Kat Eye Studio

Archives for November 2012

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Medieval Connection

Today I’m continuing on with my stories of connection, this time from the medieval town of Shrewsbury. If you look at a map of England, Shrewsbury might seem a bit out of the way place for a stop between Yorkshire and London. However when your primary purpose for a trip is to meet people, then it all starts to make sense. I had someone to meet, so I was headed that way. And that someone was Gilly Walker.

Gilly and I have been in contact online for several years. I first ran into her on Flickr while I was in Italy, then we shared comments on blogs and for a short time we were both Mortal Muses together. I’ve always loved her photography, her thoughts and philosophy, and – bonus – she teaches photography too. We seemed to have much in common, so she was on my list of connections this trip to England. She’s recently moved north, not far from Liverpool, so we had a bit of a struggle to figure out the best way to meet. Should she come to London? Should we meet in the middle? Finally she just invited me to come stay at her house, and then we could visit Shrewsbury the next day. Perfect! She apologized that it was a two hour train ride, but I assured her, after traveling 12 hours to get to England, a two hour train ride was no problem. That’s why I was there!

So from Hebden Bridge it was off to Hooton, to stay the night with Gilly and her husband, and then on to Shrewsbury the next day together. All of the images in this post are from our day in Shrewsbury.

I have to admit, on the surface it seems a bit strange to visit and stay with someone you’ve never met face-to-face. Here Gilly was inviting me into her home, and I was staying there, without knowing more about each other than our photography and writing. But I’ve always found that when you meet and develop a relationship with someone online, one that is built over time and around a common interest, that relationship is real and your gut feel about a person is accurate. So while we were both a bit nervous to meet in person, I had a feeling it would go just fine. And it did! Better than fine, we talked non-stop and had a lovely visit.

I knew Gilly was knowledgeable about photography, but I hadn’t realized the depth of her study until I visited her home. Staying in her home office, I got to peruse her bookshelves which had an amazing array of books on photography and creativity. I was in heaven. She had many of the same books I had, but also many, many more I had never even heard about. It was exciting to hear about her creative journey and what has influenced her along the way. I wanted to know which books were her favorites, and why. (Since I knew you all would want to know too, I asked her to write a guest post sharing a few. Come back tomorrow to read her recommendations!)

The next morning we were off to Shrewsbury, known for its medieval architecture. The day started off partly sunny, transitioned to mostly cloudy and then the rains settled in. It was interesting to wander the tight alleyways and see the mix of timber-frame and brick buildings side by side. It is always shocking as an American to see buildings that have existed for such a long time. It’s hard to fathom. Our idea of “antique” is on a different scale. The mix of the modern and historic gave this city a wonderful visual feel.

I’ve found that when you spend some time with another photographer, you get to know more about them through what catches their eye. Their work makes more sense to you, because you see how their heart and soul comes through. Ask anyone who’s gone on a photowalk with me and they will tell you: If there is a scooter sighting I will stop, with enthusiasm, to capture it. For Gilly, she has a series called “Fallen Things” and she stopped often to capture things fallen on the ground. I couldn’t help but capture one or two as well, and here’s my homage to Gilly’s Fallen Things series.

As I write this I start to wonder, if you spend time learning about another photographer’s point of view, does that affect you too? Did the time with Gilly get me started with looking down on the ground? Did that influence my current mobile photography series, As They Fell? Probably. As I talked about yesterday, the time spend with another in creative connection influences us in ways we don’t always realize. Everything we see and everyone we connect with becomes input that informs our output. Choosing our connections is as important as choosing our input.

For me, Gilly is a great source of inspiration. I am grateful to have have this connection with her. Thank you, Gilly, for a lovely day!

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Creative Connections

A month has slipped by since my England trip and I’ve barely written a word about it. I’ve barely looked at the images. I’ve moved on to one thing or another, my recent obsession taking up my brain space and creativity. And I need to spend some time on the trip to England, because it was a marker of sorts. A milestone with teaching my first in-person workshops, but a trip of creative connections too.

In fact, the creative connections are the reason I went in the first place. I had met so many lovely people in the UK, online and in person, that I felt drawn back. I wanted to renew these connections and deepen the friendships. The only way to do that is with time. So I plan to share a few stories here, of the people I connected with and the places we visited together. The things I learned from each of them.

First up, the Hebden Bridge crew: Fiona Pattison, Hannah Nunn and Rhiannon Connelly. I met all of these lovely ladies at the Do What You Love Retreat in May 2011. Fiona and Hannah both live in Hebden Bridge, and Rhiannon came to visit from Holland via Scotland. I spent most of my time in Hebden Bridge with them in some combination, and we took a walk together in the woods one morning of my visit. All of the photos in this post are from that lovely walk in the hills around Hebden Bridge.

Fiona was my host in Hebden Bridge, sharing her flat with me and my workshop. While I met Fiona at the retreat, I started working directly with her last fall on Public Relations. I was thinking she could help me get the word out on Kat Eye Studio, but it turned out she does so much more – business coaching and mentoring. Through our working together we have become great friends, so it was wonderful to deepen the connection in person, talking non-stop over a bottle of wine (or two!), great dinners and walks in the woods. She has so much wisdom and enthusiasm for living a creative life. She has a special gift; her art is helping creative people develop businesses that thrive. I have been lucky to be on the receiving end of her talents.

Hannah is an amazing artist, bringing beautiful light to the world. She creates handmade lamps with simple yet gorgeous flower motifs that cast beautiful and subtle light. She loves lighting of all kinds, so her shop, Radiance, showcases beautiful lights from different designers. Walking into her shop you just smile from the warmth of the lights. Or maybe it’s the warmth of Hannah! Being around her seems to bring a smile to my face and a sense of calm to my soul. It was so much fun to see more of her lamps in person and spend time with her. I’ve been dying for one of her lamps since I saw them at the retreat, even looked more than once online, so I was excited to finally buy one directly from her shop to have sent home. Now I have two beautiful pieces of Hannah’s art, bringing cheerful light to my house through the gray Oregon days. Is there anything better than having art you love, made by a friend, gracing your home? I don’t think so.

Last, but certainly not least, is my lovely friend and fellow photographer Rhiannon. I was so excited when she said she’d be able to make it down to Yorkshire for my visit. Her life is a bit crazy, splitting time between her permanent home in Scotland and her temporary home in Holland, so getting a few days with her was fantastic. She and I spent much time wandering Hebden Bridge with our cameras, discussing art, life and our respective creative journeys. I have always loved her painterly photographs created from Polaroids, and enjoyed watching her capture images with her iPhone while we were together. Now that I look back at it, I’m pretty sure our time together had a strong influence on my sudden adoption of mobile photography and editing. Seeing Rhiannon work and hearing her talk about her process planted a seed that burst free a week or two later.

And that, truly, is the beauty of creative connections. They plant seeds. They nurture growth. They encourage us and influence us, maybe sending us in new directions than we otherwise would have gone. I am glad that I heeded the call of my soul and spent the time to renew these connections. My heart is full and my journey is better as a result.

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Exploring with a Camera: Chiaroscuro

Greetings! Welcome to November’s Exploring with a Camera. This month I am going back to Italy, literally and figuratively, as we study chiaroscuro, or light/dark contrast. I found myself creating of images with strong light/dark contrast on my recent trip to England, reminding me that I used this technique on a regular basis when I was living in Italy. Images like this can create a strong mood and story.

Chiaroscuro is an Italian word, combining the words for light (chiaro) and dark (scuro), and it refers to an artistic technique of using light and dark to render an object as three dimensional in two dimensional art. It is commonly used to refer to very strong light and dark contrasts in a piece of art, such as seen in the works of Caravaggio and Rembrandt. If you aren’t familiar with their paintings, give the links a quick click to see some examples.

In photography, the concept of chiaroscuro can be used to create dramatic images. Creating an image with strong light/dark contrast has some challenges, however. Let’s take a look at how to overcome them so we can use this wonderfully dramatic artistic effect.

Contrast and your Camera

The built in light meters in our digital cameras are a fantastic tool, but they can’t read our artistic intent. The camera’s automatic settings are programmed to work with the light meter to get an even exposure across the frame. It reads the light and dark and recommends an exposure to get an average, based on mid-tone grey. This works great when we have even lighting and want the entire frame illuminated, but when we have a situation with a strong light/dark contrast, the automated exposure can be dramatically wrong. If there is a small amount of light compared to dark areas within the frame, to get the average exposure camera will try to make the darks lighter, and will overexpose. If there is a small amount of dark in light, the camera will try to make the lights darker, and will underexpose.

For an effective chiaroscuro image, you need to expose for where you want the detail. To do that, you will need to compensate your exposure manually, increasing or decreasing the exposure to get the desired effect. You can use manual mode or exposure compensation in the creative modes to adjust the exposure. Look up exposure compensation and exposure modes in your camera manual to learn more. (If you’re not clear on this, my Digital Photography Basics ebook will be ready very soon and it has a more thorough explanation. Sign up for the Kat Eye News to be notified when it’s available.)

For the typical chiaroscuro effect, a small amount of light in dark, you will want to underexposure. This will keep the dark tones very dark, almost black, while the light tones will not be overexposed. Play around with your exposure, however, to see what works best for the specific image you want to create.

If your light source is actually in your frame, don’t worry if your highlights are overexposed. In the example below, underexposing further would render the view out the window visible, but would have put the figure in silhouette — not the desired effect. With chiaroscuro, you want to see the form of the subject.

You can also adjust your highlights and shadows in post processing to create greater light/dark contrast. In this image, I pushed the shadows darker to create more contrast between the figure and the alley.

Finding the Light

It takes the right lighting situation to create a chiaroscuro effect. You need the contrast of light in dark, which requires a light source that drops off fairly quickly into darkness. An interior room with one window, an alley opening into sun, or a light at night all provide the opportunity for creating with light/dark contrast.

There is no specific direction the light needs to be relative to the camera. In my examples, I get chiaroscuro effects with backlight, side light, and top light.

Interior hallway with back light from outdoor access

Inside house with side light from north facing window

Interior with top light from lamp.

Focal Point

When you have a strong light/dark contrast, it will become the focal point of your image, whether you intend it or not. Going back the concept of visual weight, strong light/dark contrast has a strong pull on the viewer’s eye. If your intended focal point is not the part of the image with the strongest contrast, there will be competition between the two. I’ve found that creating the focal point in the point with highest contrast is effective.

In this image below, the focal point is the door at the end of the alley. The backlighting makes the door the highest contrast element in the image. In addition, all lines lead to this door, and the door is in focus. All of these give the door visual weight, pulling the eye right to it.

Now consider a similar image, with the wall in focus instead of the door. Does it work as well?

I don’t think so. The strong light/dark contrast still pulls my eye but since it’s not in focus, my eye has to wander around the image trying to find the intended focal point.

Let’s also consider the effects of color in the image. Bright color can be as strong as light/dark contrast when considering visual weight. You will notice that many of my chiaroscuro images are in black and white. Color can, at times, be a detractor from the intended focal point. Consider the alley image again, this time in color. Does it work as well as the black and white?

In my opinion, no. The green of the leaves and wall attract my eye and detract from the door. The image is not as strong in color.

Practice makes Perfect

Creating effective chiaroscuro images takes practice and experimentation. To play with this technique:

  • Find a place with a point light source, like a lamp or a window in an otherwise dark room.
  • Grab a volunteer to model for you or set up a small still life.
  • Take multiple images from different angles and at different exposures, and also try varying your intended focal point.
  • Review the images and see what works out of the camera and with post processing.

Have fun! I look forward to seeing your exploration of chiaroscuro images. You can link in and share through the end of the month!


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Lessons in Painting with Photographs

My experimentation of digital/mobile painting with photographs continues this week and for Paint Party Friday I thought I would share a couple of lessons learned.

First Lesson: To make a good painting from a photograph, you first need a good photograph.

If you are going to end up with a painting that has interesting composition, contrast and a good focal point, the photograph you are working with has to start out that way. The principles of design apply the same. This was not so much of an “aha” moment as a “well, duh” moment for me this week. It seems obvious after the fact. If you take a poorly executed image and then apply some painterly filters to it, it doesn’t make it the image inherently better. It gives it a bit of a “wow” factor briefly due to the processing, but it’s not going to stand the test of time.

So all this work I do to improve and refine my photographic composition and design? It totally applies in this new endeavor. It also makes me think that my Paint Party Friday friends might want to start joining me in Exploring with a Camera, because I have no doubt if you improve your photographs you will improve your painting. (And November’s Exploring with a Camera posts tomorrow!)

Second Lesson: Not every good photograph will make a good painting.

I’ll share a little example of one of my failures this week. Let’s start with the photograph, as taken with my iPod Touch:

This arrangement of leaves was found outside my car door in a parking space. I spent some time framing it in an interesting way. I liked the color and size contrast of the focal point leaf and the seemingly artful way the smaller leaves were scattered around. I thought the contrast would make it a good candidate for a painting.

Unfortunately, I did not save most of my attempts, because they were so atrocious. The translation to the painting didn’t necessarily change the feel. Here’s one example, created with the Glaze app:

And here’s the best I got out of it, using the Line Brush app. This app has some really neat features, in that you can paint portions of your image and then remove the underlying photograph. That’s what I did here: painted the leaf, removed the photograph, and then used a different brush for more painting to blend the colors and edges. The problem with this app is that it seems to want a specific rectangular canvas side, and it rotates and crops any square images without giving a choice in composition. That’s why the end of the leaf is chopped off. Grrrr. I cropped the end result as best I could to get a decent composition, but it’s not what I would have chosen.

So after all of the playing with this image, I finally decided it was meant to stay a photograph. I edited it with a vintage filter to soften the yellow-black contrast, worked with the vignetting to even out the corners, did a small crop to get rid of a couple of distracting elements on the edges, and called it good.

Great lessons for me this week.

Not only that, as I was writing this post I finally checked the resolutions on some of the files I’ve been using (I’ve been meaning to do that for days) and discovered that the Photo Stream sharing feature through iCloud doesn’t transfer full resolution files between devices. So now I need to figure out how to transfer full res files between devices, so these can actually be printed larger than a postage stamp, and re-edit my favorite images at high resolution. I guess it’s better to discover this now than later. But wow, is there a learning curve with all of this stuff!

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Repeating Myself

It’s a quiet morning in my brain today. Not so much to say. Rather than repeat myself with words, I’ll just share an image with some repetition from the Brick Lane photowalk I did as part of the Hampstead workshop last month. I can’t believe my England trip was a month ago already!

Also, today is the last day to link into this month’s Photo-Heart Connection. Don’t miss it! Have a great Wednesday.

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Different Paths

Today is the day. After months of campaigning, the US elections are finally here. Don’t worry, this is not a post where I share any political views. This is a post to celebrate that they really don’t matter here.

Regardless of political views, regardless of cultural or religious or socioeconomic background, we come together united by art. We come together to seek beauty and personal expression through our camera lens. That’s all that matters.

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We all walk a different path, to a different destination. Our journey is truly our own. Let’s be united in the pursuit of great photographs along the way.

PS – The Photo-Heart Connection link up is open through tomorrow. Come join us!

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