Kat Eye Studio

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Energy from Outside the Zone

If you tend toward order in you daily actions, experiment with the expressive chaos and imbalance. If you are generally impulsive in your habitual ways, focus for a wile on orderly and calculated movements. Try to access unfamiliar roles. There is tremendous energy in whatever is antithetical to the norm.
— Shaun McNiff in Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go

Have you ever noticed this? That sometimes, when you do something that is opposite to your normal routine or nature, you get a burst of energy. While it can be uncomfortable, it can also be fun and liberating.

It takes a bit of a reminder at times, a push to get out of our comfort zones. The participants in my Find Your Eye: Journey of Recognition class are doing it right now, so this quote resonated when I read it today.

And it made me think. Have I been outside of my comfort zone lately? Maybe a little. This expansive landscape shot is different than my usual city scene. But it’s not that far out of my comfort zone. Not really. I need to challenge myself to step out a bit further to get that boost of energy that comes from trying something new.

How about you? Have you stepped outside of your comfort zone lately?

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Come Visit!

I’m over at Shutter Sisters today, with a guest post sharing the Photo-Heart Connection. I’m excited to have the chance to guest post there, and to share this project with more photographers. I would love to have you come visit.

Have you been thinking about your Photo-Heart Connection more this month, since I announced the project? I have. I’m looking more closely, more critically at each photo. Not to see what is technically right or wrong, but to notice how I feel. That’s a very good thing.

Today’s photo is from our recent snowstorm. I don’t know what it is, but there is always something about a lone tree image that gets me, right in the heart.

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Unusual Weather

While some of you live in places where you get tired of the snow in winter, I don’t live in one of those places. In the Willamette Valley of Oregon we rarely get snow. It’s mostly rain, rain, rain.

But on Sunday morning, we woke up to snow on the ground and big, fat flakes falling. I could not miss this photo opportunity, so my son and I went out and put fresh tracks in the snow. In a short while the snow stopped and the sun came out as a break in the clouds moved through, creating some lovely photo opportunities, like the one below.

The snow came and went for a day or two and now we are back to rain. Serious rain. This is a good thing, since we have had a very dry winter so far. Dry and clear is nice for the humans here in the winter, but not so good for the land. I don’t mind the rain right now, it’s been a while and I like the sound of the rain outside while I’m safe and warm inside.

Somehow though, it’s not as exciting or as magical as waking up to the world covered with a quiet blanket of snow.

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The Power of Nature

It’s hard to believe that a little over one week ago we stood on an active volcano. Located in Sicily, Mt. Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe. We rode the gondola up on the south side, stood in the snow as the locals skied down the hill, and ogled the peak puffing away. We marveled, “We’re on an active volcano!”

It was a beautiful day, as the blue skies attest (no color enhancement to these photos). It would be hard to believe that it could change in an instant, but you can’t predict nature. On the north side of Etna you can see the most recent lava flows below the smoking peaks.

As I hear the reports and see the videos of the Japan earthquakes and tsunami, I am rendered speechless. In the face of nature’s power, we are helpless. We are mere passengers on this ball of rock hurtling through space. The earth continues to re-shape itself as it will, regardless of how the humans on the surface try to monitor, predict or even control it. We easily forget that in our everyday lives.

My heart and support goes out to those struggling with the aftermath of this natural disaster in Japan.

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Snowflake Math

Snowflake + snowflake + snowflake + …. + snowflake = SNOW.

Today’s 9 Muses Musing prompt is SNOWFLAKE, but I’ve been sick and in bed the last couple of days, and have not come up with a snowflake photo. So I’m trying to make one of my favorites from our little trip into Monza last weekend work for this prompt. What do you think? Are you buying it?

I loved this photo because it shows how bicycles are just a part of life here. A mode of transportation, regardless of the weather. I was a bike commuter back in Oregon, but I have to admit I would not ride in snow. I think many people have that opinion here too, but look – there were enough bikes to fill up a bike rack on a Saturday night in Monza. Only one of them had snow on the seat, and the tire tracks indicate most of these had been used recently.

Impressive. It should inspire me, but I still don’t think I want to ride in the snow.

Tomorrow’s 9 Muses Musing prompt is STOCKING. I’d better get creative…

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Beauty Shot

The Swiss Alps at sunset, a beautiful scene from the town of Interlaken. Here is a beauty shot of the Alps for you! We had a lot of overcast and rainy weather while we were in the mountainous part of Switzerland, which made for interesting cloud and fog photos, but not always those classic Swiss Alps shots that might be expected. That’s ok with me, it just makes me get more creative with what I do capture, and also to appreciate the little bit of clear mountains we did get to see!

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