photo-Heart Connection practice enables me to be.

How about you? What’s your Photo-Heart Connection this month? Share it with us, and then visit your neighbors in the link up. The connection to each other is as important as the connection to the heart.


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Beyond “Hobby”

What do you call an interest that goes beyond “hobby?” When it becomes something that seems essential to your expression? When it’s a part of who you are? I’m trying to find the right word to use for my love of photography. The word I want is definitely not “hobby.” To me, that implies a side interest, something you do to fill your time. OK, I do that, but it’s become more to me than that.

Yesterday I met up with friend who was interested in learning more about my prints and how I was doing them. As we sat and chatted about what we were both up to, she used the word “hobby” for what I was doing and then kind of looked at me askance, as if she knew that didn’t fit either. I chuckled and tried to come up with a word for it, and I couldn’t.

I don’t have a word for what it is I’m doing with photography, and why. It’s as if it’s become an essential form of expression. I could stop teaching, if I had to. I could stop blogging, if you made me. But I don’t think I can stop photographing. Even if I had no one to share them with, I would still create photographs. It’s how I see and experience the world. It’s how I learn about myself. It feeds me energy and brings me joy. No matter what I try to do differently, even this whole mobile photography/digital painting thing I’ve got going on, it comes back to the essential element of the photograph.

Maybe I’m really just learning what it means to be an artist. I remember last year, listening to an artist talk about his journey and how, in his younger days, he was desperate to paint. Even when he had no money for materials, he found ways to paint. He had to, he said. He couldn’t stop it. I remember thinking, “Wow, that’s intense. I don’t feel that way.” But now I wonder if I’m starting to. If I already do.

Maybe being an artist, deep down in our soul, means not just that we do create, but that we need to create. That we can’t help it, can’t stop ourselves. There is something about photography that’s put it’s hooks into my heart and soul, and I can’t get away from it. Regardless of what else I explore, it always comes back to this for me.

So can you help me out? What’s the word I’m looking for, for this thing I’m experiencing? Because it’s way beyond “hobby” and I would like to put a word to it, if one exists.

There are several things going on I don’t want you to miss:

  • Today is the last day to enter for the Spark & Inspire eBook giveaway. You can enter by leaving a comment on this blog post.
  • Today is also the last day to link in to Exploring with a Camera: Chiaroscuro. Have you seen the gorgeous work that has been shared this month? Wow! Be sure to visit the links to see what your fellow photographers are creating with dramatic light.
  • The November Photo-Heart Connection link up opens tomorrow! What does your heart have to say this month? It’s time to find out. See you tomorrow!

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The Happiest Monday

And why is this the happiest Monday, you ask? Because I feel better! Woohoo! It’s amazing how happy you are for the little things, like getting up early on a Monday morning, when you’ve been feeling a bit under the weather. The four day weekend was just what I needed to recuperate.

You know how I could tell when I was on the mend? Creativity started flowing again. I sat down with my iPad this weekend and some photos I took with my brand new iPhone 5 last week and created a couple of new pieces of digital art. Well, more than a couple, but I’ll share my favorite two with you here.

Tree, Squared

I am still having so much fun with this whole mobile photography/digital art stuff! My excitement for getting the new iPhone last week was a bit damped by all of the coughing and sniffling going on at the time, but after playing with the images this weekend I am so happy to have this higher resolution tool for image capture. And of course, it’s just plain fun to enter the world of the smartphone, although I really wanted it mainly for the camera.

Reaching

I used my other favorite new tool, my printer, to print and hang a few of my recent creations in my hallway from the entry to the kitchen. You can see them there, in the center. (I found the square shadowbox frames at IKEA, if you were wondering.)

From capture to creation to wall, all in a couple of days! I love it. See, it’s a happy Monday!

PS – Don’t miss the giveaway of the Spark & Inspire eBook I have going on this week.

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Lettere

Sometimes I marvel how the human brain works. I wanted a mail-related photo for today’s Liberate Your Art Swap update post and I thought of this photo. I remembered taking this picture in Venice, although I had never done any editing on it. I thought I took it when we were there with my husband’s parents. So, with nothing other than that to go on, I went into Lightroom and went directly to the November 2010 folder, the month we visited with his parents. Yep, there it was! Pretty darn cool the way the brain works, isn’t it? And the way Lightroom works too. Even though my photos are still not keyworded (although getting better – this folder now has keywords for Venice!), I can find things relatively quickly.

So with that… on to the update! As of this morning, there are 255 artists signed up for the swap! Yeah! If the participation rate is the same or better as last year, I should meet my goal for increasing participation this year. And, there are still a couple more weeks to sign up! I’m going to keep sign up open through July 15. After that, I figure it’s getting to late to get everything together with creating and mailing postcards. Thanks to everyone who has been sharing about the swap – there is still time to share!

A few more envelopes trickled in this week, doubling my total of envelopes to 8. I’m also keep track of where they are coming from, so that will be fun to give an update on as I receive more. From the comments in the Facebook event, lots of people are getting ready to send their postcards in, so the rush is on it’s way. How fun!!

If you haven’t ordered your postcards yet, I received a code from Moo this week: Enter the code POSTSTICK at checkout by midnight PST 4th July 2012 and you will receive free shipping (cheapest shipping option only). Order must include at least one pack of Postcards and/or Stickers. I don’t know if that will work in conjunction with my link that gives 10% off for new customers, but it’s worth a try if you haven’t ordered yet and were planning to use Moo.

One more reminder: Photo-Heart Connection link up for June opens this Sunday, July 1! I can’t wait to see what’s connecting with you this month. See you then!

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Ouch

When I took this picture, I wondered why someone would write OUCH on an empty shop window. I liked the reflections of the double-paned glass and thought processing it would be fun, even as I wondered what I would ever use it for.

Apparently, I took the photo for today. As I sit in my achy body and sip my tea to soothe an achy throat and I wonder if I should make a doctor’s appointment for this achy ear of mine, I share the OUCH since that’s how I feel.

I sincerely hope you all are feeling better than me today!

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Brain Power

The brain is an amazing thing. Our bodies, our cells, our neurons, the way it all works together is amazing. Over the weekend I read a fascinating book that made me aware of all of this, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD.

It’s a short read, but an amazing story of the author’s personal journey through a stroke at age 37 and her recovery. As an accomplished brain scientist, she has a very unique point of view. There is much important information in her book, about understanding and helping those who have suffered strokes; about the plasticity and flexibility of our brains to adapt. But what she learned about how our thoughts work as her brain came back “online” is the most important, I think.

We have a choice in our thoughts. We have a choice to engage in the negative patterns of our brain and react to the emotions we feel in our body, or not. We can “step to the right” as she calls it, out of our left-brain, rigid thinking into the wholeness and peacefulness of our “right” mind.

Her stroke of insight: “peace is only a thought away, and all we have to do to access it is silence the voice of our dominating left mind.” Later in the book she discusses the different “characters” that come from the two sides of our brain, and how “we can take a more balanced-brain approach to how we lead our lives.”

I so resonate with her message.

It’s as if she experienced from the inside out what I’ve been struggling with the last few years. This idea of balancing the “doing” and the “being.” Balancing the coexistence of the logical, goal-oriented left-brain me with the creative, spiritual right-brain me. There are both there. They both have their place in creating a whole life.

Photography and writing are the things that help me “step to the right” as she puts it. For many of us, I’m sure that’s true. While I’ve known the benefits of a creative practice for a while now, reading this book helped to put it in a new frame of reference with the physiology of our bodies and our brains. Why we might do the things we do and think the thoughts we think, but also the choice we continually have to change our thoughts and subsequently change our whole perspective on life.

Today I’m honoring my body and my brain. Thanking them for the work they do all of the time. Dr. Taylor has made me very aware of how amazing our physiology is, and, more importantly, my role as the consciousness in this body. I get to choose.

I chose this image from San Francisco for today because of the optical illusion I perceive in it. I love how it looks flat! I composed it to look that way and processed it to enhance that perception. Even though our left brain may understand the reality of what we are looking at, we can move ourselves into the right brain and alter that reality by how we frame the world through our cameras. Fun, huh?

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