Kat Eye Studio

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Fascinations

There are a few surprising things that I have found interesting to capture since returning back to the USA. Newspaper boxes, mailboxes and parking meters. Lovely parking meters, like this set, all by themselves. Or parking meters with something else, like my scooter. I didn’t see these beauties in Italy, there was usually a box where you would pay down the street and print a receipt. That was boring. These are interesting.

The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. 
— Marcel Proust
Linking in to Texture Tuesday today. Here’s the recipe I used:
– First, adjusted levels and converted to sepia tone.
– Next, added Kim Klassen’s crackerjack texture, blended with soft light at 88%.
– Erased this layer over the parking meters.
– Finally, added the crackerjack texture again, rotating 180 degrees. Blended with soft light at 48%.

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What’s going on around The Kat Eye View of the World…

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Playing with Night

Since we’re exploring Night Photography right now, I had a couple of photos from my recent trip to Venice open to edit. Usually for night photos I do very little editing – cropping and a tiny bit of levels adjustment. I like the light of night as is. Looking at this one though, I started to see some “vintage” opportunities. There is just so much going on here, the store windows, the alleyway, the signs… not to mention the interesting light — it’s very well illuminated for night. I played around with some conversions and really like this one using Pioneer Woman’s Heartland action. Couldn’t this be from the 60’s? With the exception of a couple of modern details, I bet it could. I liked the photo before, I love, love, love it now.

It’s so much fun to do this type of play! I hope you are out exploring with your camera this weekend, staying up late and catching the night light. Maybe playing around with some edits, to see what happens. It’s all fun! Tomorrow the Night Photography Camera Companion will be sent in my newsletter too – yay! I’m so excited to send this, and I hope it helps you get some great night shots. Keep exploring the night!

PS – If you don’t know what a Camera Companion is, you can visit this post or sign up for the newsletter here – you’ll get the Basic Composition Camera Companion as a gift for signing up.

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A Few New Tools

These old tools look well used, don’t they? They were part of a display in the Marksburg Castle in the Rhine River Valley in Germany. I loved the light and contrast, but just as much I loved that they represented the hard work of the people who once lived there. Imagine back when these tools were new. Imagine the lives that touched them, and how they supported and improved those lives.

Today I want to share with you a few new tools, through sites that can help link you up with online resources to further your creative journey and connections.

Finding Photo Link Ups

Yesterday Exploring with a Camera was featured on the blog Through a Photographer’s Eyes. Misty is featuring a different link up every Monday, with a resource list of the link ups you can access here or by clicking the button below. It’s a nice way to get an overview of the different link ups along with a list, so check out her features so far and remember to see who she’s featuring every Monday!

There are so many link up opportunities out there for photographers on the web, it can feel overwhelming at times. You might want to participate in them all, but I believe you have to find the ones that are right for you. I know that I resonate with some and not others, based on my style and interests, and I keep that in mind when I choose where to participate. Check them out and see what fits for you!

Finding Blogging Artists


How do you find new and interesting blogs of other artists? If you’re like me, it’s an organic process. You visit one site, follow a link to another site and over time find a few that you really love.

Geri Centonze has decided to help speed up that process of linking blogging artists by creating artseebloggers.com. On this site, you will find blogging artists grouped by category – Digital Art, Draw/Paint, Fiber Arts, Jewelry, Mixed Media, Paper Crafts and Photography. You can look around and visit the sites, and add yours too!

Artsee Bloggers

Geri says this is just the beginning of her vision and I can’t wait to see where she goes next. I love the idea of connecting artists to each other in new ways! I hope you will check out her site.

Finding Retreats and Online Courses

I know I mentioned the new site, Seek Your Course, a couple of weeks ago but I wanted to call it out in today’s “tools” post again. This new site is a fabulous resource to find courses that cover all aspects of art and creativity – everything from creative blogging to film making to personal growth and so much more. This is my kind of resource! I love to learn as much as I love to teach, and this opens a whole new way to find great learning opportunities.    

Before you had to click around, follow the organic route and, if you were lucky, stumble upon a link to a course that is perfect for you. No longer! How lucky we are to find these courses in one place, and who knows what new things you will find. I hope you will visit and check out the offerings. Tell Jess that Kat sent you! 🙂

A big thank you!

I love that in all of these cases, someone thought “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” and then did something about that thought. They saw a need and filled it by creating something we can all use. A big thank you to them!! It takes hard work to create tools like these that everyone can use.

I’ve created a new “resource” section on the left sidebar, and will add reference resources like these as they come my way. I’m all for anything that helps us connect with our art and creativity, and each other, at a higher level!

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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?

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Scotland is…

Dramatic skies
Church steeples
Green hillsides
Rain then sun then rain
Plaid and kilted
Friendly
Bagpipes
Bloody history
Lochs and firths
Castles
Lilting accents
Hearty food
Lots of fun

We are back from our relaxed week in Scotland, where the weather was amazingly warm and sunny the last couple of days. I even got a bit of sunburn! Back in Italy it’s grey and rainy, so my sunburn will fade fast. I can feel it disappearing already.

This image is from our first evening in Inverness, one of the times the sun popped out right before sundown. I loved the dramatic light and dark contrast found in the sky and the churches. Just one of the many skies we witnessed on this trip, it was ever changing. I’m just starting to go through my pictures and I look forward to sharing more this week!

Don’t forget, today is the last day to sign up for the Liberate your Art Postcard Swap. Tomorrow I’ll share the final count and the updated link list. I’m so excited!

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Turning the Camera on Myself

I’m over at Mortal Muses today, kicking off a week of musing on self-portraits with this image of me in my little creative space in our apartment here in Italy. We’ve been talking about a self portrait prompt amongst the muses for quite some time, and I must admit I had been dreading it. I don’t like pictures of myself. I see all of my flaws, the things I want to change. I’ve never quite figured out the self-portrait craze that seems to be going on in photography right now.

The dread was reduced when I finally got the idea to capture a picture of me in this place, our apartment in Italy, which we are leaving so soon. This little space you see me in is where my creative journey has unfolded. Where I dream, plan, and capture all of my ideas as they emerge. This is me, right now, right here. In the process of doing this prompt, I discovered something interesting – I actually like this photo of myself. I still see all of my physical flaws, but it’s as if they diminish in importance because there is more context. This is a self-portrait of more than the outer shell, it shows what’s going on inside too. There are a thousand details in this photo I could point out, each representing some aspect of me that goes beyond what you see on the outside. I like that.

So often, with portraits, it’s all about keeping the focus on the physical person and trying to remove a distracting background. Sometimes though, the context found in that background is as important to the portrait as the person itself. Context can make a portrait something more. I learned this when I saw the work of photographer Jason Bell, at an exhibit in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The portraits were for his project, An Englishman in New York, and his work struck me for how he captured the setting as much as the person in the image. These portraits are about each person in their place, and they tell a larger story than just a great head shot alone.

I’m heading out today for another week of vacation, this time to Scotland. It’s our last week-long vacation here in Europe before we move back to the US on July 1. You’ll see a few scheduled posts from me over the next week but I’ll be back, live and in person, on June 6. Have a great week!