Kat Eye Studio

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Into the Light

We continue our Exploring with a Camera topic of Chiaroscuro this week, with a look at walking into the light. You can get some great strong light/dark contrast when you are indoors and look out into the light. In this situation, instead of having the subject illuminated against a dark background, the subject is dark against a light background.

This image was taken at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. After a while I was overwhelmed by the museum’s vast and varied collection, so I began wandering the museum looking more at the architecture than the artifacts. I stopped at an overlook above the main doors and photographed the movement of people in and out. There was an ebb and flow to the motion. It made me wonder where all of these people are coming from, and going to. I wondered where this woman was headed with such purpose. The strong light/dark contrast, the focus and her isolation from other elements highlights her as the subject.

How is your exploration of chiaroscuro going? Have you found examples in your archives? Have you experimented yet? Share your results with us here! The link up is open until November 30, so you have plenty of time to explore.


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Repeating Myself

It’s a quiet morning in my brain today. Not so much to say. Rather than repeat myself with words, I’ll just share an image with some repetition from the Brick Lane photowalk I did as part of the Hampstead workshop last month. I can’t believe my England trip was a month ago already!

Also, today is the last day to link into this month’s Photo-Heart Connection. Don’t miss it! Have a great Wednesday.

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What’s Your Input?

We are bombarded each day with images. Images come to us without seeking them, from TV, newspapers, magazines, emails, websites, billboards. We are a visual culture. We communicate with images. We remember in images.

I believe each image we see stays with us. Whether we consciously remember it or not, it is there. If it didn’t, why could an idea or a smell or a comment bring up a picture in my head in a flash? Why can I remember a specific image I captured 4 years ago, or a vision of something seen in an art exhibit, when the right trigger comes along? The image is there, whether I consciously tried to remember it, or not. It is part of what we draw upon, when we create something new. Input is the raw material we use to create.

Since our input informs our output, it begs the question, what’s your input?

Choosing to see beauty…

We talked about this a bit in the workshop with David duChemin, about how the creative process works. It requires input. And we should be selective about that input. We should look for good stuff, creative stuff, beautiful stuff to go in. We should study good photography to help us learn to create good photographs ourselves.

But I would take this concept beyond the visual imagery, to other areas of life. If we dwell on the bad or the ugly or the horrific, that becomes part of us. It starts to shift our point of view on the world. We start to live in fear of what bad things might happen rather than observe the good that does happen every day, right in front of us. BrenĂ© Brown talks about this in Daring Greatly. She talks about how we can squelch moments of joy by immediately worrying about all of the things that might take that joy away. Many of the things we worry about aren’t of our own experience, but what has come to us through the media. Input we would never have, in our own experience.

I learned the truth of this input/feeling connection in Italy, when I stopped watching the news on TV. Part of this change was language, my Italian wasn’t good enough to understand, and part of it was cultural, I had no connection to the current events of politics or pop culture to give me context. But an amazing thing happened as an outcome… I started living without as much fear. Because I wasn’t bombarded with all the bad going on in the world around me, it wasn’t input to my thought processes. I didn’t, by extension, start to worry what might happen to me or my family or my job next. I still found out about the important stuff that was going on in the area and world, but I could choose how I followed up to learn more rather than being fed fear.

…rather than worrying about who might pickpocket me.

And because I wasn’t spending time on the input of the bad stuff, I had more time for input of the good stuff. Art and creativity, which blossomed in a new way.

Now that I’m back in the US, I still don’t watch the news. I don’t want that kind of input. I want to read good books, watch movies that tell great stories, see good art and discuss interesting ideas. I find out what is going on in the world, but in a measured and balanced way that doesn’t fill me with fear. Not all of my input is happy and positive, but much of it is. It’s by my choice, because that is how I want to see the world. I truly believe 99.999% of the world’s population are good people. That’s who I want to hear about and interact with. That doesn’t mean I go through life thinking nothing will happen to me, but it does mean that I am more conscious and careful now to sort out the difference between things I really should be concerned about and what’s an irrationally generated fear.

This is all kind of roundabout today as I talk about input – the gamut from art to emotion. But it all ties together: Our input informs our output. How we view the world, what we create, even what we believe and feel.

I want to choose my inputs carefully. I want to view art that stretches me and helps me grow. I want experiences that help me see the world in different ways. I want to look at photographs that move me and touch my heart and soul. That’s the kind of input I’m seeking. That’s the filter I want to place when I have a choice in the matter.

What’s your input? How do you decide what goes in? Have you made changes in your life to improve the quality or the type of input you receive? What has been the result? I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this topic.

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What a Scooter Sighting can teach about the Process of Elimination

Oh, how heavenly it was, to be back in the land of scooters! I didn’t spot any scooters in my excursions around Yorkshire, but London had a nice selection of scooters to photograph. I’ve come to realize that my little scooter photography obsession is as much about place as it is about scooters. Usually when I’m capturing a scooter sighting, I try to find out if I can find an interesting composition that tells you about the place the scooter was parked, through the context I choose to include. Interesting scooters and interesting places, a perfect combination!

When I have a scooter sighting, it’s the perfect opportunity to use the Process of Elimination, which we’re studying this month in Exploring with a Camera. This wonderful scooter was spotted on the Hampstead workshop photowalk, just off Brick Lane. I thought it might be interesting to share my Process of Elimination for this image. All of the images shared are straight out of the camera except for the final edit.

The first sighting was from walking down the sidewalk behind the scooter. It’s an interesting scooter, not your usually cute one, but I thought the chairs would be great to include. It wasn’t a busy street (thankfully) so I stepped out across/into the street to explore the scene. The first shot I tried was vertical, going with the lines of the scooter.

The vertical orientation doesn’t include enough of the chairs, which really add interest to the scene. The background becomes more of a distraction with this framing, with bits and pieces of too many things. So, the next step was to try horizontal.

Better! Got the chairs, the interesting window with the reflections, the graffiti. But the scooter is too high in the frame. The foreground of the road is doing nothing for this image. I want more of the interesting background. As I framed up the next image, this guy walked buy. Quick, catch him in a good spot!

OK, I like where he is in the frame but this image is not really what I was looking for in the scooter sighting. He’s a distraction. So I capture essentially the same frame without the guy.

You will note that I included the car on the right in the frame. That was intentional. I had the framing mostly the way I wanted it, but including a little extra would give me the most to work with later for cropping since I didn’t have time to work the scene further. I needed to move on, as the rest of the participants in the class had moved way up the street and I was lucky I hadn’t been run over by a car by this time.

Into Lightroom for crop and edit when I got back home, and here’s the final image again:

An interesting scooter in an interesting place — I couldn’t ask for more in a scooter sighting! I’m going into scooter withdrawal now that I’m home. The only one I see is in my garage, and believe me, that’s not a place you want to see! If you sight a scooter, please share it with me on Instagram or Twitter using #scootersighting. I need to get my fix one way or another. đŸ™‚

Have you been thinking about the Process of Elimination this last week? How has the idea of eliminating what is not essential to your message affected your capture or edit of images? Please share with us! You can link your exploration into the comments on the original post here. There are a couple of folks already linked in, so be sure to visit to see what they’ve found. And how do you like the process of linking into the comments? Would you rather have a linky? Let me know! I’m on the fence myself. I kind of miss the linky.

PS – I’m off to the Vancouver Gathering with David duChemin this weekend. Yay! I’ll be away from the blog for a few days, but I’ll tell you all about it next week!

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The Workshop Report: Hampstead

The forecast was bleak. Just the day before the Hampstead run of my A Sense of Place Workshop, it showed rain, rain, rain. Everyone was supposed to be prepared for the weather, but I knew a lot of rain would cut our afternoon photowalk short. So imagine the delightful surprise, waking up to a day of blue sky and sun!

Saturday 8th October proved to be a great day for a photowalk. With the same format as the Hebden Bridge workshop, on this day four participants gathered at The Oak Studio in Hampstead for the morning classroom portion session and then a photowalk in the afternoon.

It was a great morning, getting to know everyone as we talked Photography of Place. We discussed our personal philosophies and approach on photography, and how that figured into our individual sense of place. We looked at whether we tend toward capturing the big picture, landscapes and cityscapes, or the little details. We talked about creating images that convey our experience of a place.

And then we went out to practice! Our walk began as we took the underground from Hampstead to Brick Lane, although we spent more time chatting with each other than photographing on this part of the journey.

Using the converging lines on the tube station to capture a fun portrait of Fiona

We arrived at Brick Lane with cameras in hand and blue skies above. What a lively place! It was a fantastic opportunity to capture everything from grungy urban texture to vibrant graffiti to vintage looks. It was amazing the different views and details we could choose from in the walk through these few streets. What we all see and choose to photograph is so different! The variety is evident in the images from the participants:

Lost in thought
Photo by Elissa

Street scene
Photo by Becs

kat-scooter
Photo by Barbara

Down my way
Photo by Justine

Photo by Kat

During the walk we chatted and mingled as we photographed. It’s always fun to be with other photographers, because you understand each other. You aren’t hurried along, and you don’t get weird looks from each other about what you choose to photograph.

Elissa and I, enjoying a joint self-portrait

Being in a group photographers can embolden you, and help you photograph in situations you normally don’t. One thing I heard both at the workshop and when I went on photowalks with other friends during this trip was how brave I was, taking pictures of anything. Me? Brave? I don’t see myself that way. But the comments made me realize I have become more comfortable just capturing things that interest me, regardless of who is around. If I can help others feel more empowered to capture what they want to capture, then hey, I guess I’ve done my job as an instructor.

Street Art - Just off Brick Lane
Photo by Becs

We wandered our way to a fence of love locks, where Justine left us for the day. Unfortunately I thought of getting the group photo just after she left, so this isn’t quite the full class group.

The participants: Fiona, Elissa, Barbara, Becs and Justine (not pictured)

I can’t tell you how fabulous it was to meet these lovely photographers in person. Since they all had been in my online classes at one time or another, we’ve interacted before, but it was a great way to get to know each other in a new way. To hear about their lives beyond the computer, along with our shared interest in photography. I hope that the connections made on this day continue well into the future.

I’ve always believed that taking workshops is a fantastic way to get us out of our regular patterns, and to learn something new that can help us continue our growth as artists. I take the approach that if I get even one new idea from a workshop that I can put into practice, it was time well spent.

Becs checking out a different perspective.

What I’ve known for a while is that teaching workshops ratchets it up a notch from there. It can be daunting and scary to put yourself in place as the teacher, but ultimately, the experience of thinking through the concepts, creating the content and then seeing it put to use by others is immensely satisfying.

What I learned from these workshops: I enjoy it just as much so in person as online. I think I was made for this.

Want to see more images and hear more about the Hampstead workshop? Check out these blog posts from the participants:
A Workshop and A Photowalk by Becs
Photography Down the Lane by Elissa
A Sense of Place by Barbara
a sense of place by Justine
Sense of Place with Kat Sloma from Kat Eye Studio by Fiona

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Travel Shifts

What is your idea of “travel?”

Maybe it’s fun, seeking experiences that help you enjoy the moment.
Maybe it’s relaxation, sitting with your feet up looking at a beautiful view.
Maybe it’s exploration, experiencing something new and different.

For me, “travel” is learning. There is something about being out of my usual environment and in different places that opens me to new things. I’m more aware and observant of my surroundings and of myself. Travel brings moments of fun, relaxation and exploration, but it also brings moments of insight and clarity. Especially travelling alone, where you don’t have someone to turn to every moment of the day. I had to become comfortable with myself.

Off to Work, King’s Cross Station

I’m always seeking to understand new things, to grow and expand my point of view. Maybe that’s why travel has become so important to me — the learning. Maybe that’s why this trip was so important to me… It wasn’t just about teaching the on location workshops and connecting with friends. It was about connecting with myself, my art and exploring what comes next. I didn’t expect or seek those things, but they came along the way.

Looking Back, near Brick Lane

Some of the shifts will take a while to make themselves known. But there were some shifts that were more obvious, because they were visible in my photographs. Instead of always seeking the empty view within the frame, I started to capture people. Not very many of my images included people, but more of them did than ever before. And, funny thing, these images are the ones that stuck in my mind the most. I had to go through my photographs and find them first. Share them first.

Smoke Break, St. Pancras Station

Part of me wonders why and part of me knows to just go with it. It will all become clear with time.

Into the Light, Westminster Underground Station

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