leaf

November 21, 2013 by Kat

Inviting Inspiration

Hey, do you know my friend Inspiration? She’s great fun. When she comes to visit we have an amazing time.

Were a good team, she and I. We are amazingly productive together when she shows up, always creating new work like crazy, generating wonderful ideas, and moving in new directions. I love the feeling of having her around. She makes me bold and confident, not caring what’s going on in the world around me. Could there be a better friend?

There’s one problem with Inspiration though, and it’s a big one. She’s flighty and unpredictable. She doesn’t show up when it’s convenient and she’ll leave suddenly without warning. No matter how much you beg or plead, when she’s ready to go, she’s gone.

If she wasn’t so much fun to have around when she came to visit, I’d probably end my friendship with her. I mean, who really wants a friend so fickle? But I know what she does is not intentional. It’s as much me as it is her.

You see, if I don’t give her my attention, she’ll move on. If I think I can delay her departure by saying, “I can’t right now, hang on until tomorrow,” I’m deluding myself. She doesn’t have time for that, she’s got other people to inspire. If I don’t drop everything and take what she has to give, I can’t expect her to hang around indefinitely.

But I often do just that. Inspiration comes to visit and I say, “No thanks, not right now. I’ve got other things on my plate.” I forget what a great team we are, how much fun we have. I forget that I may not see her for a while, if I say no.

I forget that it’s my choice, in the end, whether Inspiration comes to visit. I might not have any control in when she shows up, how long she stays, or what we do while she’s here. But being open and willing and inviting her through the door… That’s all me.

She’s gone from here for the moment. Hopefully she’s having a grand time with you right now, since she’s not with me. I miss her, but her absence helps me realize that next time, I can’t put her off. I’ll rearrange my schedule and invite Inspiration in.

November 14, 2013 by Kat

Leaf Dance (A Mobile Tutorial)

I was standing on the front lawn, waiting for a friend to pick me up. Rather than wait in the house, I decided to take the few minutes I had to capture the fading leaves of the trees along my street. It was windy and partly cloudy, the sun dancing in and out of the clouds and the leaves dancing in the breeze. Stalking the trees for a few graceful branches against an open sky, I finally found the right scene.

This edit, Leaf Dance, feels nostalgic to me. Vintage memories of autumn, from a year that already seems long gone. Capturing the leaves in transition is already poignant, but vintage processing can make it even more so. I thought I would share this edit as a mobile tutorial, so you can see the challenges and phases an image goes through along the way. I usually can’t see where it will end up. I just have an idea of the next step I should take at each phase.

Lets’s start with the original image. I really liked these reaching branches, but was impossible to get them with a blank sky. The trees of the neighborhood were too close. So I endeavored to frame the branches against the clouds with some space between any other trees. Did I mention it was windy? I probably have 10 shots of the same scene because the branches were moving around. This was the best one.

The next step was to remove the distractions of the other neighborhood trees. If there is a gap between the distraction and subject of interest, it is much easier to accomplish. I used the Retouch feature of Handy Photo to remove the trees, crop in closer, and the remove a few of the branches in the background. Here’s the next phase:

Because of the lighting, the leaves and branches look like a silhouette but I want to pull out more detail. In Snapseed, I start with a global adjustment for brightness, but that didn’t do quite enough for the leaves, so I add a selective adjust to increase the brightness only on the leaves. By doing this, I pull out the details in the leaves, both color and texture, but don’t adjust the sky any further. I want the clouds as is. It looks very odd at this point, my eye can tell it’s wrong, but since I know it’s a transition step I don’t worry about it. Things sometimes have to look worse before they look better.

Next step is through Snapseed’s Grunge filter. I dialed the texture way back and scrolled through the options to see what colors felt right for the image. Purpleish-pink! I also played with the center spot and adjusted the location and radius to make sure the focal point of the image was clear, while the less important corners were darkened and fogged.

Time for some texture! I pulled the image into Pic Grunger to see what I could do. This app can overwhelm images with its default settings, but if you play with dialing it back a bit you can often find a great aged texture effect.

It is almost there. I’d like to pull the focus more tightly in on the branch, minimizing the pull if the brighter sky in the upper left. I pull the image into XnView FX and play with some of my favorite textures. These textures often give just the subtle effect I’m looking for, and this time was no exception. It darkened much of the sky but left the brightness where I wanted it – under the branch. This provides great contrast to pull your eye right to the intended area of focus.

Both the color and processing of the final image leaves me with a romantic, vintage feel. Exactly what I was looking for! Unlike most of my mobile tutorials, there was no blending in this edit. It’s just an image, a couple of apps and the willingness to imagine and experiment. That’s all you need to create mobile art!

November 7, 2013 by Kat

Photographer by Choice

How many of us have heard the phrase uttered one place or another: Photography is not art. I have, many times in the past. Surprisingly, most often from others who consider themselves artists.

Or if it’s not explicitly stated, the non-art of photography is implied in some way. Even by the photographers themselves: I can’t draw a straight line, but I can photograph. As if photography is the also-ran art form, what you turn to when you have otherwise no artistic talent. I can imagine an ad: Don’t worry if you can’t paint or draw, you can be a photographer!

Those of us who practice photography know these statements are not true. Photography is art and photographers are artists. I’m not going to belabor or try to prove the point here. Whether you believe it or you don’t, that’s your concern.

But what I want to point out is that being a photographer, being an artist who practices photography, is a choice. It’s a first choice.

It’s not a runner-up choice. It’s not what you do if you can’t paint or draw. It’s not what you do because it’s easier, or cleaner, or cheaper, or more accessible than your first choice art form.

Photography is what you do when you can help but see the details of the world. It’s what you do when the beauty of the lines around you takes your breath away. It’s what you do when you realize that you can frame things, things that everyone else might walk by everyday, and express yourself through them.

A photographer is an artist who can’t help but speak through the visual language of the lens. We are compelled to see and share the world this way. Those of us who have a deep heart and soul connection to the medium know this. There is no need to prove or justify it to anyone else.

I am a photographer by choice. It’s a choice I make, every day, as I continue to pick up my camera and seek to express myself. It’s a choice I make, as I continue to learn and grow my artistic vision.

But there are moments….

Moments I wonder if I don’t have it the wrong way around.

Moments when the need to create and communicate through a photograph is so powerful, I ask myself…

Did photography choose me?

November 1, 2013 by Kat

Photo-Heart Connection: October

There is beauty in autumn. And no, this time I don’t mean the vivid colors that some trees and plants use to herald their demise. I mean the quiet beauty of transition.

The beauty of a graceful exit.

I love the lines of the bare trees of winter, that is no secret. But as this fall has progressed, I’ve enjoyed the emerging lines which are accentuated with the receding leaves. Some leaves go out in a blaze of glory, falling from the tree en mass in their bright colors, still flexible and pliant until days on the ground. One day the tree is full, the next it is bare. It’s startling. But other leaves age in place, slowly and quietly making their transition, losing a bit of themselves here and there with a whisper until one day they are all gone.

It’s these leaves I’m noticing. They speak to me of tenacity. Of a will to continue, even with the inevitability of the end. And wow, aren’t they beautiful? In their demise, they are so graceful. They accentuate the beauty of the bare tree beneath, rather than covering it, as the summer leaves do. It’s almost as if this is their finest hour, their greatest contribution. This is when the tree and leaf are truly one. They tell me that a tree is not either/or, bare or full, it’s both. I can see both seasons, appreciate both, together in this brief moment. These leaves chastise me in my wishing for one or the other; in my desire to hurry or slow time. They remind me there is only this moment. Can I not see?

This time, as any other, I look to the trees for lessons. This season’s lesson for me: How to appreciate the transition. Regardless of what is coming, it can be approached and experienced in the moment, with grace.

“Graceful” is a word that keeps coming to me, over and over, to describe the lines that I want to capture in my photographs. The way I want to live my life. Lately, I see grace all the time in the lines around me, whether it’s in the trees or the sand or extension of a human hand. This month it’s been especially clear to me in the transition of the seasons, as my Photo-Heart Connection expresses. It seems so dramatic to say this, but I ache for the beauty of it all. I do. I am deeply touched by the grace I see in the face of inevitability. I want to have that kind of stoic strength in my approach to the transitions of life. I observe it, I photograph it, and I know I fall short. But I keep going, hanging on, working toward that kind of being. I wonder: Do you have to first see, before you can be?

What is your Photo-Heart Connection this month? Do you see deep longings or light playfulness in your photographs? Your heart is telling you something. Explore the message. Share it with us here.

October 29, 2013 by Kat

Want to learn Smartphone Art?

At an ever-increasing pace, I’ve been fielding the questions: Are you going to create a Smartphone Art eCourse, Kat? When?

And the answer is: YES, definitely, I’ll be offering a Smartphone Art eCourse in 2014. Sometime in the first half, is my plan, but I haven’t penciled out dates quite yet.

I’m excited there is so much interest! But what to do until that time gets here? You can use the Smartphone Art series on the Seek your Course blog as a teaser. The third and final installment, Smartphone Art 3: Creative Editing beyond Photography is now available. In this episode, I walk you through how to blend the output of multiple apps to create a unique work of art. To me, this is the most fun part of creating Smartphone Art!

Come on over to read the article and then try it yourself. That’s the best part in all of this: Making art accessible. YOU can create Smartphone Art, too!

October 17, 2013 by Kat

Fading (A Mobile Tutorial)

We have been having some gorgeously sunny autumn days, which means the trees really get to show their colors here in Oregon. We have to take advantage of this photographic opportunity when this happens, because you never know when it’s going to rain again and knock the leaves off of the trees.

I haven’t gotten out to photograph nearly as much as I should, but the fall colors have turned my attention back to the trees and I’m having a fabulous time playing with edits. Today I’ll share a very easy mobile tutorial, combining two autumn images into this piece, called Fading.

The base image is of the tree branches, captured in ProCamera 7. It was a foggy morning and the fog hadn’t lifted yet, giving me a nice blank background.

I started with Snapseed, using the Grunge filter to change the tones. The Grunge filter can have dramatic effects, or can be more subtle when you dial back the texture and the edge blur as I did here.

Next, the image went into Distressed FX to add a texture. The bottom image is ready to blend with the top image at this point.

For the top images, I started with this image of leaves.

Starting with Snapseed again, I changed the tone and contrast. To do this, I used both the grunge and Retrolux filters.

I didn’t like how the leaves in the bottom corner were starting to distract me, and I didn’t think they would blend well, so into Handy Photo for some clean up. Amazing what you can do with this app, isn’t it?

Now the top image is done, so it’s time to blend the two in Image Blender. I adjusted the size and location of the top image relative to the bottom, so that they would overlap in a pleasing way.

I wanted more texture in the final image, so the last step was editing in Pic Grunger. This app is new to me and it gives some great texture effects. Here’s the final image again:

A simple yet effective use of two images to show the transition of the seasons. And now, I need to get out and get some more fall images, while I can!

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