Kat Eye Studio

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The Solution to “Overwhelm”

When you are overwhelmed by complexity, come back to the one thing you are doing. You can’t really do more than one thing at a time in any event. No matter how fast your mind is racing, there is just this present moment. There is no other time. There is no other place to be. There is nothing else to be doing. Just this. When this one thing is done, you will do the next thing, and that will be the only thing there is.
— The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes

So simple. So true, in both photography and in life. When the world threatens to overwhelm, focus in on one thing. This moment, this action, this detail, and the complexity collapses down.

I’m looking toward overwhelm. Not this very moment, but in September when I have some pretty big things all happening in less than two weeks of each other: My brother is getting married in Colorado on the 15th, I’m participating in the Corvallis Fall Festival on the 22nd-23rd, and then I leave for England to teach my on-location workshops on the 25th. Deep breath. OK, what to do? I take the advice I read in The Practice of Contemplative Photography and do one thing at a time. I have my list, I know what needs to get done. I can sit and worry, or I can focus on this moment and use it.

It’s amazing what focusing on one thing brings. My PrintMania! weekend is a good example. I focused on printing over the weekend, and wow, here I am pretty much ready for the festival. That doesn’t mean that’s all I did… I still went back-to-school shopping with my son, visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Gordon House (more on that later), enjoyed a nice afternoon on the deck of a Bavarian restaurant reminiscing about Oktoberfest with my family, and finished a book. But when I chose to focus on the “to do” list, I focused on one big thing and got an amazing amount done.

I think that’s really why I’m productive – I can focus. I don’t believe that “multitasking” makes us more productive. The idea that you can do more than one thing at once distracts us. How often do you stop doing something to read an email only to go back to your original task, trying to figure out where you were? Distractions and interruptions waste time, and ideas. If you start and stop, especially with creative projects, you lose the string of ideas and inspiration.

If you want to do something well, and quickly, you need to focus on that one thing. The better the focus, the better the outcome. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t do many very different things in the grand scheme. I certainly do! I just do them serially, one at a time. It’s how I manage to work at my corporate job as an engineer, create new classes for Kat Eye Studio, practice my own art and enjoy time with my family. I don’t try to do them all at once. I focus on the one thing that needs to be focused on, in that moment. It’s all I really can do anyway, as the quote above reminds me.

Are you struggling with overwhelm? Are you facing a crazy period of time, like my upcoming September, and wondering how you will manage? The answer really is as simple as this: Do one thing at a time, and focus on that one thing, until it is done. Then move on to the next thing.

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The Mail Room Flowers

It’s no secret, I love photographing potted flowers! The flowers at the Glacier National Park lodges were fabulous, especially at the park administrative offices, off to the side of the Glacier Park Lodge on the east side of the park. I made a beeline for the flowers as soon as I glimpsed them. Heaven!

This mail room scene was especially interesting to me. I love how you can see a bit of what’s going on inside through the open window.

Glacier Park Lodge

I love the connections that come out of my photography. I chatted with someone who worked in the mail room, after he saw me taking pictures of the flowers, and he told me where I could find more beautiful arrangements. It was a nice exchange, adding a personal element to my memory of these flowers and this place.

Glacier Park Lodge

Have you found the same? Does photography open doors for you?

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Going to the Sun

The best known attraction in Glacier National Park — besides the glaciers — is Going to the Sun Road. This road is a scenic 50-mile drive on a highway first built in the 1920’s to connect one side of the park to the other.

It was built in difficult terrain for a different generation of vehicle (read: narrower) so it is not an easy road to navigate. Add in the traffic, the road construction to restore the road, and at times the weather, and it becomes a challenging drive.

Going to the Sun Road

It’s also challenging for photography. There are very few vehicle pull-outs, none at the upper part of the road going over Logan Pass (the highest point), so it’s catch-as-you-can for photographs. It’s a practice in quick composition: Photographing out the window of a moving vehicle, between trees and other obstructions to get a good view. I love this photo of my sister and I with our cameras pointing out the truck windows. It just captures it all – the scenery, the road, the photography experience.

Going to the Sun Road

Landscape photography isn’t typically my “thing” anyway, but it was fun to see what I could capture. Here are a few of my favorites from our various trips over the road. We traveled it 4 times during our week-long visit to Glacier, so I had ample opportunity to practice.

I like how this image shows the road, the traffic and the dropoff. It gives you a sense of the experience.

Going to the Sun Road

The light and shadow on the mountainside caught my eye here.

Going to the Sun Road

We even captured wildlife on the move. This was the only mountain goat we saw during our visit. He just happened to turn his head and look as we drove by.

Going to the Sun Road

Capturing another sort of “wildlife” — tourists — was fun too. I love the way they are all photographing different directions out of the top of the bus. The buses were pulled over and stopped, but we were moving on the road across the valley.

This is my absolute favorite of the bunch! Maybe not a classic “landscape,” but I love the shades of green and the layers of the hills created by the haze in the atmosphere.

Going to the Sun Road

Photographing out of a moving vehicle is not as hard as you might think. You want a fast shutter speed to reduce motion blur and it works best if you don’t have elements very near to the vehicle, as that’s where most of the blur will come from. You get a lot of “throw-away” shots but with practice you can get some good images. Give it a try sometime!

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Warning Signs

Imagine you are walking down a path and you see this warning sign:

What do you do? Do you turn around and head home? Do you continue on, taking every precaution? Or do you wing it, figuring that you’ll be ok? We encountered this sign on one of our hikes in Glacier National Park. There were several options available to us, to avoid bears:
1. Don’t hike, because then you are sure to avoid bears.
2. Get a bell and make lots of noise, to warn the bears of your coming and scare them away.
3. Purchase the bear repellent spray for $49.95, to spray a bear if it comes near you.

Since we weren’t doing any serious back country hiking, just short hikes popular with the tourists, we opted to purchase a bear bell and continue. We already have our own noisemaker with us, in the form of an 11-year-old boy, so we figured we would be ok.

Bear Precautions: An 11-year-old boy and a bell

We were fine. No bears sighted on our hikes! Some beautiful things sighted along the path though, like gorgeous wildflowers and light dancing on the leaves. Experiences we would have never had, if we stayed in the developed areas bears avoid.

Fireweed

We could have been warned away by the sign. We could have avoided any chance of meeting bears by not going down the path. Hiking in bear country is a good analogy for living your life. Do you avoid any chance of danger, by not going down the path at all? Or do you weigh the options and risks, and move forward down the path with some precautions?

I especially love the phrase on the sign: “There is no guarantee of your safety when hiking or camping in bear country.” Really, there is no guarantee of your safety anywhere.

There is one absolute guarantee though, if you decide to avoid the path, you will miss some wonderful views.

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A Classic Experience

The USA is a young country. We’re babies in the timeline of countries throughout world history. We talk about having a “history,” but more often than not we are happy to bulldoze or junk our history to make way for the new. “Progress” we call. I used to feel the same way, until living abroad. It was in Europe I realized what we lose when we indiscriminantly move toward the future. If we don’t love and save our history, who will?

So I love it when pieces of our history, like these touring buses found in Glacier National Park, are restored.

Throughout Glacier National Park you’ll see these “Red Jammers” carrying tourists about.

Original built in the 1930’s, they were restored by Ford in the early 2000’s to continue to give visitors a classic experience. They now run on eco-friendly propane and are quieter than they once were.

They are a classic all the same. We didn’t take a tour on them, but I certainly loved photographing these beauties! Aren’t they pretty?

These images were all processed with my “Red Buddy” Lightroom preset, which I’ll share in my next newsletter. Be sure to sign up if you want to download the preset. And, in the name of progress, I’m upgrading to Lightroom 4 today. Yay! I look forward to playing around with this new revision. Have you upgraded yet? What’s your favorite new feature? Let me know!

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Sit a While

The lodges in National Parks I’ve visited are always similar… rugged timber construction, fabulous locations and a place to sit and enjoy the view. There is always a row of chairs, rocking or otherwise, placed where you can sit and just be. Notice how they are empty? Not so many people take the time to do that. We keep busy. Have to see this, do that. Fill up our time.

I am struck by these images of inviting but empty chairs. Where are all the people? They were certainly around, but not sitting. I wasn’t sitting. The empty chairs perfectly highlight what I just read in The Practice of Contemplative Photography this morning:

[W]hy can’t we relax when we have nothing to do and enjoy a little bit of space in our lives? The problem is we are afraid of our own hearts. There are many, many things we haven’t wanted to look at. The heart is so sensitive, so ready to resonate with the world, that we keep it covered, fearing we won’t be able to stand being touched. It might be too intense. We might be overwhelmed. We can’t affort to open up, because who knows what we might feel. It seems safer to armor the heart, even if that shields us from the vitality of life… When you have nothing to do, whatever accumulated agitation, restlessness, or existential anxiety you might have begins to surface. You become aware of feelings that are normally submerged. Boredom is the forerunner of this distress and a signal that you should seek some diversion to hold your heart at bay.

This rings true… it’s hard to sit a while and just be. It’s hard to open that channel to our hearts. We don’t know what we might feel, so it’s better to keep it wrapped up safely and covered with all of our busy-ness. That’s why the Photo-Heart Connection has become so important to me and many others. It may not be sitting quietly with our selves while looking at a fabulous view, but it is a process that allows the heart to open. It allows us to feel the messages that are there for us, just under the armor we’ve created by filling our lives with things to do.

Today is the last day to link in to the Photo-Heart Connection for July. I invite you to sit a while today. Enjoy the view. Connect with your heart, and the hearts of others in some way. Join us.

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