Kat Eye Studio

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Let Your Dreams Soar

It’s amazing how much a day makes a difference. Even when we try to repeat the same thing, each day and each moment are different. It never comes out the same. As a photographer, I am constantly reminded of this. The camera captures the differences in light and shadow, in my point of view. Our brains adjust and accommodate and affect our perception, but the camera tells it true.

The second morning of the NW Art & Air Festival was completely different than the first. Where there were clear skies, no wind and sunshine on Saturday, Sunday’s launch was in cloudy skies and slight wind. No morning sun on the balloons, no mass launch. One at a time the balloons filled and drifted off quickly into the cloudy sky. It wasn’t as much fun to photograph and yet…

…here is this image. My heart leapt when I first saw it. I knew some dreamy editing would be perfect. I am so happy with it I find that I can’t edit any more photos this morning. I am done. Satisfied. The words “Let Your Dreams Soar” came to me as I edited it, so that’s the title.

Thank goodness I went back the second day. Thank goodness it was different than the first. The morning that seemed imperfect turned out the best image of all. The camera told it true.

Since I love how this image turned out I created a Lightroom preset called Let Your Dreams Soar and I find I can’t wait for the next newsletter to share it with you! You can download it here. This preset will work in Lightroom 3 or 4. I thought you might like to see the original image for comparison. Quite a bit different, huh?

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It’s time to Find Your Eye

Do you have a unique style?

Yes, you definitely do. You may not recognize it yet, but you have a unique vision of the world which shows up in your photography. We all do.

How do you find it?

You connect with your heart, and tap into your soul. You learn to follow what inspires you and discover the threads that already lie in what you create. When you do this, you begin to discover not only your unique photographic style, but how it represents who you are. You gain confidence. You are empowered to express yourself.

You can find a blueprint for connecting to heart and soul through photography in the Find Your Eye ecourse series. Registration for the fall series of Starting the Journey and Journey of Recognition is open now. You can register here.

From Astoria, Oregon. Lightroom Preset for this image will be available for download in the next Kat Eye News.

It never, ever gets old to teach these courses. It always amazes me how unique we all are. I see this as I join the class participants along the journey as a guide and a witness. I love to hear what has come out of the Find Your Eye process for them. Here’s what some recent participants have said about the Find Your Eye e-courses:

Thank you Kat with all my heart. Your course was inspirational and confidence building. Your attention and beautifully crafted responses to each of our individual contributions was much appreciated. It seems each of us have what is needed to be what ever our heart desires, we just needed a facilitator to draw it out.

It’s difficult to say what my favorite thing was about this course because I loved it ALL. But what inspired me the most was the feedback that was given, both by you, Kat, and by the other participants. Sharing photographs, journaling, then getting and giving feedback made it all connect for me. People were genuine in their remarks, honest and open in their journals, and it felt like friendships were being developed with folks from around the world. Like-minded people, interested in finding beauty and meaning with their eye!

This was one of the most meaningful things I’ve done for myself in a very long time. I looked forward to new lessons, interaction from you and my new friends, and to the soul-searching that you prompted us to do. I thought this might be a more of a technical class, but am glad it wasn’t. I did learn more about my camera because of this class, but more importantly I learned more about myself as an artist.

I felt pushed to express myself in my journal and in my photography. I feel the photo and writing emphasis helped me think about my painting and other art work in way that I hope will transform those areas for me, too.

Won’t you join me for the next journey?

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Mail Call!

It’s time for an update on the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap! As of this week, there are 181 people who have signed up, and I’ve received my first two envelopes. Yay! That may seem like I’ve reached my goal, but if last year is any indication, only about 70% of the artists who sign up will actually participate. That means I need a lot more people to join up to increase participation over last year! Can you help? Share about the swap on your blog, twitter or facebook page. I’ve even created a Facebook Event to make it easy to share with your creative friends, click here.

Won’t it be great to have all of that art reaching mailboxes around the world? I can’t wait!

I can imagine some wonderful art coming to these rural mailboxes, can’t you? They were so cheery, with the riot of flowers surrounding them. I played around with the processing and created another Lightroom Preset called “Mail Call,” which you can download here. It’s got a similar feel to Your Art Here, but the result is a little bit warmer with less desaturation in the reds and greens. I like the sunny feel of it!

Today is also the day I’m sharing my painting progress this week for Paint Party Friday. I’ve continued both paintings from last week, but this is the one I’m happiest with at the moment. It has a definite aquatic feel and I’ve continued to maintain the wave shape that originally appeared on the canvas as I build the layers. I think I’ll add some white next and see what happens. Happy Paint Party Friday to all!

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Your Art Here

Walking along the street this weekend I came across an interesting antique shop. The empty frames propped up outside the door seemed to be saying, “Your art here.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about art on the wall. Since my exhibition ended, I’ve been moving around frames and hanging prints up in our house. I’ve also recently really dug into learning more about creating fine art prints of my own (more on that later). So it’s no wonder I saw the empty frames and thought about what I would put in them.

What art would you put in these frames? Would it be something you have created? Would it be a recent work, or an older favorite?

PS – I’ve also been playing around with creating presets in Lightroom. I’ve created a preset called “Your Art Here” which I used in the processing of these two images. If you would like to try it, you can click here to download.

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