Kat Eye Studio

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Are you ready to Find Your Eye?

(For info on how I processed this photo, see end of post.)

I am so, so excited to tell you that registration for my Find Your Eye: A photo course with heart and soul is up on wishstudio.com!  You can read the description of the course and get the registration details here. Instead of repeating the course description, today I want to share with you the story of what’s behind this course, where it came from, and why I’m doing it now.

For those of you who have read my blog for a while, you know what an amazing creative journey I have had during my time in Italy. (If you’re new here, you can get a sense of it from my About Me page.) I have come in to my creative, artistic self through my photography and experiences, and I’ve chronicled each little step and realization along with way here. Being able to say my mantra has taken a lot of personal work: I am an artist, my medium is photography, and I have a unique vision to show the world.


Along the way of realizing this truth for myself, I’ve realized that this is true for everyone. We all have a  unique vision to show the world. Every one of us, whether we realize it or not. Whether we are able to see it and own it, or not. With that realization, came the growing feeling that I might have a way to help others interested in photography learn to see their unique vision, by tapping in to my experiences. I could help others to gain the confidence and freedom that has come for me, as I have found my eye.

This feeling started to grow on me, and I would jot down notes here and there. Ideas would come randomly during my walks or the shower – you know how creative ideas happen when you least expect them. I started to carry notebooks every where with me to capture these ideas so that they would leave me alone. After a while those ideas started to build themselves into a framework for the class. But not now, I would say to myself, I’ll wait until I move back home, to Oregon. 


The ideas didn’t leave me alone. I call it my “creative nag.” All of the excuses I would come up with for not doing this now, my creative nag would slowly dispel them. Until finally, I relented. Six months ago, I sent an email to Mindy at wishstudio with this crazy idea of doing a photo course that was not like most photo courses out there, from a completely unknown quantity (me), and donating the proceeds to charity. Surprise of all surprises, Mindy was interested and even excited to see the proposal. You can see the result, it’s all coming together now…

I have been given a gift, with this experience of mine in Italy. I have been given a gift, by seeing how I can help others find their eye too. It is time to give that gift back to the world, and that is what the course is about. It’s not the usual digital photography course. Yes, there will be some on aperture and shutter speed and things like that – more to ensure that everyone has a foundation than to teach these in depth. That’s not what I really want to share with you.  The core of the course is giving you tools and exercises that help you learn to develop, recognize and find your eye. Gain confidence in your unique vision of the world, the way you express your heart and soul in photography.

Are you ready to Find Your Eye? I hope so, because the world needs your unique vision too.

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Many thanks to Liv Lane of Choosing Beauty for featuring me as one of her Monday Mavens today with the announcement of my e-course! Stop by and say hi to Liv for me, and look around her wonderful, inspiring site.
Today is the last day to enter the giveaway I have going on for the Burano Color postcard set! All you have to do is leave a comment on last Thursday’s post to enter. I will randomly draw the winner and announce here tomorrow morning.
And on today’s photo… it is from one of my favorite places – Burano of course!  You’ve seen a lot of this tiny, colorful island recently. I wanted to share a bit about the processing on this photo, since it’s not a straight color photo with minimal editing like mine usually are. I really wanted that blue to pop amidst the colors of the other buildings so I started by using a “color bleach” action in Photoshop Elements to desaturate the colors. I didn’t want to go completely black and white with the image, I wanted the pink hues to come through on the other buildings. Then, I carefully erased the effects of the action over the blue of the building using a layer mask, so the original bright blue color would show through. It’s a fun effect, and makes for a unique image. 
There are many, many different ways to do selective processing like this. Search “layer masks” or “selective processing” for your photo editing software to find some tutorials on the web.
Oh, and Happy Monday to you all! 🙂

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What am I Doing?


“If you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always gotten.” 
This quote, by either Anthony Robbins or Zig Zigler from what I can tell by some brief and wholly inadequate internet research, is what I’m pondering today. It makes so much sense, it is so clear. I read it and say to myself, of course, how would I get anything different if I’m always doing the same things?
Why then, do we so often stay with doing what we’ve always done? What keeps us there, when we dream of getting something different out of our lives? I think it’s fear…. of failure, of losing something we already have, of being uncomfortable, of the unknown. If we change, try something new, put ourselves out there, what we get might be… worse. Better to stay with what we have. 
But what if we get something better? What about the successes, the new wonderful things, that might be waiting for us if we change? So easy to forget about that, to brush it under the rug of fears we keep ourselves stranded on. Don’t leave this comfortable, warm little rug for the big, bad cold floor of life.
Am I doing what I can, to get something different out of my life? That is the question I’m asking myself today, trying to move off of my little rug.  How about you?

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The Beauty of Reality

Yesterday we took a day trip to Bologna, a two and a half hour drive south of where we live. It’s been a while since we’ve taken just a day trip, somewhere near by. We all enjoyed it – seeing someplace new, and then coming home to our own beds and another day of the weekend left to play around.

It was wonderful for me, to get out and shoot someplace completely new again. It’s been a while since I’ve done that since I travelled to the US and then have been focusing on fall in the park lately. Loving every minute of that too, but this was refreshing. It was also amazing to me to notice how differently I see now, as compared to, say, a year ago. Back then, I would have never have “seen” this image. It would have been part of the alley I walked by, with lots of elements I avoid… graffiti, dumpsters, street signs, windows with bars. I mean, where are the flowers, the doorstep beauty? But I love this. This is back-alley Bologna. This is real life, with it’s imperfections but worthy of capture anyway.

I think this is just another step along my journey. As I accept the imperfections in myself, I find I am able to accept them in the world around me. Apparently, that also means I am not always seeing just the lovely textures in the places we visit – but the reality of dumpsters and street signs. Finding interest in those too. And while I would not call this image “beautiful,” it does appeal to me, and does say “Italy” in a very real way.

It’s kind of fun to observe these changes in myself, to surprise myself. I also surprised my husband, who has gotten pretty good at being able to predict when to get out of the way for a photo, what little scenes might catch my eye. Yesterday, however, I messed him up because I was stopping to study things that would have never been photo-worthy to me before. Interesting to notice how it affected not just me, but him to.

And how does it affect you? Does it surprise you too? How do you look at this image? I think you may have to get used to it. There will probably be more graffiti and back-alley reality popping up around here, if my day in Bologna is any indication.

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Marking a Milestone

Last Sunday was my birthday. 40 years old! With the craziness of my life in that moment, it just wasn’t on my mind to write about it here. I’m not a big one for birthdays, perhaps because I spent my childhood not celebrating them (religious reasons) and perhaps because I feel uncomfortable with the attention. It’s just another day to me. But a milestone birthday is not to be ignored by family and friends, and I was celebrated. 

Part of “sorting the piles” this weekend included looking at all of the birthday cards I received. Sometimes I save them, sometimes I throw them away – but this was my 40th, I felt the need to do something with the cards. I decided to create a fun collage with the images from them, and cut out the words that spoke to me, which turned into the poem. In the back I tucked the personal notes people had written. This is why I needed to get organized, so I could be creative again! Creating a fun marker for this milestone, with the bits and pieces of my family and friends mixed in, was a joy.

My friends in Corvallis planned a suprise party while I was there, which was a bit foiled by the fact that I disappeared from the face of the earth in the time they were trying to get me to the location of the party. In reality I only turned off my phone for a couple of hours for a massage appointment (wouldn’t you turn off your phone?) but it was quite funny the voice messages, emails and Facebook posts that happened in that time. You can see below that I made it, although late, to my own surprise party. It was a great evening of laughter and friends, margaritas and Mexican food, along with the perfect cake made by my friend Becky!

I am truly happy to be 40 years old. I feel like there is so much ahead of me, and I’m no longer weighted down by trying to be something I’m not. I’m just happy to be… me.

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Present

Present – not as in gift, but as in being in the moment. How often are we really and truly present in our every day lives? Aware of the world around us, aware of ourselves. Not often enough, I would have to say, for me. And yet, when I am present, amazing things happen. I discover more about myself. I see the beauty around me. I see different ways to interact with others. It’s as if the world opens up as a new and wonderful place to be.

So positive, and yet so hard. One of the things that I love about photography is that it ties you to the present moment. There is nothing beyond the image you see in front of you at the moment you press the shutter button. You can’t be thinking of the photo you captured yesterday, or tomorrow, when you capture the one of today. When I first saw these seed pods, while looking for pretty leaves, I thought they were ugly. But then I went back, and studied them with my camera, and discovered their hidden beauty.

Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.”           — Thick Nhat Hanh

To live life, see the beauty in life, we have to be present. A thought I will carry with me today.

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My friend Jenny, a life coach, asked me if I wanted to share my experience in Italy and how it’s changed me with her readers. I’m writing a series of articles for her newsletter and blog, about how my time in Italy has helped me to find my passion and purpose, and how I think you can apply the lessons I’ve learned to your life. If you are interested in reading the first article, visit her blog at Rising Sun Coaching.

(By the way, does anyone know that type of tree this seed pod is from?)

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Visiting Home

Today I am heading to Oregon for a two week business trip, probably my last one before we move back next summer. I am soooo looking forward to some good Mexican food and visits with friends. It is always a whirlwind trip of work and socializing and shopping, since I’m there for such a short time. I’ll be here on the blog off and on, a few scheduled posts, a few live posts, whatever I can squeeze into my frantic schedule.

Today’s photo is of the wreck of the Peter Iredale, on the northern Oregon coast near Astoria, taken in early 2008 before there was any inkling we would ever have the opportunity to move to Italy. For all that I love the travel and the unique places we have visited in Europe, along with the photographic inspiration that it has given me, this image is a reminder that beauty is everywhere around us. No matter where we live, we just have to seek it. It is there for us to find.

I have sometimes thought that I “found my eye” here in Italy, but when I look back at a photo like this I realize that’s just not true. I already had the vision and the passion, long before this move. What has happened during my time in Italy, is that I have recognized it as my own. I have learned to see myself as the artist I am. The artist I have been, unknowingly, for quite some time.

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