Kat Eye Studio

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Blending to Perfection

When you are creating, do you find moments when everything comes together and it just feels right? Your know your piece is finished. When you are new to a medium, it’s not as easy. You may not take something far enough or you may go too far, ruining something good. As you learn and progress, I think it’s easier to know when something is “done.” It’s part of the learning process, and our own style, to develop that feeling of done.

In mobile/digital art, I’ve learned that the name of the game is blending. Using multiple apps and blending them together, until it feels “done.” I had already started on this path, as I created some of my earlier pieces like Rain Painting and Winter Flowers. I had only touched the tip of the iceberg of what is possible with blending in those, however. I’m going crazy now. Today as I share one of this week’s pieces for Paint Party Friday I thought I would also give you a taste of the kind of blending I’m doing now, and how I created this one, called Under the Surface.

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Here’s the starting image, taken with the ProCamera app. I love it! You can easily separate exposure and focus, and switch between aspect ratios within the app, going from square to rectangular.

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Then the fun started. I’ve created this little matrix of images to walk through the process of creation, but it doesn’t even cover all of the steps. To be honest, I get so many layers going I don’t even remember the exact steps but I’m trying to recreate them to share.

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From left to right, top to bottom:

  1. The first step was into Snapseed, to shift the color a bit. This also added some texture and vignetting.
  2. Next I pulled that image into Distressed FX to add textures. The next three are the image with various textures added. You can’t add more than one texture within the app, so I save an image of each texture I like on the photo. Distressed FX also will do color filters in addition to textures, but I often turn that off and just use the textures. It’s become my go-to app for textures lately.
  3. From there, I start to blend. The center image is a blend of the different texture images I saved out of Distressed FX. I’ve starting using the Image Blender app for blending, because it is easier to use and has more blending options than Iris Photo Suite. When blending, I just play with the blending modes and percentages until it looks good to me. There is no logical sequence I’ve got for this step.
  4. Once I had a nice blend, I started to use the painting apps. I take the blended photo into the apps and play around with different effects to get some I like. Middle right is the “Aquarell” painting filter from Autopainter HD (a recent favorite) and bottom left is from Glaze.
  5. From there I started blending again, with the textured image and the painted images. Bottom middle is the new blend.
  6. I was starting to lose the colors, so I took that blend back through Distressed FX and added a filter or two.

From there, I did more blending with previously created layers to get the final result.

Under the Surface

Under the Surface

There were more steps and layers than these I shared, but it gives you the basic idea of how the final piece was created. There is a depth of color and texture in the final painting that is built through blending layers which won’t exist when you use a single app. It’s really the creative part of the process, and where the unique touch of each person will come in. I’ve started to learn the apps, what works on different images and how to achieve a certain look, as I play. Eventually I might develop a “style” but right now it’s all about play and exploration. Lots of fun!

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Ready for Launch

Three… Two… One… Blast off. Time to launch back into real life. After a glorious eleven days off of my regular schedule, today I go back to normalcy. What a wonderful break! No schedule to follow, no real deadlines to worry about. I went on several hikes, read a bunch of books, hung out with my family and worked on photography projects. I spent a lot of time in my pajamas, I will happily admit. Heaven!

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As much as I loved the time off, it’s always good to get back into a routine. I do best with a regular schedule. I’m feeling a bit rusty and creaky in the routine this morning though, even with my blogging, so I’ll be short and sweet.

If you are launching back into reality today too, I hope your reentry goes well. It’s my time to launch… I’ll see you here tomorrow.

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Celebrating One Year – Photo-Heart Connection: December

Simplicity. Peace. Beauty.

That’s what I see when I look at this image. A brief moment in time captured, expressing something wonderful.

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I also see a landscape. And I scratch my head quizzically, wondering, “When did I become a landscape photographer?”

The answer whispered to me: When you stopped telling yourself you weren’t one.

Oh, yeah.

When I threw out the rules for my photography and starting to follow what brought me joy. When I let myself have fun and play again. When I threw out the need for perfection and pixels and began to create with a terrible, low-resolution iPod Touch camera.

When I stopped defining myself.

That’s when I became a landscape photographer. And a painter. And whatever I feel like being today. Tomorrow it will probably be something different.

Because you know what? None of the labels matter. It’s just me and my art. Approaching each day as it comes, with openness and joy.

Well. If that doesn’t conclude my transformation of the last few months, I’m not sure what would. From the fear of change in October to the emergence of November to this acceptance that arrived in December. Completely unplanned, somehow my monthly Photo-Heart Connections tracks this dramatic transition to a new approach to my art. As I worked on my “eighteen months” project I was a bit shocked to discover that I hadn’t picked up my dSLR at all between October 22nd and December 14th, when I went out for my night shoot. I mean, I knew I hadn’t picked up my “big” camera for a while, but there was something about seeing it right there in Lightroom that was a bit shocking. And you know what? I didn’t care. Because I’m having so much fun with all of this! I’m going with it.

This month concludes the first year of the Photo-Heart Connection. It’s been an amazing practice! I’ve gained so much from it, as well as the community of people who have joined me this year. The guests posts from the last week have shared some amazing stories of connection, and I am truly honored to be able to play host to such a wonderful community of artists. I’m excited to continue for 2013. Who knows what will emerge?

To celebrate a new year of the Photo-Heart Connection, I’ve created a new button that better expresses my feelings about the whole practice. You can copy the code from the sidebar here.

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And as a second part of the New Year celebration, I am going to give away a small matted print of this image, entitled “Windblown,” to one of the participants in this month’s Photo-Heart Connection. All you have to do to enter is to participate! So, what is your Photo-Heart Connection this month?


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When Good Holiday Lights Go Bad

I’ve been wanting to get this shot for months. Since the days began getting shorter, and I began noticing the lights on my drive home from work. I love that “Books” sign with all of those books in the window! Usually there are cars parked on the street in front and three lanes of traffic passing by, so I knew I was going to have to make a special trip to capture it. I was going to have to be out some time when people were home in bed. When the streets were quiet.

4am on a Saturday should have done the trick. It was perfect… the streets were slightly damp, reflecting the red glow. The bicycle that’s usually there was still parked on the bike rack – score! There were no cars, except mine parked across the street. Just me and the shot I had been wanting.

Tripod, ISO100, 82mm, f/18, 25s

I set up, framed, captured… and then noticed the reflected Christmas lights. Argh! This store is across from our county courthouse, which was all done up in its holiday light finery. The lights were reflecting in the window, ruining my otherwise perfect shot. Just a reminder that you can’t get everything you want, especially when you are working with the Lights of Night.

Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to go out again, once the holiday lights come down. I hope the bicycle will be there next time! Has this ever happened to you?

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Color or Not?

Today we are continuing our study of the Lights of Night, this time with a tripod shot from my weekend excursion. One of the things that captivated my attention were the tree shadows. Probably no surprise, since I’ve been obsessed by trees lately! The question at the end of the day becomes… How to process them?

Do I leave them in color, with the interesting color from the streetlights…

Tripod, ISO200, 82mm, f/18, 30s

…or do I convert to black and white and eliminate the color?

I tried both, and prefer the color. It doesn’t have the same feel of night in the black and white, and I like that warm glow from the lights of night. What do you think?

While you are thinking about it, you can visit the other participants of Exploring with a Camera! And have you gotten out at night yet? Brave the weather and give it a try! Dress warmly, bring an umbrella if you need to, ask someone along as a “spotter” and get out into the night. The holiday lights won’t last too much longer! Visit the Lights of Night post for lots of links to night photography resources. See you back here!


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My Name in Lights

OK, my name is not in lights literally, but I’m over on Moms Who Click today with an interview and a giveaway. If you would like to win a spot in the upcoming Find Your Eye series then click yourself right over there to enter! And of course, to learn a little more about me and my photography. Thanks so much to Kristina at Moms Who Click for inviting me to participate in their Behind the Lens series!

But back to our regularly scheduled programming… the Lights of Night.

I’ve been very much attracted to neon lights lately. After I ditched the tripod on Saturday morning, that’s what called to me. This was my favorite capture from the window of a local pizzeria. It tells a bit of a story, don’t you think?

Handheld, ISO400, 35mm, f/1.8, 1/125

I also shared one in the Exploring with a Camera: Lights of Night post from San Francisco earlier this year. I love the repetition of the neon signs in this one, and the detail you can just make out through the windows.

Handheld, ISO400, 35mm, f/3.2, 1/50

You’ll notice the last couple of days I’m adding the settings for the photos I share. I’ll do that all this week as I share night photos. I want you to get a feel for the settings I’m using to get effective images, so you can see what you might want to try if you are struggling.

Capturing neon signs can even more of a night photography challenge, because they are often so bright relative to their surroundings. I have discovered a few things about successfully photographing neon signs:

  • It often works best when there is some ambient light behind the sign. If you are photographing a sign in a dark window, all you are going to get is the sign on a field of black. That might be what you are going for, but I find the sign with some context of what it is advertising is more interesting.
  • It is easy to overexpose the neon sign relative to the rest of the frame and lose the color. Dial back your exposure so that most of the sign is not overexposed.
  • It is ok for the brightest part of the neon to be overexposed as long as you don’t overexpose the whole thing. In the Pizza by the Slice image above, the center of the letters is overexposed and completely blown out. Can you tell? No, because there is enough color in the rest of the sign to blend in and provide the colorful neon glow.

Good luck! Be sure to share your night photography experiments in our Exploring with a Camera link up this month. Share the triumphs and the failures, it’s all good for learning. I’m happy to help you and answer questions if you are struggling, too. Just leave a comment.