winter

December 16, 2014 by Kat

Winterrupted (A Mobile Tutorial)

I invented a new word with the title of this piece: Winterrupted. I bet I don’t even need to define it, and you could use it in a sentence like this…

We are traveling for the holidays and I hope our trip isn’t winterrupted.

See? I’m liking this word.

I’m liking this piece too! I spent waaaay too long on it Tuesday morning, with a lot of false starts. I thought I would share the sequence of the final edit, and also give you an idea of how unrealistic it is to expect to just move through an edit directly, in so few steps.

First, it started with this image, captured in ProCamera. Hello bare trees! It’s so good to have you back. Now we can have some fun with editing.

I cropped it in Snapseed, and also increased resolution in Big Photo.

Next, into Mextures for a color filter.

And then into Autopainter for an artistic effect. Remember, in Autopainter you can stop the process before it finishes, which is what I did here.

I’m loving the colors at this point! I want to get the detail of the branches back in, so it’s into Image Blender to blend back with the cropped version above.

I’m enjoying Decim8 again lately, I think it’s the combination of the geometric effects on the organic lines of the trees. I played around with a few effects, finding two I liked:

These two were blended in Image Blender, to get to the final image: Winterrupted.

Looks like a straightforward sequence, right? Of course, when I’m at the end and can trace the steps backward, it is clear. But look at how many steps were really in this process. Each image is something I tried, something a little bit different:

The same image, the same apps, but lots of variations in sequence. There were problems with the image in the original sequence I tried. As I got further along in the edit, the upper branches became too dark and muddy and there were some blobby spots appearing in other locations, both of which required me to go back and try again. And again. I loved the colors and how they varied with the effects, so I knew I was onto something good. I kept working it until it came together. Good thing I was able to work without winterruption. 😉

Don’t ever get to thinking that mobile photography and editing with apps is a slam dunk. I’m not just tapping a button and getting a finished result with this kind of process. It’s messy and experimental and can be frustrating at times. But the mess is part of the fun, and getting a finished piece you are happy with in the end, like this one, makes it all worthwhile.

December 12, 2014 by Kat

From Mechanics to Understanding

Do you want to know the best way to learn about your art, your process, your self? About why you do the things you do, the philosophy and motivations behind your work? It’s a very simple answer: You explain it to others.

I’ve discovered this secret quite by accident, through writing and teaching myself.

I always tell people that I teach because when I love to do something, when I’m enthusiastic about an idea or a process or an art form, it just bubbles up outside of me and I have to share it with others. I love the “a-ha” moment when someone gets it. When I see the enthusiasm catch in someone else and they run with it, in their own direction, I stand by with pride.

I thought that’s why I teach, but I’ve recently realized that is the second payoff in teaching. The first comes in the creation of the materials. In the process of distilling the ideas, of determining how and what my students need to know to move forward, I learn about myself. I learn why I do things the way I do them. Why my process works for me, what the important pieces are and how they work together.

For me, the time and effort I invest to clearly explain something to others is also time invested in understanding myself.

Last week, I finished the first draft of my upcoming book. (Woohoo!) It’s rough, needing a lot of editing and examples and work, but it’s enough for me to see myself more clearly already. You would think that writing a how-to book on iPhone photography is all mechanics, but it isn’t. You can’t teach without a framework, a reference philosophy that guides the intent and organization of the materials.

I had mechanics before, now I have understanding. That understanding will feed more ideas, more creativity, stronger connection to heart and soul. I already feel them brewing.

Have you found the same thing? Maybe it’s not through teaching specifically for you, but the simple act of explaining your ideas to others. In communicating about your art, you gain a deeper understanding of your self. Try it and see. Don’t worry if it’s awkward at first. It gets easier with practice. You refine your thoughts through the give and take of conversation, of question and answer.

When you understand your self better, you create and communicate from a place of confidence. You can say, “This is who I am, what I do and why.” You are less shaken by the criticism of others, less prone to periods of self-doubt.

Want to practice? Explain why you create the art you create to me in the comments below. Link to a blog post if you need more space for gathering your thoughts. Let’s get your conversation going, so you can improve your understanding and confidence too.

December 9, 2014 by Kat

The Dark Time

It’s the dark time of year. I’ve got few opportunities to photograph, leaving and arriving the house most days in the dark, and even less motivation. A couple more weeks until the solstice and then we’ll turn the corner on daylight. A couple more weeks and maybe I’ll turn the corner on this malaise that’s come upon me.

I think I get this feeling every year, in December. This melancholy. This desire to check out of normal life and curl up inside myself for a little while. To go dark.

Does this happen to you?

I came across this article on Brain Pickings, about how melancholy is good for creativity. Maria Popova, the article author writes:

… I am also of the firm conviction that access to the full spectrum of human experience and the whole psychoemotional range of our inner lives — high and low, light and darkness — is what makes us complete individuals and enables us to create rich, dimensional, meaningful work.

I believe this too. So I’m allowing myself the dark time, knowing that the light will come again.

It does every year, without fail.

March 1, 2014 by Kat

Photo-Heart Connection: February 2014

Who knows what the future holds?

I don’t. It’s but a faint line on the horizon. I can see the here and now, what is. I can see possibilities for the future, what might be.

To reach the future, I have to move into uncharted territory. Into the blank, unwritten part of my history.

I have plans and goals, but where the path I start on will end is still unformed. And that’s ok.

It used to be, I needed to be able to see the end before I started. I needed to know how it would all come out. But that road of expectations led to disappointment, more often than not. Because the end didn’t look like I had envisioned. The path didn’t always turn out to be the one I really wanted or needed to walk on.

Where I used to want predictable outcomes, I am ok now with a faintly formed outline of what might be. I am ok with changing my direction partway through. I am ok with not knowing.

Maybe this is a by-product of age; of maturity. Maybe it is a by-product of experience.

Because now I know, the end is often more interesting than what I could envision. And the journey is where all of the fun happens anyway.

I don’t need to know what the future holds. I just look out at that faint line on the horizon, and go.

My Photo-Heart Connection this month puts into words a change that has been slowly creeping over me for the last five to ten years. Turning from a driven, goal-oriented go-getter, always striving for the next achievement to someone who enjoys the journey and doesn’t mind winding my way along. Someone who doesn’t mind changing or abandoning a goal if it no longer suits. I’m now more in tune with myself, and what my heart wants. I don’t live my life for others, or for dreams of the past. I see all of that in this photograph, with it’s clear foreground tree and faintly visible horizon. I love that I can pull this out of my art, my heart.

What is your Photo-Heart Connection this month? What is your heart connection, in any art form? Here’s my approach to finding the Photo-Heart Connection:

Identify all of the image I worked with this month. I don’t look through every single image I captured with my camera, but the ones I decided had potential and I edited. The sorting through of the raw images to edit throughout the month is really the first step of my Photo-Heart Connection, I don’t need to do it twice.
I place them all in one location, in this case it’s a special folder on my hard drive where I export copies.
Then, in the quiet of the early morning, I look through them on a black background and see what kind of emotional response I have. If there is no emotional response at all, I delete. Generally, the first time through more than half are eliminated. There are always a few that start to bubble to the top.
As I get to these few that “bubble up” as having a stronger connection than the rest, I usually take a break. Go refresh my tea, and see what sticks in my mind. What words come out to describe the feelings that are coming with the remaining images.
When I sit down again, it’s usually with a top two or three. I look through them, feeling each one and the words that come. From there, I can usually tell which one is coming out on top, from the feeling of both image and words.
I start my blog post, add the picture and usually start with the few words that were with me as I made my decision, and then I write. I let the story emerge, as if I’m telling it to myself. What you see in the posts is the result.

Your approach to the Photo-Heart Connection is likely different. That’s ok, there is no right or wrong. Maybe this month, as you go through and do it, you can share your approach with us along with your February Photo-Heart Connection. Then we can all learn a bit more… about you, and about this wonderful process.

February 27, 2014 by Kat

Ethereal

I gained a new word to describe my work yesterday… Ethereal.

I was hanging some prints in the hallway of a local medical office yesterday. It was near the end of the work day, so people were still bustling about. They seemed excited to have new art on the wall, and I received many very nice comments on it. But my favorite was the one that my work was ethereal.

e·the·re·al iˈTHi(ə)rēəl/ adjective
Extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world.
“her ethereal beauty”
synonyms: delicate, exquisite, dainty, elegant, graceful;

I decided I like that description, and will add it to my list. Previous words I’ve taken from other people’s comments include contemplative and delicate.

Getting your art in front of other people, especially non-photographers, is a great way to get descriptions of your work. Not just critical feedback, which we often seek from our fellow artists as a means to improve, but reactions from the general public. How does it connect with them? How does someone unfamiliar with your art, your process, your motivations react? That’s powerful feedback in itself.

There are lots of ways to get your art out there, into the real world, not just online. Doctor’s offices, restaurants, meeting rooms all have wall space they need to fill. As an exhibiting member of the Corvallis Art Guild, I can sign up to hang my work at various local businesses on a rotating basis. It’s a great benefit to members, in that we don’t have to do the leg work to find places to hang our work independently.

Getting a gallery exhibition is nice, and I’ve had a couple of those recently. I’m finishing up a show this week and will have new Treescapes on exhibition at The Arts Center in March. But to work up to that, it’s helpful to hang in other venues that aren’t quite so formal. It’s helpful to have the reactions of people in the real world, to give you some confidence.

Confidence, and maybe a few great words, to help you describe your work.

February 11, 2014 by Kat

Snowbound

We finally got a bit of the weather craziness that has been plaguing the rest of the US late last week, with fifteen inches of snow falling on Thursday and Friday.

Now, for those of you in cold, snowy places, fifteen inches is nothing. Having grown up in Colorado, I’m well aware of that. But fifteen inches in a place that usually sees rain year-round and has very few snow plows? Where the general population freaks out at a single snowflake? Well, kind of a mess. School was closed, and my workplace was even closed, which is a rare occurrence. Activities, including an opening reception for my latest exhibition, were all cancelled. The streets were deserted.

Suddenly, there was space in the schedule and a beautiful world outside to explore. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

You may be seeing snow pics here for a while…