Kat Eye Studio

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Creeping Along

I found this snail on a windowsill in Ravenna, creeping along going nowhere. He made me smile, with his fake flowers happily blooming regardless of the weather. I also liked the repetition of shape, in the tea pot just barely visible in the window. Have you ever noticed the similarity in shape between a teapot and a snail? I hadn’t, until this photo. Thanks to my camera and the awareness it gives me, I now have this little tidbit filed away in my brain. As of today, you do too.

Yesterday’s post, I noticed, was my 600th post on my blog! Wow. I don’t know why that number strikes me, it just seems BIG. So I decided to celebrate that milestone by posting a photo of a snail planter full of fake flowers. The appropriate celebration of 600 posts, don’t you know. All the blogging milestone books say so.

But seriously, instead, how about giving away a few things today? That seems appropriate too! Here are the winners of my LAST giveaway from Italy. There were 49 entries, and numbers were drawn by using the random number generator from random.org:
#13 – Kristen of K. Laudick Photos wins the lens cleaning cloth from Ravenna
#48 – Pam from Utah wins one of the sets of notecards from Florence
#20 – Diana of Diana Mulder Mixed Media Artist wins the other set of notecards from Florence
#23 – Jo of Jo Murray – Art wins the postcards
I’ll be contacting you all for your addresses. Give your congrats to all of them!

Thanks so much for all of your support and participation here at The Kat Eye View of the World. Who knew that this little blog that I started to keep family updated about what was going on with us in Italy would end up with 600 posts. Well, 601 today. Amazing.

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A Night at La Scala (An iPhoneographic Essay)

A warm summer evening. A ticket to see the orchestra in Milan. A last item checked off of the “To Do” list.

Last night, I made my second visit to Teatro all Scala, the world famous opera house, to listen to the La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra. Conducted by Nicola Luisotti, they performed Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 in B flat min. Op. 23 with Alexander Toradze on piano, and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B flat maj. Op. 100.
I stressed a bit about what to wear, even though I know people show up in everything from jeans to floor length formal gowns. I settled on a skirt, digging out some nylons and my spikiest of heels. It is Milan, after all.
I found my seat on the main floor, fifth row, on the right.
I watched the boxes slowly fill, and captured some of the details of this historic opera house.
As the orchestra took the stage, I watched as they chatted and warmed up. But when the conductor and the soloist arrived, that’s when I put my camera away and closed my eyes.
I traveled with the music, letting it take me where it willed. From colored ribbons of music that dance together to images of something real, I felt the music resonate in my body and let it guide my imagery. I saw a sunrise, a stormy sea, a stream dancing through a beautiful glade. I soared to great heights over a landscape, and watched dancers swirling around at a fancy ball. This is how I experience music. When my eyes are open, I get easily distracted with watching and thinking. When my eyes are closed, I am fully in the moment. The amazing experience of live orchestral music, and how I respond, is something I have discovered during my time in Italy. One more beautiful thing to take home with me.
The orchestra completed, and after much applause, the patrons spilled out into the warm summer night. I looked around, trying to take it all in. Already a beautiful memory, the evening for me at La Scala. 
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I’m linking in to Creative Every Day, The Creative Exchange and Phoneography this week. Thanks for coming by!

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A Realization of the Heart

There are some things that loom larger than life in your future, and then there are the things that sneak up on you unaware. I had a moment yesterday where a “larger than life” part of my life managed to sneak up and catch me by surprise at the same time.

I was walking in Parco di Monza and admiring the wonderfully refurbished Lo Scrittore* sculpture. It’s all shiny and looking its best after they worked on it last month. I was wondering how long it would take before it started looking worn again, with peeling paint and the wood falling off. Then I realized, I won’t be here to see it. I really won’t be here. I burst into tears. What I’ve known at an intellectual level forever finally hit me at an emotional level. We’re moving in three weeks. Three weeks. I will no longer be here, living in Italy. No longer walking in Parco di Monza everyday.

It’s interesting, how I can hold two realities in my head at the same time. The reality of living in Italy and the reality of living in Oregon. Both seem so comfortable and real. What is completely unreal and hard for me to even grasp is the reality of living in Oregon after living in Italy. What will it be like to be there, as a completely different person? Because my time in Italy has changed me, changed all of us in our little family, more than I ever imagined. And I’m so, so happy with the changes.

What I have finally realized is that I’m not returning to my “old life” in Oregon. I’m moving to a new life, that happens to be in an old place. Going back to an old place doesn’t mean going back to an old life or an old me. It reminds me of the time, four months after my son was born, that I finally realized life wasn’t going to go back to “normal.” There was a new “normal” with the addition of my son then, and there will be a new “normal” for my life in Oregon now. In a way, this realization is kind of freeing. I’m open to redefine things however I like, as long as I avoid falling into assumptions that life has to be the same just because it’s the same place.

I think I’ve been writing this blog post in my head, over the last 24 hours, as I’ve wrestled with some of these realizations. There was the little, planner part of my brain that said, “No, no, you’re doing Scotland photos this week!” But as always, what I need to write wins out over what I planned to write. This blog is about my creative journey, and I can’t write anything else and be true to me. I think that’s why I’ve avoided calling myself a travel blog, or an expat blog, or even a photography blog. Because my blog is all of those things and none of them, depending on the day. Conventional wisdom for “growing a blog following” is to know your topic, know your audience and write for them. Today I’m saying aloud something I’ve felt for a long time: To hell with conventional wisdom. I write this blog for me.

This blog is about one woman’s creative journey wherever she may be. I write about what is important to me, fascinating me, challenging me in that moment. It happens that I have a passion for photography and can’t help teaching when I’m passionate about something, and that’s why you see a lot of photography. I love art and creativity and reading inspirational books, so you get that too. Since I’ve been living in Italy, I write about my life here and our travels. All because it’s who I am right now. Where my life happens is going to change, but who I am will stay the same.

Thanks for joining me on this unpredictable journey. The fact that my little life and interests can connect with others is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever experienced. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

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*Lo Scrittore is a sculpture by Giancarlo Neri, installed in Monza Park (Parco di Monza) in 2006 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the park. The sculpture is painted plywood over a metal frame. The table  measures 7.5 meters high and 11 meters long, and the chair is 10 meters tall. I captured this picture while they were working on it last month, to give a better idea of the scale. I absolutely love this sculpture.

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A Gentle Twist

This morning on my walk in Parco di Monza I noticed the tree trunks along the path. I noticed how some trees grow straight and tall while others have a gentle twist. Why is that, I wonder? 
If you know the scientific answer, don’t tell me. That was a rhetorical question. I would rather envision these stately trees reaching and stretching for the sun with gentle yoga-like twist to keep them energized.
Seeing the twist in the trees comes from the one and only sketch I did last week on our visit to Scotland. Much of the time it was windy and it rained off and on, so I wasn’t standing or sitting in any one place long enough to sketch anything outdoors until our last day in Edinburgh. We went to the botanical garden on a gorgeously sunny day where I found this interesting tree trunk. I sat and sketched the form of it – the details of texture and leaves are beyond me at this point, I’m afraid.

The best part of this drawing is not how it looks; the best part is what it helped me see today. This morning, as I was walking and noticing the twists of the tree trunks, I was very grateful to all that art has brought into my life. It doesn’t matter the art form, all of it helps me to see the world around me in different ways and capture it in my own way. Whether it’s photography or drawing or painting or words, that’s what I’m doing, isn’t it? Seeing, interpreting, and then sharing it here.

(Linking in to Creative Every Day and The Creative Exchange today. Happy Monday!)

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A Summer of Change

Ah, summer. Long days of sunlight and warmth with nothing to do but lounge around in the hammock and read a book, right?

Um, no. Not for me this summer.

As most of you probably know, my time in Italy is coming to an end. Our apartment will be packed up in a few weeks, as my son finishes his school year. Shortly after, we’ll say goodbye to friends, neighbors and colleagues, and fly back to Oregon on July 1st. A new adventure awaits, in an old, familiar place.

With all that going on, you might find me absent here and there from the blog over the next couple of months. Since blogging has become a habit, I’ll probably be on more often than not, but I’m giving myself the freedom to let things slide a little more than usual. (This is hard for me, I must admit.)

In addition, for the summer months Exploring with a Camera will run with re-posts of earlier themes. I’ve selected posts from last year, before many of you had joined in, and will run them as “second editions” with some new example photos along with the additions of the link up and Flickr pool for sharing. If you’ve done the prompts before, this will be a great opportunity to share what you captured the last time around, or cement the ideas further by using the concepts again.

Thanks a bunch for hanging in with me as I move through this transition.

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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!