Kat Eye Studio

by

Organic Growth (+ The Winners)

I’ve been thinking a lot about “organic growth” and no, I’m not talking about growing food here. I mention it a couple of times in an interview I recently recorded to promote my on-location A Sense of Place workshops coming up in England in September and October. In the interview (below), I talk about how I learned photography organically. By that I mean naturally and slowly, growing and evolving over the last twelve years. It wasn’t like I set out one day and decided, “I am going to become a photographer!” and take a course of study at a university. I started by creating a few good photographs. Wondering how I could create them more consistently. Buying a new camera. Taking a class. Practicing a lot. Reading a book or two. Taking another class. Taking more photographs. Writing about my photographs. Falling in love with photography. All this over a period of years.

There were some times of dramatic growth, like when I took an online course called Photography 101 in 2007. It covered the basics I had already learned — aperture, shutter speed, etc. — but for some reason this time it really clicked at a deeper level. Even then, it wasn’t a light switch change. It was an evolution over the 8 week course and beyond. Now I can look back on that as a significant “moment” but it really occurred over months.

I think this is an important thing to remember. Growth does not happen overnight. At least natural, sustainable growth doesn’t. Most of the time, it’s a day-by-day journey of growing by millimeters. It’s the sustained growth over long periods of time that gets us to a new place. Like this fantastic rusty mailbox scene found in Astoria… It didn’t appear overnight. It took years for the mailbox to rust, for the ivy to grow. It took years of someone letting this little spot alone to grow.

That’s what organic growth is. Slow, sustainable growth. This applies to photography or business or even personal growth in life. Sometimes, we look at someone we admire, and we want to be where they are now. We want to be that fantastic photographer. We want to be that successful business owner. We want to have that kind of confidence in ourselves. But we can’t get there by leapfrogging all of the work it takes to get to that place. Sure, we can make it easier on ourselves. We can learn from others how they got there. There is so much wonderful information available. We have books and classes and articles and videos all at our fingertips here on the web. But it still takes our own action. It takes practice, and moving ahead, that little step at a time, to get where we want to go.

I think organic growth is the best kind of growth. At least, I’ve discovered that it is for me. It’s the kind of growth that lets me adapt to my environment. It’s the kind of growth that lets me try something out and change course if I need to. It’s the kind of growth that doesn’t commit me to too much, getting into overwhelm. It’s the kind of growth that integrates what I’m learning into a stable foundation, so that each time I take a step up or out of my normal zone the world doesn’t collapse beneath me.

I tell you all this today so that you can be encouraged. That goal you have? The place you want to go? You can absolutely get there. Just don’t try to do it overnight. Give yourself time to grow.

PS – That lovely voice with the English accent you hear in all of my interviews is my dear friend and PR consultant in England, Fiona Pattison. You probably can’t tell because she edited it so beautifully, but we were laughing like crazy as we recorded this interview, over very silly mistakes. Fiona has definitely been an important part of the organic growth of Kat Eye Studio!

And the giveaway winners are…

Out of 107 entries…
#28 Marji of Sun Breaks in the Forecast
#89 Nadine

I’m so excited to liberate these postcards to the lucky winners! Thanks to all of you who entered. I was surprised about all of the nice things you said to me as you entered, that was an unexpected bonus. Thank you for your lovely comments and your ongoing support! More giveaways are definitely to come. Giving things away is so much fun! 🙂

by

Mail Call!

It’s time for an update on the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap! As of this week, there are 181 people who have signed up, and I’ve received my first two envelopes. Yay! That may seem like I’ve reached my goal, but if last year is any indication, only about 70% of the artists who sign up will actually participate. That means I need a lot more people to join up to increase participation over last year! Can you help? Share about the swap on your blog, twitter or facebook page. I’ve even created a Facebook Event to make it easy to share with your creative friends, click here.

Won’t it be great to have all of that art reaching mailboxes around the world? I can’t wait!

I can imagine some wonderful art coming to these rural mailboxes, can’t you? They were so cheery, with the riot of flowers surrounding them. I played around with the processing and created another Lightroom Preset called “Mail Call,” which you can download here. It’s got a similar feel to Your Art Here, but the result is a little bit warmer with less desaturation in the reds and greens. I like the sunny feel of it!

Today is also the day I’m sharing my painting progress this week for Paint Party Friday. I’ve continued both paintings from last week, but this is the one I’m happiest with at the moment. It has a definite aquatic feel and I’ve continued to maintain the wave shape that originally appeared on the canvas as I build the layers. I think I’ll add some white next and see what happens. Happy Paint Party Friday to all!

by

Fascinations, Part 2

As I mentioned yesterday, one of my latest fascinations is mail boxes! (“Letter boxes” for those of you in the UK.) These are disappearing around the US too, just like parking meters. Replaced by safer and more efficient shared post boxes, these are a bit of life that is going away. I remember the excitement as a child, of putting up that flag when the box had mail and seeing it down later in the day after the postman had come. I would run to see what had arrived in the mail. It’s sad, I don’t even have one in front of my house now. We walk up the street with a key to see what arrived, and it’s usually junk. Bills don’t even come anymore, they are sent via email.

Mail boxes are a symbol of so much else disappearing too, personal mail and the written letter. We all love to get mail but how often do we send it? Not so often. That’s why the Liberate Your Art postcard swap was so much fun for many of us. For a little while, we got fun mail!

In honor of little-used mail boxes everywhere, let’s all send a postcard or a letter or a note to someone we care about today. I’ve got my pen out now! Won’t you join me?

_________________________

What’s going on around The Kat Eye View of the World…

Upcoming Events