snow

March 1, 2014 by Kat

Photo-Heart Connection: February 2014

Who knows what the future holds?

I don’t. It’s but a faint line on the horizon. I can see the here and now, what is. I can see possibilities for the future, what might be.

To reach the future, I have to move into uncharted territory. Into the blank, unwritten part of my history.

I have plans and goals, but where the path I start on will end is still unformed. And that’s ok.

It used to be, I needed to be able to see the end before I started. I needed to know how it would all come out. But that road of expectations led to disappointment, more often than not. Because the end didn’t look like I had envisioned. The path didn’t always turn out to be the one I really wanted or needed to walk on.

Where I used to want predictable outcomes, I am ok now with a faintly formed outline of what might be. I am ok with changing my direction partway through. I am ok with not knowing.

Maybe this is a by-product of age; of maturity. Maybe it is a by-product of experience.

Because now I know, the end is often more interesting than what I could envision. And the journey is where all of the fun happens anyway.

I don’t need to know what the future holds. I just look out at that faint line on the horizon, and go.

My Photo-Heart Connection this month puts into words a change that has been slowly creeping over me for the last five to ten years. Turning from a driven, goal-oriented go-getter, always striving for the next achievement to someone who enjoys the journey and doesn’t mind winding my way along. Someone who doesn’t mind changing or abandoning a goal if it no longer suits. I’m now more in tune with myself, and what my heart wants. I don’t live my life for others, or for dreams of the past. I see all of that in this photograph, with it’s clear foreground tree and faintly visible horizon. I love that I can pull this out of my art, my heart.

What is your Photo-Heart Connection this month? What is your heart connection, in any art form? Here’s my approach to finding the Photo-Heart Connection:

Identify all of the image I worked with this month. I don’t look through every single image I captured with my camera, but the ones I decided had potential and I edited. The sorting through of the raw images to edit throughout the month is really the first step of my Photo-Heart Connection, I don’t need to do it twice.
I place them all in one location, in this case it’s a special folder on my hard drive where I export copies.
Then, in the quiet of the early morning, I look through them on a black background and see what kind of emotional response I have. If there is no emotional response at all, I delete. Generally, the first time through more than half are eliminated. There are always a few that start to bubble to the top.
As I get to these few that “bubble up” as having a stronger connection than the rest, I usually take a break. Go refresh my tea, and see what sticks in my mind. What words come out to describe the feelings that are coming with the remaining images.
When I sit down again, it’s usually with a top two or three. I look through them, feeling each one and the words that come. From there, I can usually tell which one is coming out on top, from the feeling of both image and words.
I start my blog post, add the picture and usually start with the few words that were with me as I made my decision, and then I write. I let the story emerge, as if I’m telling it to myself. What you see in the posts is the result.

Your approach to the Photo-Heart Connection is likely different. That’s ok, there is no right or wrong. Maybe this month, as you go through and do it, you can share your approach with us along with your February Photo-Heart Connection. Then we can all learn a bit more… about you, and about this wonderful process.

February 27, 2014 by Kat

Ethereal

I gained a new word to describe my work yesterday… Ethereal.

I was hanging some prints in the hallway of a local medical office yesterday. It was near the end of the work day, so people were still bustling about. They seemed excited to have new art on the wall, and I received many very nice comments on it. But my favorite was the one that my work was ethereal.

e·the·re·al iˈTHi(ə)rēəl/ adjective
Extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world.
“her ethereal beauty”
synonyms: delicate, exquisite, dainty, elegant, graceful;

I decided I like that description, and will add it to my list. Previous words I’ve taken from other people’s comments include contemplative and delicate.

Getting your art in front of other people, especially non-photographers, is a great way to get descriptions of your work. Not just critical feedback, which we often seek from our fellow artists as a means to improve, but reactions from the general public. How does it connect with them? How does someone unfamiliar with your art, your process, your motivations react? That’s powerful feedback in itself.

There are lots of ways to get your art out there, into the real world, not just online. Doctor’s offices, restaurants, meeting rooms all have wall space they need to fill. As an exhibiting member of the Corvallis Art Guild, I can sign up to hang my work at various local businesses on a rotating basis. It’s a great benefit to members, in that we don’t have to do the leg work to find places to hang our work independently.

Getting a gallery exhibition is nice, and I’ve had a couple of those recently. I’m finishing up a show this week and will have new Treescapes on exhibition at The Arts Center in March. But to work up to that, it’s helpful to hang in other venues that aren’t quite so formal. It’s helpful to have the reactions of people in the real world, to give you some confidence.

Confidence, and maybe a few great words, to help you describe your work.

February 13, 2014 by Kat

Let’s Back Up a Bit

Normally I talk about the “fun” things related to photography and creativity, but today I’m going to turn my attention to the more mundane: Backing up your image files. Like file management in general, if you don’t put a little time and effort into this topic you may end up in a world of hurt.

This topic is on the top of my mind this week, because I’ve been in the throes of some computer maintenance. I’ve had indications that the main hard drive on my desktop computer is on it’s last legs, so I’ve been trying to replace it. It has turned out to be a bigger project than expected, first for technical reasons related to he new hard drive size and my computer, second for failed mirror image on my external back up, and finally, for the old hard drive failing permanently this morning.

Through all of this adventure, though, I’ve been calm and unworried about losing my data.

Why so calm? Because I have a solid back up strategy that means I’m in good shape. Let me walk you through it…

First, my desktop computer is my main archive. Even though I’m doing all of my photographic work on the iPhone and iPad these days, all of the image files I create get transferred over to the desktop for archival. I transfer the image files to my computer using Lightroom, same as I’ve always done for my dSLR files. (Did you know you can easily import from your device directly into Lightoom? Just plug in your device through a USB port and go to Lightroom’s Import menu. The device will show up as a drive and you can import as normal. One tip: Wait until iTunes has done its sync with the device before you try to Import with Lightroom.)

Once the files are on my desktop, they are backed up two places: An external USB hard drive (my mirror image drive) and online. You want both a local backup and an online back up, because they cover you in different situations.

The local backup is great way to get up and running quickly if you have an internal hard drive failure. All of your data should be right there, ready to restore if you accidentally delete a file or folder or replace your hard drive. There are a few maintenance things you need to do with an external hard drive backup:

1. Make sure your back up drive is larger than your internal hard drive. Some back up software saves multiple images of files and so the back up may require more space than you think.

2. Schedule your back up for a regular frequency. Most back up software allows you to schedule the back up for a time you aren’t using the computer. I back up daily, but weekly or a few times a week is likely fine. Think about how much you might lose if you have a hard drive crash between back ups, and the. Set the frequency accordingly.

3. Check periodically to make sure the back up is happening as you expect. Sometimes there can be software problems or settings in your computer that interfere with the regular back up. You may not get an error message.

4. Check to make sure that you can actually restore your files. This last one is the one that I got caught by this week, just assuming the mirror image would restore fine. It didn’t. A mirror image, which is supposed to restore all of your system software and settings in addition to data, is not something you can easily check, since it completely resets the computer. So I won’t be using a mirror image back up, at least on its own, going forward. I’ll find some good data back up software for my external hard drive that I can check for restorability occasionally. I need to do a little more research to find the right solution.

Since I’m not planning to back up a mirror image anymore, I need to make sure I have the system restore disks for my computer and install disks for all of the software I’ve added to my system over the last couple of years. Whenever I buy software, like Lightroom or MS Office, I like to buy a physical disk rather than just downloading from the web. This makes it easy to reinstall all of my software if I need to, as I’m doing this week on the new hard drive. I’m sure you can keep track of product keys and links for software downloads too, it just seems easier for me to keep track of a physical disk. I put them all in one place and forget about them. Easy archive.

So that’s the local back up. But what happens if there is a fire or a flood, and both my computer and local back up are damaged? What about theft? (Although the idea of a thief taking a 2.5 year old desktop seems laughable, I must admit.) Or what if both internal hard drive and local back up fail, as mine did this week?

You need a remote or online back up. Which I have, through Carbonite. And it felt great, through this whole process, to know no matter what was going on locally, my data was safe. All those photographs… From Brandon as a preschooler, to our two years of travels in Italy, to all of my fine art photographs… They are safe.

So it felt really good to call this morning for data recovery, since I’m all out of options here locally. I’ll be getting a hard drive FedEx’d to me with 800+GB of my backed up data, and I’ll get up and running on my new hard drive in no time. No loss, other than a little time.

There are lots of online back up options, beyond Carbonite. You’ll want to look at the cost, size limitations, and file types. I chose Carbonite because it backs up all of my files, regardless of type, with unlimited storage for one price. Many photo back up sites only back up JPG files, which doesn’t help you if you use RAW. And a photo-only back up doesn’t help for all of those other types of files… Like documents and spreadsheets and all, which can be important to life in general.

And just like the local back up, you’ll want to ensure your online back up solution is backing up on a regular frequency, working properly and you can restore your files when you need them. I’ve done that in the last week, before starting on this whole hard drive project, so I know I’m in good shape.

Here I sit this morning, a little inconvenienced my computer is not working, but that’s about it. Can you imagine what a mess I’d be if I’d lost EVERYTHING? All of my photographic work to date? All of the eCourse and Workshop files I’ve poured my heart and soul into? All of my personal documents? I can’t even imagine how upset I would be. Non-functional, probably.

How about you? How would YOU feel, if you were in my situation? Would you be sitting calmly, drinking tea and writing a blog post, or would you be pulling your hair out?

That’s why I’m talking back up strategy with you today. It’s not exciting or fun, but it’s important. If you are not in a good situation with your back up, make a plan and work on it TODAY. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Because if you’ve not had a hard drive failure yet in your life, someday you will. It’s just a matter of time.

February 11, 2014 by Kat

Snowbound

We finally got a bit of the weather craziness that has been plaguing the rest of the US late last week, with fifteen inches of snow falling on Thursday and Friday.

Now, for those of you in cold, snowy places, fifteen inches is nothing. Having grown up in Colorado, I’m well aware of that. But fifteen inches in a place that usually sees rain year-round and has very few snow plows? Where the general population freaks out at a single snowflake? Well, kind of a mess. School was closed, and my workplace was even closed, which is a rare occurrence. Activities, including an opening reception for my latest exhibition, were all cancelled. The streets were deserted.