Archives for May 2013

May 21, 2013 by Kat

Silent Communication

There is a moment when I feel the forest in my body. When I step out of the car at the trailhead, the change is palpable. The quiet is immense. My soul breathes a sigh of relief.

It’s a different kind of communication, between my heart and the forest. It’s one of the senses. Hearing the quiet between the sounds of the birds twittering and my boots along the path. Feeling a gentle breeze against my skin, or the cool wet of misty rain, or the warmth of sunshine. Smelling the new growth of the earth or scent of spring blooms. And seeing, my primary sense, is enhanced. Seeing what is and what could be, through my camera’s lens. Feeling the abundance of having so much to photograph I can leave most of it alone, and only stop for what truly moves me.

As I sit here writing this I’m struck by the contrast in sound the most. It’s early morning and I’m the only one awake, but the house is not quiet. There is the ticking of the clock. The faint high-pitch whine of the computer. The whir of the refrigerator. The spit of sprinklers turning on in the yard. Trucks rumbling along the nearby street.

Maybe that’s why my soul breathes such a sigh of relief at the trailhead. I must need the quiet of the forest. Stilling the sounds of everyday life for just a little while, so I can hear my true thoughts and desires well up from deep within.

Shhh… What do you hear?

May 21, 2013 by Kat

Silent Communication

There is a moment when I feel the forest in my body. When I step out of the car at the trailhead, the change is palpable. The quiet is immense. My soul breathes a sigh of relief.

Shhh… What do you hear?

May 20, 2013 by Kat

Happy Monday

Popping in here with a little boost of graphic color for your Monday enjoyment.

I went to an iris garden with some photographer friends yesterday, and photographed everything BUT the iris. (Well, maybe just a few…)

I particularly loved these alliums. They have such a cool shape! I’ll have to play around with these images some more.

May 17, 2013 by Kat

This Way

I believe each and every one of us know deep down in our hearts the direction we want to go. It might be a secret longing, but we know.

The problem is, we let other things get in the way of moving that direction… Be it our fears or doubts or other commitments and responsibilities. We often spend our energy coming up with reasons why we can’t follow the path our heart sets for us, instead of spending energy removing the roadblocks or starting out along the path.

It often takes something bigger, a crisis to nudge us over those barriers and along the path. Sometimes we need the obvious arrows pointing the direction we need to go.

I was reminded of this as I hiked in the woods this week. I’ve been longing to hike on a regular basis for months. My heart has been yearning for this quiet time in the forest; my body has been asking to be moved. There is a happiness and contentment I feel when I get out and hike which spreads out into the rest of my life.

I started to rearrange my schedule and responsibilities so I could get out regularly months ago, but then I let other things get in the way. I made excuses and distracted myself. And then my shoulder started hurting, which became the arrow pointing me along the path in the direction my heart was already telling me to go.

My heart knew all along what I wanted. My body and my head knew too. Why did I have to wait until there was something painful to make the change? I’m looking closely at this, to see what I can learn.

Do you know where you want to go next? What is your heart telling you to do? Maybe it’s as simple as mine, walking in the woods. Maybe it’s something bigger. What can you do to move in that direction now? Look at what you need to rearrange, what you need to change, and start down the path. If you don’t, you might find an arrow or two appearing, making sure you know the way.

May 16, 2013 by Kat

A Simple Outline

I’ve been enjoying getting out on my spring hikes the last couple of weeks, and it’s given me a whole new supply of images to edit. So much fun! I thought for Paint Party Friday this week I would share the super simple editing technique I used to create this bright and cheery piece.

I started with this image, captured with the ProCamera app:

Next I processed it in a new app I’ve been playing with, Tangled FX. It has all sorts of different ways to process your images and lots of tuning controls.

Finally, I ran it through the Glaze app. As always, I played with the different options in Glaze to see which one would work the best. I liked the “outline” effect the combination of the two apps created, the bright colors and the very loose brushstroke feel at this point – so I called it done!

See? Super easy. Try it out!

If you’re in Oregon and you want to learn more about creating art like this, check out my Smartphone Art class scheduled in Corvallis on August 10th.

May 15, 2013 by Kat

Going BIG!

I’ve waited. I’ve practiced. I’ve experimented. I’ve made sure I knew how to get my prints to look the way I wanted to before going BIG, as big as my printer can handle. I finally took the plunge this weekend and printed my first 17×22″ print. I chose to print my favorite tree image from Spring Break, The Last Tree.

Even though I wanted to understand the ins and outs before I printed this big, this print was a bit of an experiment, too. The Last Tree is an iPhone 5 image edited in the Noir app. I love Noir for its dramatic monochromatic effects, but the app doesn’t save full resolution files. The info in the app says it does, but that must apply only to phones at the time it was first released (2011) and doesn’t apply to the newer, higher resolution iPhone cameras. I needed to “upsize” the file to increase the resolution, and for that I used the Big Photo app. I was a bit skeptical I would get anything useful out at the end, but the final file came out surprisingly well-processed.

I stepped up to the big print, printing first on 13×19″ paper to verify the new file would look ok, then printing the image on the 17×22″ paper. I was so excited to see the finished print! It came out great. Doesn’t it dwarf my usual prints on 8.5×11″ paper?

The next step was framing. I had purchased some 22×28″ frames and accompanying mats (see my resource page for sources), so that I would have a way to present larger prints. The image at left is the final framed print, temporarily hung on the wall of my family room to give a sense of the scale. The final scene is a bit monochromatic, and the print looks surprisingly small given the size of the frame, but I think it could be a great addition in the right location. In this location, I prefer the color of the painting that usually hangs in above the couch (on right).

So now that I have this print all matted and framed, what am I going to do with it? I’ve no idea! I’ll find a place to hang it in the house, and maybe it will go into an exhibition someday. Until then, I have achieved one of my goals to print as large as I can with my printer, I’ve learned a bit about increasing file resolution with apps and I am ready for the moment I need to print BIG.

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