Kat Eye Studio

by

Weekend Away: Light in the Kitchen

I’m giving myself a little blog break on weekends these days. Rather than leaving the blog empty though, I’ll share one of the many images in my queue I haven’t gotten around to sharing yet. When you see the “Weekend Away” title, the image could be from anywhere!

Today’s image is from Marksburg Castle, in the Rhine River Valley in Germany. This is one of the few castles on the Rhine that was never destroyed, so it was the most realistic view of castle life around. Many of the other castles on the Rhine were rebuilt with a more idealized view of castle life, or are in crumbling ruins.

Can’t you see working in this kitchen? I loved the light. I’ve always thought it funny that when we think of living in the past, many people think of living as the lords and ladies. We have this ideal view of what life was like. The reality is that there were very few people who were in that position of wealth. If I were born sometime long ago, I always thought I would probably have been a serving wench, eeking out a life somewhere. I would much rather live in the present day, thank you very much!

(Hmmm… that didn’t end up being much of a blogging break this morning. A different topic than usual though!)

by

Dramatic Cropping

Today we are going back to the Rhine River Valley in Germany, to the town of Bacharach. This image has been in my file waiting to be shared for ages, and today it won’t leave my head. Isn’t it a beautiful scene? So “German,” with the timber-frame house. So “Rhine River Valley,” with the grape vines growing on the hillside behind. So summery, with the sun, the green vines, and the flowers. This house is the Altes Haus, one of the oldest timber-frame houses in existence, built in 1368.

Take a moment to look below at the original image. It’s just ho-hum. A little overexposed in the sky and the composition doesn’t do anything for me. It’s amazing what cropping can do. Reducing the extraneous information improved the image. I don’t normally crop my images this dramatically, going from vertical to horizontal, but look at the difference!

This morning I’ve been considering what “cropping” I need to do in my life, so it should be no surprise to me that this image comes to mind. Where am I filling my time with extraneous things? Am I spending my energy in places that aren’t moving me in my chosen direction? It is easy to get into a cycle of do-do-do. To join activities because they sound fun without ever considering everything else that you have going on. Ignoring the time and energy loss that being overwhelmed can create. Even if you don’t follow through on the activities, the mere guilt or remorse of having joined and not taken action can drain us.

Today I ask you to consider, is there something that you need to crop from your life? What would make your personal “composition” better, just by trimming a little extra away? Like a photo, where you have no guilt whatsoever about removing extraneous information, just decide and let it go. Focus on the part that makes the image, your life, a healthy and complete whole.

by

Start Close In

A new year, a new beginning. What castles do you want to reach this year? I have my own castles, dreams that float in my heart and my head. Dreams that require plans and effort. I could set resolutions, or choose a word of the year to move toward them, but this year I decided to choose a poem.

I wrote recently about my journey, and taking the step I can see in front of me. I plan to continue with that idea in 2011, and here is the poem to inspire me along the way. It is by David Whyte from his book River Flow.

START CLOSE IN
Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.
Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.
To find
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.
Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,

don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Happy New Year! Today ends 9 Muses Musing with RESOLUTION. I hope you’ve enjoyed the party! Come by, link in, and see what others are planning for their year.

by

Shall we Play a Game?

Something to do, on these cold and rainy winter days, like today. I recently learned to play chess, from my son. I enjoy it, even though I’m not very good. This photo from Marksburg castle in the Rhine River Valley, reminds me that this is a game that has been played for centuries. I can imagine the people of medieval times in this nook in the hall, concentrating and passing the time with a game on a long winter’s day. (Although in my imagination I’m guessing the people are much cleaner than they actually were.)

Today I will say to my son, “Shall we play a game?”

Enjoy your Sunday!

by

Exploring with a Camera: Frame within a Frame

“Frame within a Frame” is a compositional technique that I’ve had on my mind to share here, but was waiting for the perfect “frame” shot to lead off with. I found it in this shot from Bologna, looking through a bridge window into the buildings and canal beyond. Now that I’m writing this post and reviewing my archives, however, I am seeing that I use this technique more than I thought!

Frame within a Frame works for a couple of reasons:

  • First, it serves to focus the eye of the viewer on a specific subject. When you look at a frame within a frame photograph, you are usually drawn directly to the frame and what is inside of it. Then you kind of visually take a step back and take in the whole of the image. In the photo above, you are immediately drawn to the jumble of windows and walls and the distant bridge within the frame. Then you back out and see that you are looking through a wall with graffiti.
  • Second, it provides context for the image. You are looking through one thing – the frame – into something else. You have a better feel for where you are, as the viewer. It places the viewer of the photograph into a slightly different role. Instead of just looking at the photograph, they are looking through the photograph, from the frame into what is beyond. They are immersed in the image more completely. 

The “frames” that are within photo don’t have to be windows, although these are used to good effect. Basically you are looking  for anything that serves to contain or frame the subject. The nice thing about a frame within a frame is that it doesn’t have to be a straight line! The edges of our photographs are typically straight lines, with rectangular or square shape. Compositional frames we can use within our photographs can be any shape, from natural or man made.

In this image the eye is immediately drawn to the subject framed in the “white” of the overexposed window, and from there you move into the room to get the context of the boy (my son) standing at this very large window.

In this image from Padova, the subject is the bookstore, but the context is provided by the frame of the store window at night. The person walking by serves to punctuate the fact that we are looking into the store from outside.

I find that I use arches all of the time in my photography to frame a subject. It helps that they are almost everywhere in Europe! An arch is a nice contrast to the rectangular shape of the photo, as shown in this image from Brescia.

And here is one from Marksburg Castle, in the Rhine River Valley of Germany. This arch frames both a near and far vista, looking down the Rhine. It shows the strategic view the castle had of the surrounding area.

Yet another, this time an arch internal to the building, at Casa Battlo, in Barcelona. This arch frames the beautiful lines of the staircase curving upward.

Don’t ignore the good old, square doorway though! This doorway serves as a frame, giving more depth to the alley beyond and leading your eye right to the window at the end.

Natural elements make great frames. I think you can probably conjure up images you’ve seen or captured looking through trees at a distant object or vista – the trees are the frame. The palm tree in the image below from Split, Croatia serves to frame the subject of the lighted building while also giving the context of where the photo was taken from, the waterfront promenade. I have photos of this building without the palm tree, and they are not as interesting as this one.

This may be a familiar photo to you, as I’ve used it in Exploring with a Camera before. The branches of the trees arching over and hanging down to the water, along with the reflections completing the the arch below, serve to frame the path and draw your eye right along it to the water beyond.

Finally, here is a more literally frame within a frame from Bologna. Instead of looking through the frame, you are looking at what is inside the frame. It takes the random jumble of advertising, ties it together and gives it context. It becomes street art on it’s own.

So, now that you’ve seen a few examples of frame within a frame, how can you use this compositional technique?

  1. The easiest place to start is to look for the obvious in our everyday lives – windows and doors. Look at these as frames. What do you see when you look through them? What do you see reflected in them? Consider the point of view from both sides of the frame – looking out and looking in.
  2. Expand beyond the obvious to look for other opportunities for frames in our everyday spaces – hallways, mirrors and furniture are a few places to start. What other ideas can you come up with?
  3. Look for frames in architecture. As with arches, architectural elements can make great frames for something beyond, as well as provide the context of where you are at when you take the picture.
  4. Look for frames in nature. Trees make great frames, what other natural elements can you use to highlight your subject?
  5. Try changing your focus point and exposure – focus on the frame as the subject, focus on the image beyond the frame as the subject. What works best? Why? For many of my Frame within a Frame images, I have done both and then picked the one that had the best feel.
Chances are you are already using this compositional principle without thought, as I was. Take a look at your photos, and see where you have used frame within a frame and what effect it had. Keep an eye out, notice how it is used in the images you see around you everyday on the web, in print, in TV and movies. Try to consciously use it this week if you can. Next week, you can come back and share your view here, I can’t wait to see what you’ve captured!
P.S. I am no longer going to be using the Flickr group for sharing, it just hasn’t gotten any traction, probably because I’m not loving it. We’ll continue with linking in to the Share Your View follow up posts instead! If you have suggestions for other linking tools, please let me know. I’m looking at trying some different ones. Thanks for your participation!

by

One Brick at a Time

Today marks my 365th blog post – one year! I’ve been watching the little number tick up daily on my blogger dashboard and have been marveling. I’ve written one year of posts. To be honest, it took me two years to get the 365 posts, but I’ve decided it’s the number itself that counts. And since most of the posts are since I started doing the photo-a-day posts last November, it means more to me. It’s since that time that I’ve found my voice, found my eye, found myself here in this daily blog.

It’s funny, for the last couple of years, I’ve watched all of these people share their “Project 365” photos where they take a photo every day of the year, and I always said “I could never do that.” It’s wonderful to see bits and pieces of people’s lives captured daily, and they have a cool record of the year when they are done. But that never interested me. Much as I love photography, I don’t feel inspired to take a picture every day. I didn’t have interest in a project where I would start and invariably fizzle out after a month or two. But, when I got the idea to share a picture every day, to look through my pile of photos (metaphorically speaking) and pick out the best, the ones that speak to me in some way, now that I could do.

So here I am, at post 365. How did I get here I ask myself? One day, one image, one word at a time. Just like when building something monumental, a cathedral or a castle, it’s built one brick, one stone at a time. That’s what it takes.

Of course, in my case I don’t have a blueprint. I’m just figuring out as I go along and that seems to work. I don’t have hard and fast rules for myself, like “you must post every day” or “you must post in sequential order” or “you must have a specific topic” because that would all make it feel like work. I know myself, I would work really hard to meet the self-dictated rules and then, eventually, lose all interest because I would have lost the spark that got me started. Think about it, have there been times where your self-imposed rules have run you into the ground? Do you have any right now? I’m constantly on the lookout for them anymore. I’ve learned those little self-imposed rules are the ones that can get in the way of following my heart, creating great things because I’m so busy with the work of following my rules.

Thanks for joining me here, thanks for reading post 365 of the Kat Eye View. A place where rules are thrown out and images and words are based on whatever inspires me that day. A place where you can participate too, answer a question, leave a comment, tell me your view. I love to hear what’s going on with you! I’ve met some amazing people this way, through comments and blog hopping and I love it. One more thing that motivates me to keep going!

Ciao until next time, post 366…

(Image is of Rheinfels Castle, in St. Goar, Germany in the Rhine River Valley.)

Upcoming Events