Kat Eye Studio

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Deeper than the Eye

The heart sees deeper than the eye.
– Found on my Yogi tea bag Friday

Inspiration… sometimes elusive, other times abundant. As a creative person, I’m always aware of my sources of inspiration. It comes from the reading I do, the playing in my craft. It comes from exploring the world around me. Inspiration is everywhere.

Let me repeat: Inspiration is everywhere.

This weekend, inspiration was found in crab pots sitting along the bayfront in the coastal town of Newport, Oregon. Aren’t the colors and textures just amazing? I spent quite a while exploring the crab pots with my camera. A few years ago I took one picture of a stack of pots in this town, and for some reason that image popped into my head before my excursion. I was on the hunt for crab pots.

During my hunt I found a number of other things… some interesting texture, brought on by the salt water and proximity of the ocean. I found interesting colors, from the quaint buildings to the stacks of containers in the fish processing warehouses. I found interesting contrasts, in the people working in the processing plants in their rubber boots and the tourists in their flip flops. I found inspiration in the process of taking pictures, with three new Exploring with a Camera ideas coming to me. Thank goodness for my little notebook and pen, always with me in my camera bag.

Most of all, I found a deeper truth, finally understood with my heart instead of just my head. My inspiration comes from the process of creating my art. It is found when I am out and about, hunting for photos. Seeing the world through my viewfinder and lens. Translating something that just catches me out of the corner of my eye into something that is beautifully presented. It is the process of photography — of exploring, capturing and then making those little tweaks in post-processing to perfect an image — that matters to me. It is the process of creating that is the whole point to all of this artistic stuff. Sitting at home, inspiration doesn’t come for me. It takes getting out and doing.

For some reason, a year ago or more, I had this idea that I would move back to Oregon and still share mostly photos of Europe on my blog. I have gazillions of photos from my two years of living in Italy on my hard drive – many unedited and just crying out for review. Who knows, I might even have ones I like better than my favorites hidden in the folders. So I’ve had this idea stuck in my head, that’s what I would do… Edit my photos from the last two years and continue share them here. For some reason, I thought it was Italy and Europe that was inspiring me photographically, and that just the sharing of the images would be inspiration enough to carry me a good long while.

Not true. I know now: It’s the creative process itself that inspires me. What living temporarily in Italy did was get me out regularly with my camera, to new places. It exposed me to new and different things. It got me out and doing. It got me writing and sharing. Trying new things, like painting. Once I was doing all of that, the rest took care of itself.

Inspiration is everywhere I go, because it’s found within me. 

That lesson, learned with my heart this weekend, may be the most important one I’ve learned to date. I hope you can take it to heart too.

Linking in to Creative Exchange and Creative Every Day today.

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Planting Flowers of Generosity

These lovely flowers grace the doorstep of a store in Carbondale, Colorado. They put here for all to enjoy, freely shared with the passersby. They are meant for everyone, not just one, hence the sign in them, “Thank you for not picking me.” I found this sign cute and amusing, but it’s a polite little reminder that by a simple inaction – not picking the flowers – you can give the beauty to others as well.

Today I am thinking of generosity and service and how this fits with creating our best work and our best lives. I started thinking on this from an idea in Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, which I am still reading and loving. She writes:

How to be Lucky: Be generous. I don’t use that word lightly. Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you’re generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It’s like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune.

Doesn’t that quote just feel right? Generosity is luck flowing out. We get as much, or more, from that outflow than when things are coming to us. And I think the kind of generosity she is talking is not about money, it is about spirit and heart. What do we have to offer others? Is it a smile, a phone call? We can be generous with our time and our attention. Our knowledge. Our encouragement, support and enthusiasm. There are a million ways we can be generous every day, and the first step may be leaving the flowers alone so that others can enjoy them too.

Building on this, another idea came my way this morning, via the Brave Girls Club “Daily Truths”emails (you too can sign up for these, go here). The email says:

Dear Influential Girl,

There is a beautiful and little known secret to happiness that it sometimes takes us way too long to finally learn….and it is one that we can start practicing today, fabulous friend.

When life feels overwhelming, upsetting or grim…we can instantly change our outlook on things by getting out and serving someone else. Somehow, when we turn our focus to someone else, and especially to making their load lighter, or their day brighter…it comes back to us ten times stronger even than what we put out. That is some sweet math, isn’t it?

If things are tough right now, even if you feel like you don’t have time……just try it out. Make a phone call, write a kind note…..bake some cookies or make a piece of art for someone. Take time to really visit….help someone do something that is hard for them and easy for you. Something so beautiful will happen that you will forget about your own sadness for a while…and when things start feeling tough again, you have the power to get out and serve mankind in little ways all over again.

Just try, my friend. It will be worth the effort.

This is one of the most magical facts of life….and it works every time.

I like what they wrote, “…do something that is hard for them and easy for you.” That feels right to me too. Generosity and service don’t have to be hard. They don’t have to be a huge sacrifice in order to “count.” Maybe it’s as simple as sharing something we are good at with others. Maybe it’s just sharing a piece of our art in the form of a postcard in the mail, or a technique on a blog post. I think of these things, because they are how I share. They are what I enjoy doing. I hadn’t quite thought of them quite in the light of generosity and service before.

At the moment we give of ourselves, we are outside of ourselves. We become part of the larger world and are contributing to a greater good. We make the world a more beautiful place. And, while it’s not often our intent with generosity and service, we gain too. We forget our sadness, our own personal issues, and make room for that good fortune Twyla talks about to come our way.

If the first step toward generosity is not picking the flowers, the second step is surely planting and tending a few of our own. I’m pondering what flowers I’m planting today, through simple acts of generosity and service. How about you?

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Potential of the Day

Yesterday morning, on my walk in Parco di Monza, I saw this. Such amazing light and mist, and mystery. It seems an infinite path, you wonder where it ends.  What a difference a day makes, the intense rain of the previous day contributing the moisture for the mist in this otherwise sunny morning, making this image possible. A moment where you can sense the potential of the day.

Would you believe that this is straight out of the camera, and a point-and-shoot camera, no less? This supports my fundamental belief that it’s not the equipment that makes the photographer, it’s the eye. I keep coming back to this quote, “The best camera you have is the one you have with you.” I keep my Canon Elph with me at all times in the park, so I’m armed for whatever inspiration is shown to me. And lately, things are shown to me often. I must have just started to see it in a different way, because I doubt the park has changed substantially in the year and a half I’ve been here, but my enjoyment of it has deepened substantially and it’s become a wonderful source of inspiration.

Speaking of inspiration, have you been keeping up with the 9 Days of Inspiration on the Mortal Muses sites? If not, go right now and read this post by writer Cara Lopez Lee. Her words are incredible. And while you’re there, look around and leave a comment or two on the different sites to win some of the cool giveaways (including a set of my postcards – I have more on the way!).

I hope you have an inspirational day! The potential is there, in every day.

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What Inspires You?

Maybe it’s light coming in through the window, maybe it’s color, maybe it’s a wonderful quote. What is it that makes you want to perfect your craft, become a better person, explore new things? We all have different sources of inspiration. I was inspired a few weeks ago by this random composition in my window after I was done playing around with capturing the plant shadows. Lines and light and plants peeking out, it was interesting to me.

Today I’m musing on inspiration over at Mortal Muses. We’re in the second day of 9 Days of Inspiration, with lots of giveaways – every day! Come on over and comment to enter. Also visit our More Musing site, where today’s post of Muse University – a repost of this week’s Exploring with a Camera on Rain – has an awesome giveaway for rainy day photography! Every day for the next 9 (well, now 8) days you will see inspiring posts from amazing women around the internet on the More Musing site in addition to the usual daily inspiration from Mortal Muses. Hope to see you all over there.

Today’s update on the piles: Thanks for all of the advice yesterday, last night I took it easy and just talked to a friend, then put my feet up and watched a movie and read for a while. Today the piles are slowly disappearing as I work through the house, but I’ve also made pancakes with my son and done some other organizing, so it’s all been good. In the words of one commenter: What needs to get done, will get done, with plenty of time. 🙂

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Visiting Home

Today I am heading to Oregon for a two week business trip, probably my last one before we move back next summer. I am soooo looking forward to some good Mexican food and visits with friends. It is always a whirlwind trip of work and socializing and shopping, since I’m there for such a short time. I’ll be here on the blog off and on, a few scheduled posts, a few live posts, whatever I can squeeze into my frantic schedule.

Today’s photo is of the wreck of the Peter Iredale, on the northern Oregon coast near Astoria, taken in early 2008 before there was any inkling we would ever have the opportunity to move to Italy. For all that I love the travel and the unique places we have visited in Europe, along with the photographic inspiration that it has given me, this image is a reminder that beauty is everywhere around us. No matter where we live, we just have to seek it. It is there for us to find.

I have sometimes thought that I “found my eye” here in Italy, but when I look back at a photo like this I realize that’s just not true. I already had the vision and the passion, long before this move. What has happened during my time in Italy, is that I have recognized it as my own. I have learned to see myself as the artist I am. The artist I have been, unknowingly, for quite some time.