Kat Eye Studio

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A View of Dublin

  
Last week was a whirlwind trip to Dublin, Ireland for my corporate job. The week was busy with meetings and dinners and travel, but I did manage to squeeze in a day and a half of exploring the city over the weekend before heading home. Here are a few images of this great city. I hope to get back very soon!

I started out wandering the streets… Yes, Starbucks is everywhere.

  
My favorite thing is finding interesting scenes on streets and back alleys. Oh, and bicycles. Mission accomplished in the Temple Bar area!
  
  
Wandering into Trinity College is like pausing for a deep breath in the middle of the busy city.

  
I saw the Book of Kells (no pictures allowed) and the amazing old library. A true book lover’s dream, that library. I stayed in there for a while, just soaking up the feel and the smell of the place.

  
  
Midday I met up with my friend Tom who recently moved from Corvallis to Ireland. Together we wandered some more, me always looking for interesting scenes, sometimes dragging Tom across streets and down alleys. 

   
   
Eventually we found our way to the National Gallery to take in a Turner exhibition, and then met up with some other new friends from work. We went to this amazing Italian restaurant, where I had the best gnocchi since living in Italy. Mmmmm.

Meeting and connecting with people through work is one of the more wonderful parts of business travel. While I often don’t have much time for outside exploring and socialization, the connections with the people I work with, sometimes extending to their families and friends, makes the experience of the place so much richer than when you visit solely as a tourist. I’ve learned to always take up offers to meet for a meal, or a walk, or to see a sight that is important to the culture or a shared interest. My experience of a place is so, so much richer. 

Before heading out to the airport, I managed to squeeze in a visit to Kilmainham Gaol, learning more about the history of Ireland in the process.

  
And a quick visit to the Irish Museum of Modern Art as well. This 1937 Salvador Dali painting, Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds, was part of a temporary exhibition on love. Not a big fan of surrealism, this is one of the few Dali paintings I have ever liked.

  

My favorite exhibition was Nick Miller and the studio of Edward McGuire. In 2009, Irish painter Edward McGuire’s widow donated 130 items from his studio to the museum. To “avoid a detached, museological approach” of displaying and explained the studio contents, artist Nick Miller researched and reinterpreted the items through his own work. It was exceptionally interesting and well done. I don’t have any good pictures of this exhibition unfortunately, but there is some additional information you can explore online.

Then it was off to the airport to discover one of my flights had been cancelled due to the weather on the east coast, and to be rerouted I would have to leave the following day. A small glitch in plans, an extra night in an airport hotel, and I made it home safe and sound.

  
And speaking of safe and sound… Patrick and Brandon were in a car accident while I was gone. It was a hit and run, the other drivers fault. They walked away without a scratch, but my car is likely totaled. 

  
Scary all around, but makes you realize what is truly important in life: It’s people, always people. Everything else is secondary.

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A Human Snow Globe

Every now and then it’s good to step out of the routine. Whether it’s through a vacation or a class or a retreat, it gives you a chance to look at things from a different perspective. Things get swirled up internally, giving you the chance to review and reconsider your direction. Giving you new tools to use moving forward.

Last week was a jam-packed week for me. It started with a relaxing, but rainy, yoga retreat at the Oregon coast. Good food, good company, good times. After two years of attending right after my open studio, I consider this retreat a little reward after my art fair season. 

   
Normally I would come back from the retreat to my everyday world, rested and recharged. Instead, I went straight from the retreat to the airport, and heading to California for a week-long business and leadership course taught by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

 
It was a crazy week, “on” from 6am for a bit of exercise to 9 or 10pm with studying or socializing with colleagues from around the world. Intense classes and discussions, full of new ideas. Whew. 

While the content and the tenor of the course was quite different from the retreat, I realized they had something in common: Good food, good company, good times. A great group of people, brought together by a common goal and interest, is always an invigorating space.

  
And the two events had one other important thing in common, too. They both provided the opportunity to step outside of my normal life. They both swirled up thoughts and ideas that may land in a different place. I’m like a human snow globe right now, a blizzard of sparkly thoughts flying around. Things will be different as they land.

Life is change. If you don’t seek opportunities to learn and grow, they will find you. Sometimes it’s good to get out of your routine and stir things up, whether it’s through a quiet yoga retreat or an intense business course. 

It may be a while, but I’ll let you know when and where all these sparkly new ideas land. 

Busy weeks mean simple edits! Info on the photos:

Top: Oregon Coast, edited using the Formulas app.

Middle: Hoover Tower on the Stanford Campus, edited using the Stackables app, my Heceta formula

Bottom: Rodin sculpture garden on the Stanford campus, edited in Snapseed. I was able to get an art fix during my morning walks at Stanford. An unexpected bonus!

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Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Last Sunday I left home for a technical conference in Arizona, arriving home late Wednesday evening. I enjoyed a few short days at home and then tomorrow I fly down to San Diego to work for the week. All of this travel is fun but not very conducive to writing, so I haven’t been here on the blog much.

Today I’m dropping in for a quick note to say hi and let you know what’s up in my world…

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I finally caved and took my own shoe selfie on the Portland Airport’s old carpet, which is rapidly vanishing as they replace it with new carpet. If you didn’t know you this was a “thing,” then check out #pdxcarpet on Instagram. Who knew carpet could reach cult status? Of course, I had to include the pink suitcase, which goes wherever I go. Off to San Diego!!

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When I’m home, I’m still getting out hiking and enjoying the forest. This year, I’ve become enamored of playing with long exposures using the Slow Shutter Cam app. I enjoy the experimental nature of slow shutter work. You play and play and once in a while something wonderful results! I love the feelings the light and lines in the forest evoke, and seek to enhance the feeling in the post-processing. I’m now working on a series of these images. They’ve given a focus to my hiking photographs, and I’m starting to explore how best to present them. Stay tuned.

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My son completed middle school! My in-laws were in town the last week to attend my son’s last choir concert of the year and to be here for his 8th grade celebration. It’s always fun to have them here! Brandon is getting very teenager-looking, isn’t he? He’s very excited for high school in the fall.

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Anytime my mother-in-law comes to visit, we have a decorating project to do. I can arrange things artistically once I see them in a room, but she has a knack for finding the individual elements to pull a room together. This time the project was our hallway bathroom, which has been largely undecorated for the 17 years we’ve had this house. Now it’s a cozy place, thanks to her help!

The project also involved visiting my photographic archives to find and edit a couple of images for the frames on the wall. The sandy brown color in the room reminded me of the stone in Croatia, so I chose these two photographs, from Split and Korkula respectively. I thought you might enjoy seeing them, too. If you like the processing on these I’ve created a Lightroom preset called “Croatian Stone,” which you can download here. (Word of warning: I’m still using Lightroom 4 so hopefully it will work in newer versions.)

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And with that, I’m off again! I hope to share something with you from the beach in California later this week, but given my success in blogging from the road in the past, I’m not promising anything. Have a great week!

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Resurfacing

Returning from an international trip always feels a bit like diving into a bodyof water, resurfacing in a different place. There is a planned location for arrival back to shore, and plans about what will happen upon arrival, but plans can go awry.

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Resurfacing from my China/Taiwan trip did not go as planned. My to do lists and scheduled commitments upon arrival to the home shore had to be forgotten. My body decided, after several months of non-stop go-go-go, not to mention exposure to foreign bugs and a 16 hour time change, that it was time for a break. So I spent much of the last week in bed, and the rest of the time paring down to the minimum required. I didn’t have energy for more.

Now I’ve washed up on shore, a bit battered by the waves, in a different time and place than anticipated. I’m catching my breath, laying here on the beach, trying to decide if I want to pick back up with the plans I had or if I will plot a new course. To be honest, a new course, with an easier route, appeals to me right now. I might just take a little break here for the moment.

So I’m not sure how much I’ll be around the blog for the next few weeks. I’m playing it by ear, letting my body and my energy rejuvenate, spending time with my family over the holidays, and opening myself up to what might come next.

If I’m not back here in the next week or so, I want to wish you a wonderful holiday season with your family and friends. I hope you take the time to create some meaningful memories and heartfelt art as well. That’s where my focus will be.

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Ode to a Pink Suitcase

It always makes me happy to pull out this pink suitcase. Purchased partway through my time in Italy, it’s gone on many adventures with me.

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It’s kitted out with a luggage tag purchased at a Paperchase store in Bath, England and the cat sticker given to me by my friend’s son on a visit to London. It’s got a few travel scars, but that only adds to its appeal.

It’s served as carry on and checked bag, expanding to fit more stuff on the trip home. I can always tell which bag is mine at baggage claim. It’s the perfect piece of luggage.

It’s traveling with me yet again, this time to Asia. In a little over an hour I’ll be on my way to Singapore via Tokyo, for a two week business trip. I can’t wait to visit and photograph a new part of the world!

For the next couple of weeks I’ll share some of my adventures as I travel.

Me and my pink suitcase.

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Travel Shifts

What is your idea of “travel?”

Maybe it’s fun, seeking experiences that help you enjoy the moment.
Maybe it’s relaxation, sitting with your feet up looking at a beautiful view.
Maybe it’s exploration, experiencing something new and different.

For me, “travel” is learning. There is something about being out of my usual environment and in different places that opens me to new things. I’m more aware and observant of my surroundings and of myself. Travel brings moments of fun, relaxation and exploration, but it also brings moments of insight and clarity. Especially travelling alone, where you don’t have someone to turn to every moment of the day. I had to become comfortable with myself.

Off to Work, King’s Cross Station

I’m always seeking to understand new things, to grow and expand my point of view. Maybe that’s why travel has become so important to me — the learning. Maybe that’s why this trip was so important to me… It wasn’t just about teaching the on location workshops and connecting with friends. It was about connecting with myself, my art and exploring what comes next. I didn’t expect or seek those things, but they came along the way.

Looking Back, near Brick Lane

Some of the shifts will take a while to make themselves known. But there were some shifts that were more obvious, because they were visible in my photographs. Instead of always seeking the empty view within the frame, I started to capture people. Not very many of my images included people, but more of them did than ever before. And, funny thing, these images are the ones that stuck in my mind the most. I had to go through my photographs and find them first. Share them first.

Smoke Break, St. Pancras Station

Part of me wonders why and part of me knows to just go with it. It will all become clear with time.

Into the Light, Westminster Underground Station

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