Kat Eye Studio

by

In Search of Beauty

Today I find myself in search of beauty. Craving flowers in my images. As I sat down to write this morning, I discovered I didn’t have any photos ready that I wanted to share today. So I set out in search of some beauty.

For some reason, this brought to mind a day spent in Korkula, Croatia, in 2010. On this day, I wandered the alleyways of the historic stone town. I remember enjoying the shady light, the summer flowers and the texture of the stone. It was a quiet day, as if I had the town to myself. Me and my camera.

Revisiting images of Korkula, I found beauty.

What are you searching for today?

by

Weekend Away: Stone Garden

Even though Dubrovnik, Croatia is a city of steps and stone, you find gardens springing up in all sorts of places, like this side “street” of steps leading to the top of the city. The light you find in narrow alleys, that filters down onto plants like this, is some of my favorite light for photographing.

For “Weekend Away,” I take a little blogging break and share random photos captured in my travels.

by

News Flash – Postcard Swap, Birds for Japan and Superheros

I interrupt today’s regularly scheduled blog post to bring you some interesting news. What do postcards, birds and superheros have in common? They are all on my blog today – read on to find out why!

Introducing the Liberate your Art Postcard Swap


Today I’m announcing the “Liberate your Art” Postcard Swap I’ll be hosting this summer! Many of us have an artistic practice – whether it be photography, mixed media, painting, beading, papercrafting, ceramics, you name it – but we don’t always share our craft with the rest of the world in a physical form. So I’m going to encourage you to “Liberate your Art” from the online world through a postcard swap! Is there anything better than getting artistic, creative snail mail in your post box? I don’t think so!

Here’s how it will work:
1. Have five postcard prints made of your original artwork. These could be photographs you’ve taken, prints of your painted or mixed media work, or images of 3D artwork. You can use five different images or five of the same image. The only requirement is that they be postcard-size prints of your original work (no layered or 3D artwork as part of this swap).
2. Mail the postcards to me in the US along with your address and return postage in July. (Signup and mailing details will be provided later, along with how non-US participants can provide return postage.)
3. You will receive five postcards back in the mail from other artists from around the world.

Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

Though the swap won’t take place until July after I return to the US, I’m telling you this now so that you can get started on your postcard prints. You may want to create them yourself at home, or you may want to order them from an online source. I’ve had great luck with moo.com and have a 20% off discount code for new customers if you order by 30 March – that’s tomorrow (use this code: BK67DT). There are many other options for printing postcards, let me know what services you recommend and if you come across any discounts I’ll share them in future updates.

More details and sign up will be available in the near future. Until then, start planning your postcards and get ready to Liberate your Art this summer!


Help Japan 1000 Birds Project

UK-based Japanese ceramics artist Makiko Hastings has a wonderful project going on to help Japan. She is creating and selling one thousand of these delightful little ceramic birds to raise money. All are unique, numbered and handmade by Maki. You can find out how to participate and help her help Japan on her blog, shin shin.
I have a special connection to Maki, since I had the opportunity to meet her when we visited England last summer. We met for breakfast and both were a bit nervous to meet someone from the online world. It seemed a bit weird at first, but we knew we had a love of art in common and quickly fell into conversation. I enjoyed talking with Maki and hearing the story of how she came to England from Japan and her dreams of being a ceramic artist. Since then, I’ve enjoyed following her adventures and her beautiful artwork on her blog.
Maki and me at the “posh” Betty’s Tea Room in York
I hope you’ll support Maki’s efforts to help Japan. We have three of these special little birds winging their way to us in Italy – I can see a group of three photo in my mind’s eye already!
Are you a Superhero?

If you are ready to put on your cape and change the world with your creative ideas, my friend Jenny Shih is here to help you. She’s a business coach for creative entrepreneurs, and I can’t begin to express to you how enthusiastic she is about this job! Even though I haven’t ever been “officially” coached by her, she’s given me more helpful ideas than I can count, just in casual conversation. She’s got it all – great ideas, great strategies and great heart. 
If you have a creative idea and are looking for some help to make your business a reality, or to help your existing business grow, she’s the woman to help you become the superhero you were meant to be. Take a look at her fun video below and then stop by her site, jennyshih.com, to see how she can help you with your plans to change the world.


Put on Your Cape, It’s Time to Save the World from Jenny Shih on Vimeo.

(Today’s image is from a back alley in Dubrovnik, Croatia.)

by

Lessons from Abroad: Put Ideas on the Table

Lessons from Abroad: Put Ideas on the Table

[This post is part four in a five part series. See the previous posts here: one, two, three.]

We’ve covered the first lessons from my experience abroad on finding your passion and purpose: Change up your schedule, Find a regular practice, and Get out of your comfort zone. This time I’m going to share a fun and easy lesson: Put Ideas on the Table.

As you begin to see the world of possibility opening up when you get out of your comfort zone, and you begin to receive all sorts of inspiration during your regular practice, you will find that you have a lot of new ideas. You need to put them someplace safe, where they won’t get trampled on. A place where they can be examined but not immediately decided or discarded. That place is “on the table.”

Let me explain what this means by telling you a story….

Early in our time in Italy, the move had definitely inspired my family to look at the world in a different way. As with any change, we were really examining our lives, both individually and as a family, and looking at what might come next. We had this opportunity, this little break from “reality” as I put it, which allowed us to dream up all kinds of crazy scenarios. The problem was, when my husband or I would bring up an idea, it was very easy for the other one of us to feel threatened and quickly point out all of the flaws – how it wouldn’t work for all sorts of reasons.

So during one of these conversations, where I had thrown out an idea and my husband was confused because it conflicted with an idea we had discussed several days earlier, I said, “I’m just putting these ideas on the table. Every so often, I want to pick one up, look at it from different angles, and then put it back on the table. We don’t have to decide right now.”

This concept, of putting ideas on the table, became a huge key for us to be able to really discuss ideas without the emotional attachments or reactions that can crush them too early or drive poor decisions. Let’s examine why…

It takes the idea from being a living piece of you, “your idea”, and makes it a thing, “the idea.” You can imagine it there as physical thing, sitting on a table, like a coffee cup in a store. You can imagine a discussion about it is the same as picking the cup up, looking at it from different angles. Then, you can just set the idea down and leave it there. No decisions or agreements have to be made from the discussion, just like nothing has to be done after you’ve looked at the cup. You’re just browsing. If the conversation starts to get emotional or personal, you can say, “Hey, ideas on the table here!” just to get the perspective back.

Not only does it reduce the emotional attachments we feel to our ideas, it also allows for several radically different and conflicting ideas to be held at the same time. Most of us probably like alignment in our lives. We have plans and like to know where we are going. When an idea that is diametrically opposed to our current direction comes up, it is easy to dismiss it without a second thought because of the disruption it would cause. But if the idea is placed on the table, it can coexist with numerous other ideas that have no relation to each other. You don’t have to think about them all at the same time or choose between them, you look at the ideas one at a time, and then put them back.

Over time, as you periodically examine the ideas, picking them up off of the table every so often, you will find that the ideas sort of magically whittle themselves down. Some of the ideas get dusty, sitting there. Some fall off the table and you never even notice, you just subconsciously discarded them. You might pick them up later, look at them, and think, “Yeah, done with that idea.” Eventually you end up with a few ideas that start to have actions formed around them. The discussion naturally transitions from evaluating the idea to acting on the idea. You may still not be fully committed to it, but you feel these ideas are worthy of more in depth investigation. Just because you choose to pursue one idea doesn’t mean the table has to be cleared off and all of the other ideas thrown away, they can stay there for the future.

This concept works with for you alone as well as with family and friends – any time a new idea comes to you. Here are some thoughts on how to use this to find your passion and purpose:

  • First, be clear that you are putting the idea “on the table.” This might mean discussing the concept of “on the table” with your partner or just writing it down in your journal that you are approaching the evaluation of the idea this way. This frees up the emotional attachment, the fear of putting the idea out there only to be crushed. If you are going to use this with other people, I recommend starting it with ideas that are not the about your core – your passion and purpose – to make sure the other person really gets it and will play along. You might need to nurture those core ideas on your personal table for a while so they don’t get crushed too early by others who aren’t playing along.
  • Once the idea is “on the table,” feel free to examine it or not as often as you like. It will be there any time you want to come back to it. If you feel yourself obsessing about it, leave it for a while. If you find you are dismissing ideas before you get a chance to get them on the table, consciously acknowledge the idea and then just leave it there.
  • Use a physical tool, like sticky notes or a journal to represent the ideas if you want to “keep” them somewhere in the real world along with on the virtual table. I have an idea notebook, where I scribble ideas as they come to me, just to put them somewhere and move them out of my mind. Sometimes, I come back to these ideas naturally, examine them and start to do something with them. Other times, I will only examine them when I flip through the notebook. But they aren’t lost, immediately dismissed to be never thought again.
  • If you find yourself starting down the path of action with an idea, either dismissing it or putting it into use, just do a quick check if that is really aligned with your true intention or if you are caught up in the “action trap” where you feel you have to decide in that moment. If your gut check says, yes, it’s time to move on this idea – then move.

The entire concept of “putting ideas on the table” has been a huge benefit for me, my family and anyone I’ve shared it with. Without this, an idea that needs time to grow and mature to be accepted can be killed too early. Or we can commit ourselves too early to ideas that don’t seem so good upon later reflection. The “table” is a safe place to keep them, examine them, and eventually sort them out – moving toward your passion and purpose all the while.

(Photo is from Dubrovnik, Croatia)

by

Exploring with a Camera: Frame within a Frame

“Frame within a Frame” is a compositional technique that I’ve had on my mind to share here, but was waiting for the perfect “frame” shot to lead off with. I found it in this shot from Bologna, looking through a bridge window into the buildings and canal beyond. Now that I’m writing this post and reviewing my archives, however, I am seeing that I use this technique more than I thought!

Frame within a Frame works for a couple of reasons:

  • First, it serves to focus the eye of the viewer on a specific subject. When you look at a frame within a frame photograph, you are usually drawn directly to the frame and what is inside of it. Then you kind of visually take a step back and take in the whole of the image. In the photo above, you are immediately drawn to the jumble of windows and walls and the distant bridge within the frame. Then you back out and see that you are looking through a wall with graffiti.
  • Second, it provides context for the image. You are looking through one thing – the frame – into something else. You have a better feel for where you are, as the viewer. It places the viewer of the photograph into a slightly different role. Instead of just looking at the photograph, they are looking through the photograph, from the frame into what is beyond. They are immersed in the image more completely. 

The “frames” that are within photo don’t have to be windows, although these are used to good effect. Basically you are looking  for anything that serves to contain or frame the subject. The nice thing about a frame within a frame is that it doesn’t have to be a straight line! The edges of our photographs are typically straight lines, with rectangular or square shape. Compositional frames we can use within our photographs can be any shape, from natural or man made.

In this image the eye is immediately drawn to the subject framed in the “white” of the overexposed window, and from there you move into the room to get the context of the boy (my son) standing at this very large window.

In this image from Padova, the subject is the bookstore, but the context is provided by the frame of the store window at night. The person walking by serves to punctuate the fact that we are looking into the store from outside.

I find that I use arches all of the time in my photography to frame a subject. It helps that they are almost everywhere in Europe! An arch is a nice contrast to the rectangular shape of the photo, as shown in this image from Brescia.

And here is one from Marksburg Castle, in the Rhine River Valley of Germany. This arch frames both a near and far vista, looking down the Rhine. It shows the strategic view the castle had of the surrounding area.

Yet another, this time an arch internal to the building, at Casa Battlo, in Barcelona. This arch frames the beautiful lines of the staircase curving upward.

Don’t ignore the good old, square doorway though! This doorway serves as a frame, giving more depth to the alley beyond and leading your eye right to the window at the end.

Natural elements make great frames. I think you can probably conjure up images you’ve seen or captured looking through trees at a distant object or vista – the trees are the frame. The palm tree in the image below from Split, Croatia serves to frame the subject of the lighted building while also giving the context of where the photo was taken from, the waterfront promenade. I have photos of this building without the palm tree, and they are not as interesting as this one.

This may be a familiar photo to you, as I’ve used it in Exploring with a Camera before. The branches of the trees arching over and hanging down to the water, along with the reflections completing the the arch below, serve to frame the path and draw your eye right along it to the water beyond.

Finally, here is a more literally frame within a frame from Bologna. Instead of looking through the frame, you are looking at what is inside the frame. It takes the random jumble of advertising, ties it together and gives it context. It becomes street art on it’s own.

So, now that you’ve seen a few examples of frame within a frame, how can you use this compositional technique?

  1. The easiest place to start is to look for the obvious in our everyday lives – windows and doors. Look at these as frames. What do you see when you look through them? What do you see reflected in them? Consider the point of view from both sides of the frame – looking out and looking in.
  2. Expand beyond the obvious to look for other opportunities for frames in our everyday spaces – hallways, mirrors and furniture are a few places to start. What other ideas can you come up with?
  3. Look for frames in architecture. As with arches, architectural elements can make great frames for something beyond, as well as provide the context of where you are at when you take the picture.
  4. Look for frames in nature. Trees make great frames, what other natural elements can you use to highlight your subject?
  5. Try changing your focus point and exposure – focus on the frame as the subject, focus on the image beyond the frame as the subject. What works best? Why? For many of my Frame within a Frame images, I have done both and then picked the one that had the best feel.
Chances are you are already using this compositional principle without thought, as I was. Take a look at your photos, and see where you have used frame within a frame and what effect it had. Keep an eye out, notice how it is used in the images you see around you everyday on the web, in print, in TV and movies. Try to consciously use it this week if you can. Next week, you can come back and share your view here, I can’t wait to see what you’ve captured!
P.S. I am no longer going to be using the Flickr group for sharing, it just hasn’t gotten any traction, probably because I’m not loving it. We’ll continue with linking in to the Share Your View follow up posts instead! If you have suggestions for other linking tools, please let me know. I’m looking at trying some different ones. Thanks for your participation!

Upcoming Events