Kat Eye Studio

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Layers upon Layers

 
Aaaahhhh, Italia.

Italy seems to be coming up for me a lot lately. Just little remembrances, here and there. It’s like a soft realization that my time in Italy has been absorbed into the layers of me, of my history. No longer the most important layer, or the most fragile, raw layer. A layer that’s been safely ensconced by “before” and “after.”

Italy Sorrento Bicycle Kat Sloma Photography

Sorrento, Italy

Maybe it’s because now — heading on 3 years later — I know there is a “Kat” after Italy. Life has continued to go on. There has been more creativity, more learning. More growth. I’ve reinvented myself again, as a new person, after Italy.

My time in Italy was about reinventing myself. Beyond the scope of my normal life it was this chance in a new place to dig deeper and find who I am at my core. I uncovered the creative, artistic part of me again. I found confidence in myself outside of my previous frames of reference.

But it was still with a frame of reference, and reliance, on Italy. I took my identity as an artist, as a photographer and writer, from the place. From the travels and adventures around Europe. So, coming back I had to reinvent myself once again, in a new context. The context of “after.”

For a while, Italy was still my frame of reference. That layer was on the surface, always to be referred to, compared to, examined against. And then, when it started to get covered up, the top layer was too fragile. I couldn’t dig down to Italy, because I would damage things on the surface. I need to let it go, and move forward.

But now… I can revisit it again. It’s like picking up a treasured object; savoring a special memory. A layer of who I am, like any other. Not one that defines me any longer, but one that enabled my definition. And a layer that, because I found I could transform, allows me to continue to transform. Because of Italy, and the return, I know I can learn and grow and forever change.

I am all layers. I am adding to myself all the time. No one layer dominates. No one layer defines. The beauty is in the strata… Layers upon layers.

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Claim your Artist

With everyone born human, a poet — an artist — is born,
who dies young and who is survived by an adult.
– Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
This morning I came across this quote in the introduction Julia Cameron’s Vein of Gold, the sequel to her amazing book The Artist’s Way which I read early in my creative journey. I’ve had Vein of Gold on my shelf for some time, but it wasn’t until this morning that I looked at the shelf and decided to pick the book up. It’s time for me to revisit the topic of creativity in more depth.
Within the first few pages, she has already touched on something that I believe at my core: We all have an artist within us. You may not have realized or rediscovered it yet, you may not have claimed it yet, but the artist is there. It’s the same artist who approached a new box of crayons with glee when you were 4 years old. The same artist who doodled on your notebooks in junior high. Who brooded over which songs to include to create the perfect mix tapes (er, playlists) as a teenager.
We all create. And a person who creates something, brings something new into the world that wasn’t there before, is an artist. I can name you an artist, but that doesn’t matter. The only person who can truly name you as an artist is… you.
Julia writes this in the introduction of Vein of Gold: “…you will reclaim your keys to the creative gifts locked within you. You will discover that the keys have been yours all along. This means, of course, that it is not my place to name you an artist. Such power would be lovely, but it does not reside with me. You are the one who must name yourself. You are the one who must seek – and claim – your creative destiny. No one else can do that for you, but you can do it for yourself.”
Are you ready to claim your artist? I did, some time ago here, and it was an amazing, empowering experience that has changed my point of view in so many ways. You can too. Come with me as I explore the “art + creativity” part of my personal equation more here in the future. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to claim your artist and find your own personal equation along the way too.

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Exploring with a Camera: Square Format

Composed

Happy Thursday! Welcome to Exploring with a Camera day, my favorite day of the week. Today we’re going to learn about composing with a Square Format. At the end of the post there is a link up, for you to share your images using a square format. If you want a chance for your Square Format image to be featured here on the blog next week, you can also place your photo in the Exploring with a Camera Flickr group.

I got the idea for playing around with Square Format from the book 150 Photographic Projects for Art Students by John Easterby. I haven’t used this format before, so I picked up another book that has become my “encyclopedia” for composition, The Photographer’s Eye by Michael Freeman, and looked at the traditional compositions for a square format. With a little bit of information in my head to guide my eye, I was off and exploring Square Format.

Let’s see what I learned…

Getting it Square

Unless your main camera is your cell phone, chances are you don’t have a square format camera. The typical frame format for digital SLR cameras is 3:2. This means that the length is longer than the height of the frame by one third. A standard size in this format is a 4×6 print. For point-and-shoot cameras the typical frame format is 4:3, where the length is longer than the height by only one quarter. It is closer to square but still not quite the same.

The first step of this exercise is getting a square format. You can always crop the photo into a square format in post-processing. This can teach you a lot, but it doesn’t help you to play around with composition at the time of taking the photo so you can make real-time corrections.

What the 150 Photographic Projects book suggests is creating a “pseudo” square format camera by blocking off part of the LCD screen so that you view only a square. Since I intensely dislike using the “live view” mode for composing with the LCD on my dSLR, I decided to modify my point-and-shoot camera (aka my “little camera”). This turned out great, because I was able to leave my little camera in this format for several weeks, even taking it on our vacation to Sicily, while not interfering with my normal photographic process using my primary dSLR camera.

To modify the LCD screen, I just taped a piece of computer paper over the LCD screen as shown below. I used computer paper because I wanted to have a similar color to the rest of the camera, to give a visually consistent border on the frame. Computer paper was not thick enough to block the light coming through the LCD, so I slipped a small piece of dark cardstock behind the taped computer paper and it worked beautifully.

I keep my camera set on center spot for focusing, so I just focus and recomposed as needed, like I do normally. With this minor modification, I was ready to go. My 9-year-old son, observing this little exercise, would occasionally take his camera and put a finger over the edge of the LCD as he composed saying, “Square Format!” In a pinch, that works too!

What follows are some of the compositions I explored. You’ll see a caption below each photo. “Cropped” means that the photo was created using the standard format frame for the camera and then a square format composition was explored using cropping in post-processing. “Composed” means that the photo was composed using my modified-LCD-screen as shown above. I still had to crop in post-processing to make the image a true square format, but the composition was decided in-camera.

Random


With the even sides, a square format is very static. This makes it a good candidate for “random” composition, where the eye takes in the whole at one time. This image of oranges on the tree from Sorrento was a good candidate for square format. There wasn’t a clear “focal point” with these oranges, it was more about the light,  shape and color of them on the tree.

Cropped

Another image I would consider to have random composition is this mountain scene from the Alps just north of where we live. There is no clear focal point in this image either, it is of the scene – sun, mountains, light, shadow – and square format works well. I actually needed to crop this one, since there was part of someone’s head on the right hand side. I was in line for the gondola down the mountain and couldn’t get a full frame image unobstructed. A square format crop allowed me to make this image something useful rather than throw it away.

Cropped

Concentric


With it’s even sides, square format provides the unique opportunity to nest a circle in the square. Coming across a pretty door in Cefalù, Sicily, I captured one of the elements carved in wood using square format.

Composed

This door design from Erice, Sicily, captures another circle in the square. This falls into both the concentric and centered composition categories.

Composed

What other circles can you think of that would be great to capture in square format? Flowers, something like a Gerbera daisy, come to my mind.

Centered

With square format, you can get a good effect with centering your focal point, something that doesn’t work as well in rectangular formats.  This best capture of this window in Venice using square format was centered.

Composed

The ancient Greek Temple of Concord, found in the Valley of the Temples in Sicily, is front and center in this image. It’s all about the temple here!

Composed

With square format, you can also put the horizon on the center line with good effect, unlike a rectangular format. I saw some great examples of this by American photographer Harry Callahan when I visited an exhibit of his work in Paris. Here is one of his images as an example.

Photo by Harry Callahan

Diagonal


Just like in rectangular format, diagonal lines can be very interesting compositions. The image below of Murano glass displayed in Venice is an example of both diagonal and centered composition. The thing I noticed when playing around with cropping diagonal images is that you need a different angle on the diagonal line to work in square format. If an image was composed with a diagonal line for a rectangular format, there is a good chance it is at a wrong angle to just crop into square format. In the case of this image, I had played around with different angles and happened to have one that worked for square format.

Cropped

Off-Centered


With more rectangular subjects, I found that the subject needed to be off-center using square format. A centered image works with a square or circular subject, but not so well for a person or a tree. Cropping this self-portrait of me in Venice solved the problem of too much wall on either side. Normally, I would have taken this in a vertical orientation, but you can’t really do that when you set your camera on a step. Square format solved my composition problem.

Cropped

The tree-in-the-field image below from Parco di Monza is influenced by the Rule of Thirds. It works with square format too!

Composed

Balance


Ultimately, what it all comes down to in any composition, regardless of format, is balance. The elements have to be balanced within the frame for a pleasing image. The lead-in image, another scene from the town of Cefalù, Sicily, is a good example of a square format image that doesn’t follow any of the specific compositions described above, but balances the elements of color and shape into an interesting photo.

This balcony with the interesting ceramic pots in Taormina, Sicily was another square format image where the composition was derived by balancing the elements of color and line.

Composed

So, how about you, do you have any experience with square format? If not, I encourage you to explore along with me here. Go through your archive and see if there are any images where a square format crop would work well. Modify your camera for a few days to create a “square format” and see what you find. Come back here to link in and share your findings with the rest of us. It will be interesting to see all of the takes on square format that you link in for this theme!

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Sweet and Tangy, with a Kick

Ah, Limoncello. The wonderfully sweet and tangy after dinner drink found in Italy originated around Sorrento, where we stayed on our recent trip. All along the Amalfi Coast you find shops boasting their own Limoncello production, offering you a taste. Mmmmm… Be warned though, this drink is strong, 30 to 40% alcohol. You only need a tiny bit! I discovered this liqueur on my very first business trip to Italy in 2008, and fell in love with it.

Lemons and other citrus are grown in this region, and have two crops a year – around May-June and November-December. It was very neat to see the groves of trees with the fruit on them, even the trees along the streets in the towns are citrus. The lemon is the symbol of the region – everything had lemons on it! We enjoyed walking along, popping into the different stores for a sample. We also discovered Limoncello Crema – the white-ish Limoncello made with milk instead of water – and love that even more.

Limoncello is easy to make, you just need lemon peel, 100-190 proof alcohol, water, sugar, and time. I found a good, detailed description of the process here. I’ve never made it, but I want to try someday. It will be a sweet taste of Italy I can make wherevery I live.

Today’s 9 Muses Musing prompt is SWEETS. Tomorrow’s is FAMILY. Come on over and see what sweet treats are shared today!

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Loving the Lights

I am so loving the lights around me! How about you? The reflection of all of the lights in this wineglass caught my eye, that’s what I was trying to capture in this restaurant in Sorrento. The background light bokeh, self-portrait in reflection and the memory of delicious wine were just bonuses that came along for the ride.

The 9 Muses Musing theme today is LIGHTS. It’s my day as muse, and I’m sponsoring a space in my class, Find Your Eye: A photo course with heart and soul, as the giveaway. I hope you will come by and link in or comment today for a chance to win the space.

Tomorrow’s theme is BELLS. See you then!

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Where Fiats Retire

Through the whole region around the Bay of Naples and the Amalfi Coast, we were amazed at the number of old Fiats that were still driving around. They are only seen rarely in the north of Italy, but here they were everywhere! We decided that this is where Fiats go to retire – southern Italy. Kind of like VW bugs in Mexico.

The Fiat 500 or Cinquecento (pronounced chink-quah-chen-toh) pictured above is the most common version, and it holds a special place in the hearts of Italians because it was so prevalent years ago. The less-commonly-spotted Fiat 600 or Seicento (say-chen-toh) holds a special place in our hearts, because we have one waiting for us in the US. It’s a 1960 Fiat 600 “Convertible” and it needs some work to be driveable. It will be our little piece of Italy when we get home, thanks to our good friend Jack.

The top photo of the Fiat 500 in Sorrento just seemed to need a bit of vintage treatment. Here are the details of what I did in Photoshop Elements:
1. Pioneer Woman “Seventies” Action (these are free actions, available here)
2. Levels layer to brighten and increase contrast
3. Hue/Saturation layer with saturation set to +11 to boost the color of the car, and make it stand out a bit more against the more neutral background.

One final reminder, don’t miss out on the Mortal Muses 9 Muses Musing holiday celebration, starting tomorrow through January 1! Each day, on the Mortal Muses blog, we will be announcing a special holiday prompt word as your daily photo/creativity assignment, along with a giveaway. Just link up your blog or a Flickr photo for that day’s assignment to be entered to win. A fun, free, no pressure way to stay creative during the holiday season! I hope to see you there.

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