Kat Eye Studio

by

Share Your View: Fog

Yesterday I took my camera and spent time noticing the details of Parco di Monza as fog hid the greater world. I saw new things, like the moss and roots of this tree, because I was looking closer. I almost felt done with the fog this year, but I reviewed my images from yesterday’s photowalk and I’ve fallen in love with fog all over again.

Have you seen fog this last week? Did you find a favorite fog photo in your archives? It’s not too late to share your view! Even though I opened the linky in last week’s Exploring with a Camera post on Fog, you can still link up for another week. Come by the blog to see who’s already joined in. Visit some of these sites, there are some wonderful and creative fog photos included already.

Don’t forget there’s a giveaway of postcards too – I’ll draw a winner from those who link up. One lucky person will win a set of my Black and White postcards this week! I can’t wait to find out who it will be.

by

Altering our View

I am musing today on Applied Texture over at Mortal Muses, come by and say hello. This image was captured on our day trip to Sirmione last weekend, and I just loved the piece of the castle jutting out into the lake. Beautiful light and reflections, a reminder of an era gone by. Perfect for a little texture to age it.

I love digital photography, for the way it can alter our view. Here’s the original image, before the texture. A different feel, don’t you agree? Which do you like best?

by

Momentous Work

I truly believe that ignorance is bliss. I believe there are times starting things without a clue as to the work involved is a good thing.

Being full of uneducated optimism, we start down a path. We don’t ask people who know, who have followed this path before, because they might say, “Wow, you have no idea what you taking on.” And they might tell us, and burst our bubble. Or if they do tell us, we don’t listen, being so full of our wonderful idea.

Bringing an idea into the world, whether it be a novel or a business or a painting, is hard enough work without knowing the full extent of the effort. Having the courage to take things on and start, one little bit at a time, can sometimes seem momentous on its own. Once you are caught up in the wave of creative expression, you find you believe in your idea and want to make it work, at any cost. You are willing to surmount any obstacle to get it done and out in the world.

I’ve learned a small piece of this truth lately, with my Find Your Eye class. I’m celebrating a little bit this week because I finished the final edits on the course two days ago. Yes, the class has already started, we are in week three. No, my schedule did not go as planned. “Finishing” ended up being much more work than I expected. Than my family expected. Most of my free time in the last month was spent in editing, rewriting and finalizing the material. Considering I work full time, have a family and we travel quite a bit, that was limited time.

Would I do it again? Absolutely, in a heartbeat. I am so proud of how the material has come together into a cohesive whole. I am loving the class, seeing these ideas and tools in the hands of new people who are finding value in them. I know that this was the right thing for me to do.

Would I have started, had I known the real work involved? It’s hard to know, but I suspect not. If I had known I would give up so much of my precious free time in Italy for this at the outset, I might have thought, “Oh, I’ll just start that when I move back to Oregon.” The problem is, I needed to do it now, while the ideas where real and fresh to me. So, like any starry-eyed person with an idea, I started without knowing the effort involved.

I believe that this is one of life’s little tricks, to allow us begin on a path without knowing the full extent of work we will have to do. It may be the only way to get us invested at the outset, so that we bring new, good, amazing ideas into the world to share. If we truly knew the cost, we might stay on the couch and read a book. Instead, we create.

Ignorance is bliss. I’m a firm believer. How about you?

by

Castle Views

A craggy castle on the tip of a peninsula, guarding against intruders to a land of days gone by. This castle is in Sirmione on Lake Garda, an hour and a half drive from our home here in Northern Italy. Yesterday afternoon we took a little day trip out to this town, exploring a new part of this beautiful country. Besides this wonderful castle, there is a nice pedestrian town with wonderful lake views, natural hot springs, roman ruins and the most frigid wind coming off of the lake. A perfect afternoon for some of the best gelato I’ve had in a while!

I love these old castles. They are so solid, so real, even today. You can tell that life was not easy in the days these castles were needed. Bare stone rooms, small spaces, dangerous stairways. The majority of the inhabitants worked long hours in difficult conditions, lived in cramped spaces without much reward other than food, shelter and protection from invading forces.

This vision is so different than our idealized version of castles with turrets and princesses with flowing dresses. I find I like the reality of these solid places better than the gilded rooms of kings and queens later in history. There is something honest and true that resonates in the bare stone, coming through the centuries to speak to me in this age. Do you feel it too?

by

Tomorrow, Tomorrow

I love ya, tomorrow. You’re only a day away…


Do I have you singing the song from “Annie” yet? I hope so! Tomorrow is the start of Find Your Eye, and it’s only a day away! I’m so excited. I chose this picture from Bologna today on purpose. I loved the row of scooters, just repeating off into the distance, but this first one had it’s own unique touch – a yellow daisy in the windscreen. Just like all of us, who are unique and have our own little touches to share with the world in our photography. It’s not too late to join the class if you are interested.

If the class is not for you, lots of great stuff will be going on here in the The Kat Eye View of the World! I’ll be back with regular posts next Tuesday, giving you a first look at our trip to Spain and Portugal. Exploring with a Camera returns this month on a regular schedule after a holiday hiatus, and I’m bursting with ideas. In the last week I’ve also posted on monochromatic color at Mortal Muses and on my 2010 Word of the Year at Christine Kane’s blog, stop by and see me there too!

Sing with me now…

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow. You’re only a daaaaay aaaaa-waaaaay!

by

Lessons from Abroad: Join the Blogosphere

Lessons from Abroad: Join the Blogosphere

[This is the last part of a five part series. See the previous parts here: one, two, three, four.]

Wow! We’re down to the last of my five lessons from abroad, to help you find your passion and purpose. The final lesson I want to share is: Join the Blogosphere.

My blog and participation in the blogosphere has been a key part of my personal journey to discover my passion and purpose, in ways that I could have never imagined when I began it in 2008. I want to talk about the two parts of joining the blogosphere that have really helped me, and show you how they can help you also find your direction.

The first part of joining the blogosphere is writing your own personal blog. This can seem daunting for a number of reasons. You are putting yourself out there in a public way – other people can read and comment on your ideas – that can be scary. You may be worried no one will want to read it. You may be overwhelmed with the idea of having something to say or share on a regular basis. You may be confused by all of the technology options, what you think you need to know technically in order to have a blog.

There are a lot of reasons to be fearful of starting a blog – but one very good reason to do it: There is no better way to get aligned with your true passion. The only way to sustain a blog long term is to write about something that you are passionate about, this is an important truth of blogging. If you are not passionate about what you write, it will not feed your soul. You may maintain it for a while but you will eventually then lose interest, drop out.

It may take a while to find your voice and topic for your blog, you might start and stop several times in writing your blog, even start and stop several different blogs. That is entirely normal, if you read the stories of long term bloggers. Finding your voice takes experimentation. You may try on different topics randomly, and have no single direction. But in the experimentation and the seemingly random blog posts, a theme may begin to emerge. You start line of conversation that you sustain for a long period of time. When this happens, it becomes easy, quite pleasurable even, to write regularly. Guess what – you are tapped into your true self, and your passion is starting to emerge. Go with it, wherever it leads.

I started my blog when I applied for this job that brought me to Italy. I thought it would be a good way to keep family and friends back home updated on what was going on, if I got the job. After moving, I found that I wasn’t able to sustain that kind of “update” blogging – I just wasn’t that interested in writing about our daily lives. After a friend pestered me to update my blog, I decided to start posting something I was interested in – a photo every day from our European travels. I would pick a favorite and then write a few words of description along with it. With that, I struck gold. As I selected the photos and wrote about them, I started to learn more about my art form and my creative process. I started to notice and write about what creativity and photography brought me at a deeper level. I started to recognize my passion, through the writing I was doing on my blog. The passion that I now realize was already there, just waiting to be noticed.

There are as many different ideas of what blogs are or are not about as there are bloggers. You will find a whole range of types of blogs on the internet. Here’s my definition, now that I’m established and looking back, and this might be a place to start if you want to begin a blog as a tool to help you find your passion.

My blog is…
A place to explore topics that interest me
A place to share my art and what it means to me
A place to share my experiences and what the personal insights I gain from them
A public place, where anyone (even my son or my boss) might read it
A place to positively connect with other people on the internet
Written from a place of honesty and heart

My blog is not…
A personal journal of all of my unfiltered emotions
A record of events
A place to vent or talk negatively
Written for show or to meet other’s expectations

If you don’t have a blog yet, there are many free options available to try it out. You can be unlisted or anonymous or use a pseudonym if you’re worried about the “public” aspects of it. The important thing is to write honestly, consistently, and about what interests you. Keep following the trail of what you seem to want to write about – your passion lies at the end of that trail.

The second way the blogosphere helps to find your passion and purpose is through participation. The blogosphere is not a one way conversation, where you put yourself out there in a vacuum. It may start out that way, but to truly expand the experience, it should be a two way conversation. Once you are consistently writing on your blog, beginning to find your voice and style and topic, it’s good to reach out to others who may have similar interests.

There are so many blogs and websites out there, it seems overwhelming at first. When you start to narrow down your focus and interest though, you start to see that there are smaller communities within the giant internet community. You might start with a keyword search, and see what you find on your area of interest. From there, you start reading the blogs you find. These might lead you to other blogs or articles, resources you didn’t ever realize existed. Once you get brave and leave a comment on someone else’s blog, you might find that you get a comment or reply back. You start to build a community, through your interactions. You find new resources, you expand your network.

Why would you want to do that? It might seem silly, to look to expand your network or build a community if you are just trying to find your personal passion. But each interaction you have, makes you think. You further define and refine your thoughts as you read ideas and have a conversation with others in the blogosphere. The others you run into have thoughts or experiences or insights that are valuable to you as you progress on your journey. What someone else writes may completely resonate or make clear an idea you are struggling with, or vice versa.

My experience with participation in the blogosphere has been extremely positive and crucial to my discovery of passion and purpose. There have been multiple times that a comment on something I wrote on my blog came along at exactly the right time to help me understand myself in a different way. I’ve had others tell me the same of comments I’ve left them, or blog posts I’ve written. In my exploration of the virtual world, I’ve found other like-minded individuals and true friendships that cross all of the borders and boundaries that exist in the real world. As I’ve started to participate, I’ve followed trails to new people and sites and resources that have, over time, let me toward my passion and purpose.

Would I have started the blog if I didn’t move to Italy? Probably not. I didn’t “get” blogging before, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on the computer because that felt like “work.”That was before I recognized the real connections – both to my true self and to others – that joining the blogosphere can bring.

My Passion and Purpose

With all of these lessons on how to find your passion and purpose, are you still wondering what mine are?

My passion is photography as an art form and an expression of my self. I have a personal mantra that I created some time ago, through writing on my blog:

I am an artist, my medium is photography, and I have a unique vision to show the world.

This statement is continually being refined as I change and grow, but that’s my passion at the core.

My purpose right now is to help others to see that they too have a unique vision to show the world, through whatever their art or passion is. We all have creativity inside of us, but we spend too much of our time comparing and limiting ourselves, or focusing on just living in the established routine.

I’ve started down this journey of fulfilling my purpose by creating my first ever e-course: Find Your Eye: A photo course with heart and soul. It starts January 9 (that’s in two days!) and runs 6 weeks (registration is open now at wishstudio.com). The course is designed to help photographers at any level start to develop, recognize and appreciate their personal style; the unique point of view that only they can share with the world in their photography.

All this clarity came through the personal practice of the Lessons from Abroad I’ve shared with you. Pretty cool, huh?(Photo is from Venice, Italy)