Kat Eye Studio

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Getting Perspective

Time for an Exploring with a Camera check-in! As I’ve taken a look at my images with Linear Perspective in mind, I’ve been noticing a common way I’ll use it in my compositions. I’ll put my subject on the left or the right of the frame, and then use the street, walkway or canal to lead the eye further into the frame. Not only does it give a sense of depth to the image, but a sense of place. This images are not only of the subject, but the subject in context. I’ll share a few examples I’ve noticed as I peruse my images.

These vintage Honda scooters are not the cutest around. I’ll take a Vespa or Piaggio any day! But this one, with its cool rear view mirror, caught my eye in Northwest Portland. Getting lower and framing so that the sidewalk heads into the distance gives you a better feel. This is definitely in the US! I never saw sidewalks like this in Europe. So there’s a bit of a juxtaposition… A scooter parked on the sidewalk, but it’s in the US. Not so common!

From Water to Wheels, one of my Market/Wheels images, utilizes linear perspective in its composition. The men and the boat are the subject, but you are led deeper into the image by the receding canal and buildings. You might even wonder what’s around the corner. The lines don’t have to be absolutely straight to serve as linear perspective. In fact, it probably adds more interest to this image that they are not.

Last, I’ll share my recent favorite from Korkula, Croatia. The potted flowers on the side of the narrow walkway are the big subject, taking almost half of the frame. But adding the linear perspective allows me to provide context. You see the stone of the walkway, leading you further into the town. Don’t you want to walk there?

What have you discovered as you look at your images for Linear Perspective? Please Share! And be sure to visit the links of the participants. You will find some great examples!


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Mail Call!

It’s time for an update on the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap! As of this week, there are 181 people who have signed up, and I’ve received my first two envelopes. Yay! That may seem like I’ve reached my goal, but if last year is any indication, only about 70% of the artists who sign up will actually participate. That means I need a lot more people to join up to increase participation over last year! Can you help? Share about the swap on your blog, twitter or facebook page. I’ve even created a Facebook Event to make it easy to share with your creative friends, click here.

Won’t it be great to have all of that art reaching mailboxes around the world? I can’t wait!

I can imagine some wonderful art coming to these rural mailboxes, can’t you? They were so cheery, with the riot of flowers surrounding them. I played around with the processing and created another Lightroom Preset called “Mail Call,” which you can download here. It’s got a similar feel to Your Art Here, but the result is a little bit warmer with less desaturation in the reds and greens. I like the sunny feel of it!

Today is also the day I’m sharing my painting progress this week for Paint Party Friday. I’ve continued both paintings from last week, but this is the one I’m happiest with at the moment. It has a definite aquatic feel and I’ve continued to maintain the wave shape that originally appeared on the canvas as I build the layers. I think I’ll add some white next and see what happens. Happy Paint Party Friday to all!

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Spaces & Places

I’ve got places and spaces on the brain this morning! This morning I started the “Creating with the Environment” chapter in Trust the Process by Shaun McNiff. He talks about our physical spaces and response to places in the creative process. I love this line:

We create together with our physical environments and don’t always appreciate how their qualities contribute to our expression.

True for any type of artist, but even more so for photographers. For many of us, the physical environment is the raw material of our creation. We capture and compose from the environment. Like today’s photo… While the owner of the house created this beautiful space on the porch to sit and relax, I captured it to share the idea of cheery relaxation with all of you. Someone else created the place, but I create with it too. So very fun.

Since I love to explore and photograph places, my environment has become my creative fuel. We really explored the concepts behind creating with places in A Sense of Place, the 8-week course that just wrapped up a couple of weeks ago. It was awesome! I love how much I learn by organizing my thoughts into a class and sharing them with a group. I am in awe of how much I gain from the discussion and interaction with the course participants. This week I read the feedback from the class participants, as they shared their impressions of the class. I get a little giddy sometimes, realizing that these ideas of mine have made an impression on someone else too. You can read a few of the comments, newly added to my class information page here. Pretty darn cool that I can do something I love so much and have it resonate with others too! How lucky am I?

I can’t wait to run A Sense of Place again, in spring of 2013. Until then, I’ll continue exploring the spaces and places around me. They are the fuel of my creative expression. What fuels you?

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Find Your Voice

The last thing we need is more homogeny in the world of art. Once you’ve found your vision, find your voice, but make sure it’s your own. That takes courage.
— David duChemin in the conclusion of Photographically Speaking

I’m in a contemplative mood this morning, having finally just finished David duChemin’s latest book, Photographically Speaking. While I’m a voracious reader of fiction, I’m not a fast reader when it comes to books on art, creativity or spirituality. I like to take my time, sip my tea, and contemplate. It didn’t help that this book has only a two-week checkout at the library. I’ve had to put it on hold and check it out three times. Now that I’ve finished, I’ve decided I need to buy the darn book already!

But the quote above really resonated with me this morning. He talks about finding your voice in photography, which I call “finding your eye.” It does take courage to be yourself in your art. To learn from others and then step to the side, sometimes discarding what you have learned. To say, “This is me. Here I am, take it or leave it.” We get worried about the “leave it” part of that statement. But the fact is… we can’t make everyone happy, with our art or otherwise. And we can’t be anyone other than who we are. So we might as well take a deep breath and work to create our own unique vision and voice.

This is probably catching my interest because we’re about to start a new session of Find Your Eye this next Sunday. Registration closes tomorrow, and later this week a new group will begin to gather to start their journey. I love these journeys. The anticipation and uncertainty at the beginning which gives way to confidence and strength by the end.

David’s right: “The last thing we need is more homogeny in the world of art.” Each of us has something new, different and fresh to add. Isn’t that a wonderful thought to contemplate today?

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Monday Flowers

Happy Monday! The sun is shining and the flowers are blooming here in Oregon. Yesterday I was out exploring and discovered these beautiful orange-yellow flowers scattered various places along the side of the road. I loved how they were intermixed with the different plants growing along with them.

What were you up to this weekend? I hope it involved sunshine and something creative! If you weren’t around, don’t miss out on this month’s Exploring with a Camera, which posted on the weekend.

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Exploring with a Camera: Linear Perspective (2nd edition)

I love linear perspective. I just love it. Perhaps it’s because of my engineering brain, the way that lines converge in the distance just fascinates me. It’s so orderly and predictable! Perhaps its because of my artistic brain, and how these lines can be used in interesting ways within the photographic frame. Perhaps it’s because we recently talked about diagonals, and this put lines in the forefront of my brain. Whatever the reason, I’ve been noticing linear perspective a lot lately so I thought it would be fun to pull out a “second edition” post and revisit Linear Perspective for this month’s Exploring with a Camera topic. With a few updates, of course! Enjoy!

Perspective is such a cool compositional concept! It takes advantage of how we see, the optical effects of lines over a distance. I remember learning the concept of perspective way back in my early art classes: Lines, when viewed across a distance, will converge to a vanishing point. Below is an example, from the Barcelona subway. If you were to continue all of the light lines in this photo, they would all meet somewhere at the edge of the tunnel. The perspective of the converging lines brings your eye right through the photo toward the vanishing point in this case.

When drawing, you need to make sure that your lines converge correctly or the drawing will look odd to the eye. In photography, we don’t have to worry about “making” the lines converge – they do that already – we can just take advantage of the effect. I’ll give you a few examples and variations on how to use linear perspective in your photographs.

Leading Lines

One of the simplest uses of linear perspective is as leading lines. In the subway station photo above, the lines all lead to the train emerging from the tunnel. In this scooter photo from back-alley San Francisco, the converging lines all lead to the scooter. In order to create this effect, I got down low to the ground, used a wide angle and moved my perspective so that the lines created by the streets and buildings all met behind the scooter. By moving myself, I was able to capture a point of view that put the scooter at the vanishing point of the lines.

Distance

To use perspective bring a sense of depth, include a long distance in the photograph so that the lines can converge more dramatically. This often means using a wide angle (smaller focal length, i.e. 24mm) instead of a zoom (longer focal length, i.e. 100mm), so that you capture the length of the diminishing lines. In the photo below from the Italian Alps, the diminishing lines of the fence give a sense of dramatic depth even though my depth of field (how much is in focus) is actually quite shallow. If I were zoomed in on the fence without the long lines moving into the distance, the photo would have a completely different feel.

While the lines of the Golden Gate and its shadow are slightly curved, they serve the same purpose. The converging lines lead you into the distance, across the bridge, to the land beyond.

Orientation

The orientation of your photograph, horizontal (landscape) versus vertical (portrait), will change how perspective effects the image. In the two examples below from Parco di Monza, note how the horizontal image emphasize the lines of the path while the vertical image emphasizes the height of the trees. Both use the diminishing perspective of the path and the trees, but in different ways. Placing a figure just about in the vanishing point makes for an interesting place for your eye to rest as it moves through the photo.

Composition

You can use linear perspective in so many different ways to get good composition – this is the really fun part! You can move the vanishing point in a photo to get dramatically different effects. Look closely at the examples above and below to see how the diminishing lines are used compositionally.

The photo below is from the Royal Palace in Madrid. The composition is very symmetric, with the lines converging in the center between the left and right. It is not symmetric from top to bottom, however. The focal point of the end of the hall is around the bottom third of the photo.

Here is another photo, this time from Amsterdam, with a left to right symmetry of the linear perspective.

This image from Parco di Monza is interesting – the perspective is symmetric left to right, but the leaf (the real subject) is not centered. The perspective here is not the focal point of the photo, it’s the backdrop for the leaf, but it certainly makes the photograph more interesting.

While a symmetric perspective can certainly bring a sense of peace and order to a photograph, linear perspective certainly doesn’t have to be used symmetrically. This image from the Berrardo museum in Lisbon, Portugal is more asymmetric in it’s lines.

Putting the vanishing point at the edge or corner of an image can make it very dynamic. I love the way all of the lines converge in the corner of this photo from Paris. The contrast of the repeating pattern of the fence provides an interesting counterpoint to the linear perspective. I’ve noticed in many of my photographs using perspective I also use repeating patterns, a topic I covered in an earlier Exploring with a Camera post.

You can also vary the point of view and effectively use converging lines. The lead in photograph of windows in Madrid or the skyscraper from Barcelona below are two examples of linear perspective looking up. The skyscraper below has an asymmetric composition while the Madrid window image at the top of the post is symmetric left to right. (I seem to like that composition!)

Isn’t this fun? Take a look at the world around you and your photos this next week with an eye toward linear perspective. You can link your findings in below through 23-June. Remember, knowledge grows when shared! By exploring and then sharing your findings with us, we all learn something new.