Kat Eye Studio

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Wonder and Delight

Last weekend I had the great opportunity to be an “official photographer” for an annual Christmas Parlour Tour of historic homes. While it was crowded and the light was low, making photography difficult, I still had fun finding and capturing some of the details that make these historic homes unique and beautiful.

Yesterday as I was editing the photos in Lightroom I began playing with different types of color conversions. I love how there is so much control of color in Lightroom! In the process, I discovered how to use split toning, where the highlights are set to one tone and the shadows another tone. In this case, the highlights yellow and the shadows blue. Wow! I love this.

It’s amazing how something so simple, editing a photo, can fill me with such wonder and delight. Who needs big presents under the tree? Just let me take photographs, and I’m happy as can be.

Today’s Many Muses Musing prompt is WONDER. Tomorrow’s prompt is HOPE. Come on over and join in!

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To Surprise or Not to Surprise

That is a really good question…

Do you like surprises? Or do you want to know what is going to happen?

There is a part of me that delights in surprises. The kind of surprises that are truly a surprise – where you had no idea it was coming. At all. This could be a surprise in an image, as you look closer. It could be a surprise twist in a book, that takes the plot to an unexpected place. A surprise letter in the mail, or a package you weren’t expecting. I love those kinds of surprises.

I also hate surprises. If it’s something big, like a trip or an event, I like to plan. I like to anticipate. It’s half of the fun. If you spring a trip on me at the last minute, I will probably have fun, but I will have lost out on some of my enjoyment by the loss of anticipation. It also might mess up other plans I made, without knowing about the surprise. I don’t usually like “event” surprises.

I enjoy giving surprises, when I have a good idea. You know those ideas that are perfect for someone? Where everything clicks and you just KNOW that is what you need to do and they will love it? These kind of ideas can be few and far between but they are the ones I have to act upon when they come to me. But it can’t be all the time, that’s too much pressure. When the ideas don’t come, that’s what wish lists are for. Thank goodness for wish lists!

I guess I don’t have a good answer to the question, “To surprise or not to surprise.” Sometimes yes, sometimes no. How about you?

Today’s Many Muses Musing prompt is SURPRISE. Tomorrow’s prompt is WONDER. Come on over and join in!

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Exploring with a Camera: Creative Lights

Holiday time = long, dark nights + lots of lights, at least in the northern hemisphere. It’s the perfect time to explore! We’re continuing the recent “lights” theme of Exploring with a Camera with Creative Lights. I’m hoping that at least one, if not all, of these creative techniques will be new to you and will keep you exploring the lights at night for the remainder of the holiday season.

Let’s jump right in!

Layered Lights

Take a look at the lead in photograph, it’s a little bit unusual. It’s a composite of two images, one in-focus and one out-of-focus, creating a neat effect I am calling “Layered Lights.” I discovered this technique on my own last year, when I was looking for new ways to capture the lights in Monza. Seeing the out-of-focus and in-focus images side by side on the computer, I wondered what it would look like to combine them. Layered Lights was the result!

You will need a photo editing software that allows you to blend layers to do this, I use Photoshop Elements (PSE). I’ll show you how to created Layered Lights using this example image from Madrid, Spain. I think it looks great when you have a bit of architecture and lights, since the architecture grounds the image in a dreamy version of reality.

First, open the out-of-focus photo. That becomes your base image. Here’s the out of focus photo I used:

Next, open the in-focus photo and pull it into a layer above the out of focus photo. Here’s my in focus photo:

Now, play with blending modes and opacity of the top layer. Soft light and Overlay blending modes work particularly well. Unless you used a tripod when you captured the images, you may also have to transform (rotate, enlarge, reduce) your in-focus image to overlay the lights and the other elements in the correct locations on the out-of-focus image. It takes a bit of playing around, and I’ve discovered I like the in-focus photo slightly offset from the out-of-focus photo for a dreamier effect.

In the case of this photo example, the out-of-focus lights were also too bright – I couldn’t easily see the in-focus lights when I blended the layers, so I reduce the opacity of the out-of-focus layer and added a 50% grey layer underneath to get the final image:

Here’s what the layers look like in PSE:

Here’s a second example, of a really tall Christmas tree in the Madrid pedestrian zone, and the resulting layers in PSE:

Fun, huh? There are so many different ways you can play with this type of image blending… add more photos or layers, change the underlying layer, change the processing with other effects. Endless possibilities! If you don’t have your own images to try this with, feel free to download the out-of-focus and in-focus images I’ve shared above (right click and then “Save as…”) to play around with this technique. Just be sure to give photo credit and link back here if you share anywhere!

Zoom Lights

Can you tell what this is?

It looks like some really cool fireworks, or I had one friend tell me it looked like something out of the movie Tron. 🙂 This was captured by zooming (changing my focal distance) during a long exposure. Here are the actual lights I photographed:

To get this effect, you will need a zoom on your camera and the ability to set a long shutter speed. I found a shutter speed of 1 second worked very well. Set up your shot by starting zoomed in, fitting the lights just inside the frame. As you press the shutter, start zooming out (making the lights smaller) and keep the zoom moving through the exposure. The more you move the zoom during the exposure, the longer the lines of light will be. If you are shooting handheld, you will see some wiggle in the lines of lights. With practice and steadiness, you can minimize the wiggle or you can always use a tripod to get absolutely straight lines.

One tip to keep obvious “joggles” at the start or end of the lines, start your zooming motion just before you press the shutter and keep it going smoothly until after the shutter closes.

Have fun experimenting! As I’ve shared before, I find it especially interesting to capture people, I think it gives a cool time travel effect.

Hologram Lights

A couple of years ago we won a prize for the “worst white elephant gift” at a holiday party. The prize was well worth it, it was two pairs of these cool holiday hologram glasses, modeled here by my son.

What’s so cool about these? They change any point light source into a holographic image when you look through them. OR, when you photograph through them! The glasses shown in this example are the “Christmas Star” version, and here’s what our tree looks like, when photographed through the film of the glasses:

I love it! Someone could probably tell me how to do this with post processing, but all I did was hold the film of glasses right up to the lens, and shoot. So simple! You have to move the glasses around a little bit to get the best coverage of the lens since the opening in the glasses is smaller than the lens, but the paper around the edges gives a nice vignetting effect. If you are shooting up closer, I’ve found you need to focus on the lights to get the hologram effect, as I did here:

If you focus on another object, as I did with this ornament, the lights become blurry and you lose the hologram effect.

This doesn’t only work for Christmas lights, it will work for any point light source. Car headlights, streetlights, etc. become point light sources when viewed from far enough away. Lots of exploration fun! A quick google search for “Holographic Christmas Glasses” yielded a number of options. Here’s a link to a set of glasses with different hologram images on Amazon. I think I may have to get the set myself to play around some more, since they are so inexpensive and so very fun.

Also consider other films you can photograph through, for interesting effects. I can imagine that the thin, colored cellophane that gift baskets come in would give cool effects too!

So, what do you think, are you ready to go exploring Creative Lights? I’m excited already to see what you link in. I love how I can throw this information out there and get even more creative interpretations coming back from all of you. You can link in below or share in the Flickr pool. Happy light hunting!



FYI - Links will be moderated. Please use a permalink, ensure that your linked image is on topic, and include a link back to this site in your post through the Exploring with a Camera button (available on the sidebar here) or a text link. Thanks!

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Magical Lights

I must admit, as we’ve gone through Exploring with a Camera: Holiday Lights, I’ve found myself desparately missing Italy and Europe. This has been the hardest period since we’ve moved home from Italy in July, and it’s caught me by surprise.

You see, holiday time is magical in Europe. The city centers come alive with light displays, like this one on Via Dante in Milan last year. Remember my lead-in photo in the Holiday Lights post? It was from the same street, a year earlier. I find myself wondering what the lights look like this year.

And the markets, oh, the holiday markets! Every town, small or large, has a holiday market with interesting goods and special foods to sell. They are always hustling, bustling places in the pedestrian zones. Regardless of the weather, the vendors and the shoppers can be found there.

Each city has their own unique lights, it’s a point of pride. Here’s ceiling of the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele in Milan, where last year the crest of Milan could be found. The city’s lights seem to be saying, “Here we are, we are Milan.” I wonder if they have a dedicated light designer working year round to create their special displays. I would not be surprised! The more we explored, the more interesting and unique lights we found.

I so miss the holiday lights. I miss the pedestrian zones and the piazzas, the places where the town is alive. I miss the store displays. I miss the holiday markets. I miss the magic.

Thank you to those of you who have shared your Holiday Lights in the link up. They’ve been a bright spot in my otherwise wistful holiday season. You can still link up today! And tomorrow, a new Exploring with a Camera begins. I’ll share a few creative ways to explore lights any time of year, beyond what you’ve seen here and in other places. Don’t miss it!


Today's Many Muses Musing prompt is MAGIC. Tomorrow's prompt is BELIEVE. Come on over and join in!

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Glowing Mosaic

There is nothing as nice as a candle’s glow on a chilly winter’s eve. Unless, maybe, it’s a candle glowing in a pretty, handmade mosaic candle holder made just for you. My husband Patrick learned to mosaic in Italy, and he created these pretty holiday candle holders this year. It took a lot of trial and error, but they came out quite nice!

Today’s Many Muses Musing prompt is GLOW. Tomorrow’s prompt is MAGIC. Come on over and join in!

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Wintering

Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.
~Pietro Aretino

It seems that many of us are feeling the same this winter, slowing down, hibernating and allowing what comes next. My dear friend Tara Leaver, whom I connected with at the Do What You Love retreat last spring, has a beautiful guest post today on “Wintering” at Creative Every Day. She reminds me that I am not alone in my feelings, being in the down part of the creative cycle. She tells me it’s ok to watch seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (or, I will translate that into watching Battlestar Galactica and devouring some novels). Thanks for the permission Tara! Do check out her post if you have time today.

A couple of unrelated notes:

Don’t miss Many Muses Musing today! I am giving away a spot in the full January-February series of Find Your Eye. If you’ve wanted to take the class, today is your lucky day! You get an entry for a comment AND for a link in, so get yourself musing on today’s prompt GREETINGS and head over to link in.

Did you catch my post on Help-Portrait on Sunday? If not, you can read about my amazing experience here. Jones Oliver, our wonderful organizer, also blogged about it here. Visit his post to see more amazing images, including one with a snake!