morning hike

April 22, 2016 by Kat

The First of the Season

It’s my first hiking pic of the season! My interpretation of the sunrise as I got out on the trail, called “Burn Away the Night.”

It’s been gorgeous out on the trail the last few days. The forest is alive with its new layer of green and birdsong, and sweet spring scents. I’m getting to know it again. Reminded of the pleasures to all of my senses.

And my body has been reminding me too… I haven’t done much of anything all winter long, and there is payment for that. From zero to a few miles of hiking a day means I’m tired and sore. Every year in the spring I curse myself for my winter inactivity, saying I should figure out how to keep this up year round. And every year, here I am in the spring, tired and sore as I get myself back into hiking shape. Ow.

This morning, there will be no hiking. I woke up to pouring rain. Between that and my aching body, I think I’ll take it easy today. I’ll enjoy a cup of tea and work on some art, pretending it’s still winter for one more day.

Hopefully the weather and the aches will clear up soon. Now that I’ve got a taste of the trails, I’ve got a whole season of hiking to get going on.

(Update: About an hour after I posted this, the rain lightened and my body warmed up, so I went out for a hike anyway. The rainy forest smelled great!)

August 25, 2015 by Kat

The Color of August

Ah, August. Such a bittersweet month.

The fields and forests smell sweet as they turn to gold.

The light arrives later, making the shadows on my morning paths longer.

All reminding me that summer is nearing its end. I must take every opportunity to play!

And be grateful for this time, these colors. August.

All images processed with my Bald Hill formula for the Stackables app. Download it here.

August 4, 2015 by Kat

Bald Hill: New Stackables Formula

Last week on a morning hike I came up the side of Bald Hill into this gorgeous light, just peeking over the hill. The clear blue sky and morning light inspired me to take a few photographs, which in turn inspired me to create a new Stackables formula. This formula increases the light contrast, warms the bottom portion of the image and creates a beautiful “blue jean” sky. Today I’m sharing the formula along with a few example photographs edited with it, and hopefully it will inspire good things for you too!

To download the “Bald Hill” formula for your own use, do the following:
1. Make sure the Stackables app is installed on your iOS device.
2. On your iOS device, download the formula file from this link. (This is a Dropbox link, and you may be prompted to save the file to your Dropbox account, if you have one. Go ahead and save it to your Dropbox and then download from there.)
3. When you go to download or open the file, use “Open in…” and choose the “Open in Stackables” option.
4. Stackables will open and ask if you want to import the formula, click “Import.”
5. To use the formula, load a photo and then go to Favorite Formulas (the ones with a heart!). You will see the imported formula there.

You can see the formula has a different result depending on the exposure and color of the sky. Experiment with exposure as you capture your images and see the variation in the results.

If you find that the textures don’t look right for your image, play around with rotating the texture layers. For the image below, I rotated and lightened Layer 3 in the formula.

Have fun! Let me know what you think, and tag me if you share any results on Instagram. I’d love to see what you do with it!

May 8, 2014 by Kat

Morning Hikes

Hiking season has begun! Sunrise is finally early enough I can be out in the woods most mornings for a three to five mile hike before I head off to work. Yay! I’ve missed my hikes.

Last fall, I stopped hiking regularly when Daylight Savings time ended and I went back to work full time, which happened nearly simultaneously. Without the morning hours free, I just didn’t have enough light to hike anymore. I thought that would change when I was able to go back to work part time again, but now I’ve got a new position at work, a promotion I’m very excited about, and I’ve made the choice to stay full time.

So… That means resetting my own expectations along with my schedule. It leaves less morning time for everything I like to do in the AM hours: journaling, creating art, blogging, hiking. I’m learning to adapt. Rather than feel constrained I’m going to make my choices work together.

From a photography standpoint, I’ve decided to do a Morning Hike series (#morninghike on social media) of photographs. I would like to create one finished photograph from each hike I do in the forest. I often photograph on my hikes but I don’t always share because they may not be exactly what was inspiring me creatively at the time. That’s a luxury I won’t have going forward… I want to hike, I want to create photographs, I don’t have all the time in the world… I need to bring these two things together.

Today’s photograph is from yesterday’s hike. Nice, huh? It was a gorgeous morning, and the photograph captures the feeling of it perfectly. It shares the optimism of spring; the promise of a new day.

I think this commitment is going to challenge my photography, and I will learn to express myself in new ways. But most of all, I will be combing two things I love more strongly, hiking and photography, rather than feeling like I am trading off one for the other. I love the feeling of “wholeness” that brings.

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