Kat Eye Studio

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One Week Left!

There’s one week left in the open call to artists in mobile photography. This is a great opportunity to liberate your art out into the world and share your work with a new audience. Have you submitted yet? Don’t delay! Deadline is June 2.

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Expanding Vision: The Contribution of Mobile Photography

 
What: Call for photographs made with mobile devices (phones or tablets)

When: August 21 – September 28, 2014

Where: The Arts Center, Main Gallery, Corvallis, Oregon

Deadline to Apply:  June 2, 2014

How to Apply:  Online

Artists have embraced technology as an art-making process since photography became available in the 1800s. Each new technological advance increased the tools available for creativity and artistic expression through photography and mobile photography is no exception.  This method of image making has the potential for the greatest widespread influence of any type of photographic innovation. People who would never have considered themselves an artist, or even creative at all, now have the means to be just that with mobile device camera technology at their fingertips.

We are looking for the full breadth and depth of what mobile photography has to offer. While the chemical darkroom allowed some latitude for expression, the digital darkroom increases the possibilities for manipulation of images even more dramatically. Mobile devices have a myriad of programs and apps–all on the device itself–that give the photographer an incredible opportunity for creative expression. Mobile photography ranges from the representational to the abstract, from street photography, still lifes, portraits and landscapes to fully abstracted impressions. We hope to see examples of all these approaches, highlighting how mobile photography contributes to the expanding artistic vision of photography.

Eligibility:

  • The Call is open to all individuals using a mobile device to take images.
  • All images must have been taken in the last two years.
  • Work previously exhibited at The Arts Center will not be accepted or presented to the jurors.

Terms and Parameters:

  • The original image must be created and edited in its entirety on a mobile device, either phone or tablet.
  • The submitting artist must be the owner of the image.
  • All submissions must be via digital image uploaded via the submission form
  • The $10 application fee must be received by the deadline. Applicants may submit up to 5 images for this amount.

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Painting with Photographs

There is nothing like a new challenge to spur creativity. My morning hikes have been wonderful, and giving myself the goal of creating and sharing one photograph per hike has given me the motivation to try something different.

In recent months, my photographic style has been very spare, with lots of open space. I love the simplicity and peace that space brings to an image! But open space is rare in the forest. Western Oregon’s forests are dense and verdant, so I’m learning to fill the frame again. I’m retraining my eye to see lines, color and space a new way.

I’m also playing with new processing techniques, on mornings when I have a little more time. My latest favorites have been created by blending multiple different photographs together. Maybe an app or two to shift colors, but otherwise created by layering and blending multiple photographs to create a rich tapestry of forest impressions. Here’s the first, called “Can’t See the Trees for the Forest.”

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And, after several attempts that haven’t quite gotten where I want them, this morning I created another piece with a similar feel, called “Left Light.”

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This technique is new. It’s as if I am painting with photographs. It’s not just altering the photographs with painterly techniques, which I’ve certainly done plenty of times, but using the photographs as the structure; the paint with which the final image is created. Layering them and combining them to create something new and unique. Look close and you will see the bits and pieces of the individual photographs. From far away it’s an impressionistic whole.

It’s a whole lot of fun, and frustration, at the same time. It’s a new way of approaching the creation of a finished piece. And this creative challenge comes only because I’ve given myself the goal to go out and hike, and capture and share a photograph of the forest each day.

Where are you challenging yourself these days?

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Beneath Perception

Yesterday, as I pulled my creaky body out of bed, I was filled with internal debate: Should I go out for my daily hike, or should I give myself a day of rest? I didn’t have to decide right away. I settled in with a cup of tea and journaled, all the while my subconscious worked the problem.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion: Yes, I needed to go for a hike. I didn’t have time for a long one, but I knew once I got out there, my body would work out the aches and pains and I would be happy I did. Even though I would have a long list of valid reasons if I didn’t go, in my heart I would know them as excuses and feel guilty. There was really no question at all, in the end.

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I walked the forest path, listening to the bird song, and soaking in the steadiness of the forest. I shared the joy of being in the open, free to roam, with my enthusiastic canine companion. I was filled with a buoyancy and lightness, a happiness that only comes in these moments on the trail.

There is something for me in the forest I can’t explain. There is a communication that lies beneath perception. It is an acceptance of all that I am, almost an absolving of all that I am not. There is no judgement in the forest. It is there whether I am or not, but it welcomes me as part of it, part of a greater system, for a brief time every morning.

I leave the forest with my soul scrubbed clean, refreshed, renewed, and ready for whatever the day brings.

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The Shedding of Responsibilities

I am in a period of realignment. As I talked about in my last post, I’m shifting old things around to make room for new things. As I shed responsibilities, there are moments it feels great. I feel free and unencumbered as I drop things away. Then I wonder if I’ve shed too far… When I discovered this morning I’ve left the pizza dough half made on the counter all night (the yeast isn’t even mixed in) and I look at my desk, piled two inches high in stuff that needs to be sorted.

Ah well. That’s what realignment is all about isn’t it? Figuring out what has to stay and what can go. Sometimes that takes ignoring things for a while, to see how important they are.

I’d better get on that pizza dough though, if we want dinner tonight!

I have a quick question for you today… I completed this image, “Canopy,” as a vertical, and after it was all done, decided to crop it to square. I’m still torn between the two. Which do you think works better? Why?

As originally Created:
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Square:
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Morning Hikes

Hiking season has begun! Sunrise is finally early enough I can be out in the woods most mornings for a three to five mile hike before I head off to work. Yay! I’ve missed my hikes.

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Last fall, I stopped hiking regularly when Daylight Savings time ended and I went back to work full time, which happened nearly simultaneously. Without the morning hours free, I just didn’t have enough light to hike anymore. I thought that would change when I was able to go back to work part time again, but now I’ve got a new position at work, a promotion I’m very excited about, and I’ve made the choice to stay full time.

So… That means resetting my own expectations along with my schedule. It leaves less morning time for everything I like to do in the AM hours: journaling, creating art, blogging, hiking. I’m learning to adapt. Rather than feel constrained I’m going to make my choices work together.

From a photography standpoint, I’ve decided to do a Morning Hike series (#morninghike on social media) of photographs. I would like to create one finished photograph from each hike I do in the forest. I often photograph on my hikes but I don’t always share because they may not be exactly what was inspiring me creatively at the time. That’s a luxury I won’t have going forward… I want to hike, I want to create photographs, I don’t have all the time in the world… I need to bring these two things together.

Today’s photograph is from yesterday’s hike. Nice, huh? It was a gorgeous morning, and the photograph captures the feeling of it perfectly. It shares the optimism of spring; the promise of a new day.

I think this commitment is going to challenge my photography, and I will learn to express myself in new ways. But most of all, I will be combing two things I love more strongly, hiking and photography, rather than feeling like I am trading off one for the other. I love the feeling of “wholeness” that brings.

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Ever-changing

Yesterday I went for a hike on a trail I haven’t visited in a while. It was barely light as I got to the trailhead and started walking with Zoey. I couldn’t even see color. As the sky lightened I noticed the forest around me had changed since I had been here. Sprinkled throughout the trees were the yellow leaves of fall, showing just how many deciduous trees are here, hidden among the fir. Summer and winter these trees blend in with the forest’s green and brown, but in the fall they say farewell brightly, as if to remind us of how much we’ll be missing for the next few months.

In the pre-dawn light with my iPhone I couldn’t hope to capture sharp detail but I could capture impressions. Impressions of bright color in the forest, a fleeting moment before fading into the winter palette of greens and browns. Impressions of an ever-changing forest.

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