Kat Eye Studio

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Quiet and Empty

What a difference a few hours makes! During the day, this location in Piazza San Marco by the Doge’s Palace is brimming with people. People in line to tour the Basilica, people shopping at the overstuffed souvenier carts, people wandering around taking photos. But just a few hours later, near midnight, it’s almost empty. How wonderful for me!

Recently, my husband asked me why I don’t like people in my photos. Sometimes I will patiently wait for minutes for just the right shot, as people move in and out and through the frame I’m trying to capture. He and my son have to wait patiently too, until I’m ready to move on. They are good sports, I must say!

But there is a good reason for it. What I’ve discovered in my photography, is that I like to provide a place for the viewer in my photograph. A place for the imagination to wander. If there are clearly other people in the photo, if they are the subject, then the viewer might just see those people, and their experience, from the outside. If it is of an empty place, the viewer can participate in the photo… project themselves into the place, let their minds wander, imagine themselves there or create new story in the place. We all have a unique vision to show the world, this one just happens to be part of mine right now.

So, today I ask, what story do you see in this photo? Have you ever had that experience with a photograph before?

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Heading Home

After a long day of work, a gondolier heads home in Venice. The first of my night images from our one-night trip to Venice this week, this was one image that I knew I would love when I took it. As with any image, I hoped it would turn out well, but you can’t always tell at the time. I’m sure there will be more photos that I missed, and more that surprise me as I go through them. In the meantime, here’s the sneak peek for a Friday – have a great weekend!

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Follow your Bliss

This may not look like a blissful photograph to you, but it is to me. Photographing Venice in the day is wonderful, photographing Venice at night is blissful. I’m so excited to be going back for a one night visit for a special session of night photography, I’ll be absent here for a couple of days. After the last visit I knew I had to get back for this while I’m here in Italy. It called to me.

What about you? Do you follow your bliss? Do you feel the little tugs on your heart that pull you in a certain direction? How do you respond?

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It Takes Hard Work

Evening comes in to Riomaggiore, in the Cinque Terre of Italy. I love the colors and light in this photo. Not full dark, the “blue hour” as I’ve recently learned.

Since night photography has become a recent interest, I’ve had to practice. It’s hard to get a really good night shot. You take so many, playing with exposures and ISO and lenses and compositions… but it pays off when you get that one beautiful one.

It’s easy to dream about doing something, but the actual doing is always a lot harder. It takes hard work to improve, to get really good, to make a vision real. The beauty of it is, if it’s something you LOVE to do, it doesn’t feel like work.

Yesterday I spend the day learning things about XML and CSS code. A beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon in Italy and I was on the computer most of it. Why? Because I have a vision of what I want this blog to look like, where I want it to go, and I’m willing to put some work into getting there. I used to hate being on the computer when I wasn’t working at my corporate job, because I associated the computer with things I didn’t really have a passion for. Computer = work = not fun. The truth of it is, the computer is just a tool for whatever the job is. And now that what I’m doing on the computer is aligned to my passion, it’s totally different.

This is an amazing realization for me, that’s been slowly creeping up. My time here in Italy so far has been spent exploring my creativity and dreaming of possibilities. Now it’s time to continue the dream into reality. I look forward to sharing with you some of these things as I work on them, like the blog update, along with my view of the world through photography.

Thanks for participating in my journey! I love hearing from you in comments and emails and facebook posts. It’s such a fun thing, to be able to share my passion with the world in this way.

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The World at Night

It’s a different place, the world at night. Sometimes quieter, sometimes rowdier, definitely different. I’ve never been a night person before, but lately I cannot get enough of night photography. On our last trip to Venice I had the opportunity to get a few night shots like this one, and it wasn’t nearly enough. I’m craving more! We are going back again soon, so I can wander around late into the night to capture this very different mood of Venice. I love it.

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Aaaaah, Venezia

I must share this today, I am compelled to share this today, as we head to Venice this morning for a quick overnight trip. Because we can. I love Venice and Murano and Burano and have had the urge to get back. So we planned this short little trip last weekend, bribing Brandon with the promise of a gondola ride (he’s begged the last two times we were there), and off we go. Because we can. Isn’t that amazing? I am truly, truly lucky.

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