Kat Eye Studio

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Town Trees: Ashland

Against the Wall

Almost a month ago I discovered a new series to capture, images of trees that line the streets of our cities and towns, bringing a little bit of the forest to our concrete-and-asphalt world. I’ve decided to call this series “Town Trees.”

I found several Town Trees when we visited Ashland, in southern Oregon. This first one is my favorite. I love the shape of this tree, it looks like it has it’s hair all mussed up, maybe it hasn’t had a trim in a while. I love how it’s grown up right against the wall, standing straight with good posture. There were several of these in a row, sentinels guarding the parking lot along the side of a building.

Green and Gold

The colors here caught my eye, how the green and gold in the tree repeated in the windows and their reflections.

Capped

I wonder who thought to plant a tree under an awning? Maybe it was never supposed to grow this tall, but someone should have realized that this is Oregon and trees seem to grow bigger here. Maybe it was supposed to be cultured by a gardener to stay small, but someone cut the landscaping budget. Whatever happened, the tree is thriving and continues to reach for the sky. I love that.

These Town Trees all seem to have personality of their own, don’t they? I think this is going to be a fun series to capture.

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Learning Black and White in Lightroom

Another Lightroom progress update today, I continue to be incredibly happy with this software! I’m still editing my photos from our Thanksgiving weekend southern Oregon trip and learning more about Lightroom along the way. Yesterday I did my first black and white conversions, with the help of Scott Kelby’s Lightroom 3 Book for Digital Photographers. I loved the texture of this old building in Jacksonville, and thought it would be cool in black and white. What do you think? Do the little Christmas lights get lost? I kind of like them as a surprise you find when you look closer.

Yesterday I also discovered the power of the search function in the Lightroom Library module. Can I just say – WOW. I now have my 85,000+ images in my Lightroom catalog (I know, it’s insane, tell me about it). While I don’t have them keyworded, I can search on filenames in Lightroom which makes finding a photo from my Inspiration File in the catalog a complete and total snap. Prior to this, the only search function was me looking around, since Windows search didn’t work very well on my computer. I organize my photos by date and have a good chronological memory so me sorting through the directories has, amazingly, worked up to now, but the more photos I take the harder it has become to find them. And when I did finally find them, then I had to load them into the software for editing. A future project is to keyword at least location for all of my files, but now being able to look by filename and move directly into editing is already two steps easier.

I still have so much to learn about Lightroom, but I can tell you thus far – this software is made for photographers. Especially photographers like me who take a LOT of images and need to be able to organize, sort and edit them. I’m figuring out how to adjust my workflow to take advantage of all of the Lightroom features, but overall it is very intuitive. While it’s sold as being for professional photographers who need to manage client shoots, I believe any photographer can get a lot out of this software.

Do I sound like an ad? Sorry. I’m just really excited about Lightroom! The more I use it, the better it gets for me. I’m off to edit more photos…

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Season’s Change

I know now
why
I did not want
fall
to end.

With the season’s change
I close up,
go inside
and
hibernate.

Dreaming.
Collecting.
Waiting.
To see what is behind
the door
at the next
season’s change.

I don’t know about you, but winter is upon me. I have curled up on my comfy chair with my cat in my lap a lot this week, reading. I have not been very productive, but then I remembered the Spiral of Creativity. Maybe it’s time for me to hang out in the center of the spiral for a while. Go back to the beginning. Allow time for input, for gestation, for the creation of new ideas. Perhaps that’s what winter is all about. It’s time to hibernate. Dream. Rest. I wonder what new ideas will come of this time? I wrap up in my quilt, and wait to see.

Lisa Gordon of The Creative Exchange and I are teaming up this week to give away TWO spots in my January Find Your Eye: Starting the Journey course. Visit The Creative Exchange and leave a comment before Friday evening if you would like to enter to win one of these spaces!

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Registration Opens with a Special Offer!

Yay! Today is the day! Registration opens for the January-February series of Find Your Eye today. Starting the Journey runs January 8 – 18, 2012 and Journey of Recognition follows from January 29 – February 24, 2012. I’ve got the gift-giving bug, so I’ve whipped up a special holiday offer too! Visit this page to register and learn more about the classes and the special offer.

I’m always excited when a new class starts, who will I meet? What will their journey be like? Each journey is unique to a person, just like our photographs. I love that!

If you’ve been considering taking the course, I hope you will join in this time. I’ll leave you with a few recent comments from Find Your Eye participants. Their words always speak much more eloquently than mine!

Kat has thought through the goals of the course, and each lesson contributes to moving the class along the journey of discovery and development. We can go at our own speed, learning through our own experience, and learning from our classmates, through their work and commentary. Kat creates an learning environment of encouragement, discovery and risk taking – so we can grow as photographers and artists. I love the sense of community that comes with doing this course in a group setting..That’s one of my favourite things.

This course made me think, made me look at what I am doing with my camera and why. I have a better understanding of why photography appeals to me because of this. I can honestly say that now when I carry my camera I’m more intentional about what I want to capture, rather than just taking a bunch of photos as fast as I can (which was kind of what I’ve been doing).

The process is very individual – meeting me where I was and moving me deeper. I like the sense of having the answers within and being guided to find them for myself. I appreciated the interaction among students and feedback received, especially from the instructor.

I learned so much from going through the same exercises with such a wide variety of photographers – women who all had different experiences, different photographic interests, different viewpoints.

These courses really helped me to figure out more about my style – likes and dislikes, how I shoot and why, etc. – and encouraged me to continue to look as I continue on my photographic journey. Thank you!

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Not the Only One

It seems I’m not the only one who is not ready to let go of fall yet. Not only did I receive a lot of comments here yesterday in agreement, but I heard it from my family as well. We set up the Christmas tree last night and none of us felt ready. It’s very odd, normally it’s a day-after-Thanksgiving tradition to excitedly decorate for Christmas in our house. I wonder what’s going on?

In the meantime, while I search for an answer to that question, I’ll keep sharing my fall images from the weekend. I loved these leaves, all piled up next to a lightpost, in Ashland, Oregon. The colors are great, as are the shapes – they are dry! Where I live in Oregon, you don’t see these kind of leaves too often. They are usually all wet and glued together from the rain. They are still pretty, just not perky like these leaves. I love how the strong color peeks out here and there.

You can visit me over at Mortal Muses today, writing on gratitude. Come see what I am most grateful for!

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Not Quite Done…

After a delightful Thanksgiving with friends, we packed up our trailer for a weekend away. As we explored a few of the small towns in Southern Oregon this weekend, I started to capture the holiday lights and the Christmas displays. But when I looked at my photos this morning, I decided I’m not quite done with fall. Not just yet. So today you get this happy grinning scarecrow, to extend autumn just a bit longer.

Happy Monday!