Archives for June 2011

June 11, 2011 by Kat

My Latest Obsession and the LAST giveaway from Italy!

At first I thought it was a Greek-inspired theme, the capture of door handles and locks. But my latest obsession continued in Scotland. I have a weakness for doors, that is nothing new. Lately that interest has been specifically focused on colorful, old doors with interesting keyholes or locks. This one is from a church in Inverness, and isn’t it cool how you can see the architectural element brought through to the door detail? I also liked how the dustiness reflects the light differently, highlighting the form of the details.

Thank you so much for the many comments on yesterday’s post. It is good to know that being real and true to my heart resonates with other people. I appreciated all of the encouragement and support for my transition back to the US. There is truly a wealth of generosity and positive support to be found here on the internet. I am always surprised when I hear people say that things like blogs, Facebook, twitter, etc. are a waste of time. I guess they can be, but they can also be a source of genuine connection and I love that.

As I start sorting things into piles for my move (what to ship, what to give away, what to take on the flight, etc.), I’ve realized that I have some more things to give away, and time is running short. So today I’m launching my LAST giveaway from Italy. Of course I’ll do more in the future, but this will be your last opportunity to get mail from me in Italy.

I’m giving away four items and there will be four different winners! I have a lens cleaning cloth printed with the mosaics from Ravenna (great for glasses or camera lenses), two sets of note cards from Florence, and a set of 5 random postcards of my images that I happen to have left (time to order more!).

You can have up to three entries:

1. Just leave a comment and say hi!

2. If you are a newsletter subscriber, leave a separate comment. (The newsletter is coming out tomorrow with some sneak peek info on my upcoming classes. Why not subscribe today? The form is on the left sidebar of the blog.)

3. If you follow me anywhere, leave a separate comment. By follow I mean through google, facebook, twitter, networked blogs, or rss feed.

Please leave separate comments for each entry. I’m going to do a random drawing based on the total number of comments, so if you write it all in one comment you will still only have one entry.

You can leave comments through around 9pm PST Monday, June 13. I’ll pick the winners on Tuesday morning when I wake up. Please make sure there is a way for me to contact you if you win – either a link back to a website, email, your name (if I know you personally), something along those lines. If I can’t figure out how to contact you, I’ll just re-draw for your item.

[Update: Giveaway has closed. See Tuesday’s post for the winners!]

Along with this giveaway, I just want to give a public thank you to my husband Patrick, for all his help with these giveaways since I’ve started them. He’s the one that goes to the post office and waits in line to mail them while I’m working my day job. Here in Italy, this can sometimes take hours or even multiple trips to get things mailed. If you’ve ever won anything or received mail from me, he’s had a part in mailing it. If you want to visit his blog and leave a note of thanks, he would love it.

Enjoy your weekend!

June 10, 2011 by Kat

A Realization of the Heart

There are some things that loom larger than life in your future, and then there are the things that sneak up on you unaware. I had a moment yesterday where a “larger than life” part of my life managed to sneak up and catch me by surprise at the same time.

I was walking in Parco di Monza and admiring the wonderfully refurbished Lo Scrittore* sculpture. It’s all shiny and looking its best after they worked on it last month. I was wondering how long it would take before it started looking worn again, with peeling paint and the wood falling off. Then I realized, I won’t be here to see it. I really won’t be here. I burst into tears. What I’ve known at an intellectual level forever finally hit me at an emotional level. We’re moving in three weeks. Three weeks. I will no longer be here, living in Italy. No longer walking in Parco di Monza everyday.

It’s interesting, how I can hold two realities in my head at the same time. The reality of living in Italy and the reality of living in Oregon. Both seem so comfortable and real. What is completely unreal and hard for me to even grasp is the reality of living in Oregon after living in Italy. What will it be like to be there, as a completely different person? Because my time in Italy has changed me, changed all of us in our little family, more than I ever imagined. And I’m so, so happy with the changes.

What I have finally realized is that I’m not returning to my “old life” in Oregon. I’m moving to a new life, that happens to be in an old place. Going back to an old place doesn’t mean going back to an old life or an old me. It reminds me of the time, four months after my son was born, that I finally realized life wasn’t going to go back to “normal.” There was a new “normal” with the addition of my son then, and there will be a new “normal” for my life in Oregon now. In a way, this realization is kind of freeing. I’m open to redefine things however I like, as long as I avoid falling into assumptions that life has to be the same just because it’s the same place.

I think I’ve been writing this blog post in my head, over the last 24 hours, as I’ve wrestled with some of these realizations. There was the little, planner part of my brain that said, “No, no, you’re doing Scotland photos this week!” But as always, what I need to write wins out over what I planned to write. This blog is about my creative journey, and I can’t write anything else and be true to me. I think that’s why I’ve avoided calling myself a travel blog, or an expat blog, or even a photography blog. Because my blog is all of those things and none of them, depending on the day. Conventional wisdom for “growing a blog following” is to know your topic, know your audience and write for them. Today I’m saying aloud something I’ve felt for a long time: To hell with conventional wisdom. I write this blog for me.

This blog is about one woman’s creative journey wherever she may be. I write about what is important to me, fascinating me, challenging me in that moment. It happens that I have a passion for photography and can’t help teaching when I’m passionate about something, and that’s why you see a lot of photography. I love art and creativity and reading inspirational books, so you get that too. Since I’ve been living in Italy, I write about my life here and our travels. All because it’s who I am right now. Where my life happens is going to change, but who I am will stay the same.

Thanks for joining me on this unpredictable journey. The fact that my little life and interests can connect with others is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever experienced. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

___________________________

*Lo Scrittore is a sculpture by Giancarlo Neri, installed in Monza Park (Parco di Monza) in 2006 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the park. The sculpture is painted plywood over a metal frame. The table measures 7.5 meters high and 11 meters long, and the chair is 10 meters tall. I captured this picture while they were working on it last month, to give a better idea of the scale. I absolutely love this sculpture.

June 9, 2011 by Kat

Exploring with a Camera: From a Flower’s Point of View (2nd edition)

[Author’s Note: Through the summer months Exploring with a Camera will be “Second Edition” postings of previous explorations with some new images. You will find a new link up at the end of this post to share your photos, and your photos are also welcome in the Flickr pool for the opportunity to be featured here on the blog. I hope that you will join in!]

Have you thought about the flower’s point of view before? What is the perspective, near to the ground, reaching for the sun? The answer is found in these photographs. I had a marvelous time, playing around with my camera from a flower’s point of view. I got a couple of amazing shots, like the one above and the one below. They are delightful because they are so unplanned, they are the results of experimentation and play. And digital photography is a WONDERFUL medium for this, because there is no cost to just play around!

There is creative power in exploration and play. I’m thinking to post some “Exploring with a Camera” ideas like this from time to time, let me know if you want to participate and I’ll create a Flickr group to share photos so that we can create a little community of explorers!

So here are some tips on how to explore from a flower’s point of view:

1. Hold the camera near the ground, pointing up toward the flower. You are not looking through the viewfinder, at the screen, anything. Depending on your camera/lens minimum focus requirements you will have to play with distance to hold the camera away from the flower.

2. Shoot, review, shoot, review. Move the camera, the angle. After a while you’ll get a better hang of what you are aiming for remotely.

3. If you’re not getting the focus you want (say, on the flower), switch to a manual focus point. For the second image above, I set the focus point for top middle point, then took a bunch of pics moving the camera around a bit to get the one flower in focus that I wanted.

4. Play around with aperture. Higher aperture will give you a better opportunity to get what you want in focus. Lower aperture will really help your flowers pop, but focus will be difficult.

During the whole process, delight in the randomness of the images. Laugh at the ones that came out totally awkward. Swoon over the ones you think that come out amazing. Enjoy the freedom that comes out from letting go of planning, composing, deciding with every shot.

Since writing the original post, I’ve come to enjoy using this technique on a regular basis. The lead-in image of this post is from the Scottish Highlands, near Loch Ness. I wouldn’t have chosen the framing or focus of this image with my eyes on the viewfinder, but I like it anyway! Here are a couple of other more shots I’ve captured, using the same principles to see things from a different point of view.

Now it’s your turn, have fun playing and link in below or put your images images in the Flickr pool. I look forward to seeing the interesting points of view you find!

FYI – Links will be moderated. Please ensure that your linked image is on topic, and include a short explanation of how it relates to the current theme. Link back to this site through the Exploring with a Camera button (available here) or a text link. Thanks!

June 7, 2011 by Kat

Coming and Going

While wandering around Inverness trying to find a restaurant one evening, we passed this church graveyard. I was fascinated by the old stones, you could read as far back as the 1800’s but there were definitely some that were older and unreadable. I could imagine people visiting here, searching out their ancestors and doing grave rubbings. I remember doing that with my mom as a child on a visit to her roots somewhere in the midwestern USA.

There is such a focus on heritage and history in Scotland, it made me wish I has some Scottish in me so that I could be part of it. Genealogy centers, clan history books and tartans… all welcoming people back to their roots. Patrick‘s great-grandfather was from Scotland, with the surname Barron. We had a time of it trying to find anything on this name, but eventually discovered it was part of the Rose clan and there was a tiny bit more on them. Apparently, Rose or Barron were not the most prolific of clans from the little we could find. But that small little connection for Patrick and Brandon made it a bit more fun.

The Picture Inspiration prompt this week was “double vision,” on diptychs using photos of the same thing from two different perspectives. I liked this gravestone from the two perspectives, and putting them together in this way created a stronger emotion. I couldn’t quite describe it, but one of my classmates commented, “I like the flare and blurriness in the one on the left. Reminds me of the mystery of death. And the one on the right is so black and white like life and death.” I like her description, it puts something concrete to the feeling of the images.

What feeling do you get when you look at this pairing?

June 6, 2011 by Kat

A Gentle Twist

This morning on my walk in Parco di Monza I noticed the tree trunks along the path. I noticed how some trees grow straight and tall while others have a gentle twist. Why is that, I wonder?

If you know the scientific answer, don’t tell me. That was a rhetorical question. I would rather envision these stately trees reaching and stretching for the sun with gentle yoga-like twist to keep them energized.

Seeing the twist in the trees comes from the one and only sketch I did last week on our visit to Scotland. Much of the time it was windy and it rained off and on, so I wasn’t standing or sitting in any one place long enough to sketch anything outdoors until our last day in Edinburgh. We went to the botanical garden on a gorgeously sunny day where I found this interesting tree trunk. I sat and sketched the form of it – the details of texture and leaves are beyond me at this point, I’m afraid.

The best part of this drawing is not how it looks; the best part is what it helped me see today. This morning, as I was walking and noticing the twists of the tree trunks, I was very grateful to all that art has brought into my life. It doesn’t matter the art form, all of it helps me to see the world around me in different ways and capture it in my own way. Whether it’s photography or drawing or painting or words, that’s what I’m doing, isn’t it? Seeing, interpreting, and then sharing it here.

(Linking in to Creative Every Day and The Creative Exchange today. Happy Monday!)

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