Kat Eye Studio

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Time to PLAY!

Today’s image is from the Umbrian hill town of Orvieto. We had two rainy days based in this hill town on our spring break trip. I found I took fewer pictures than normal on these days, probably because it’s hard to hold an umbrella and take a picture and keep your camera dry all at the same time. This image normally wouldn’t make it to my blog. I would include it the overall album of the trip as a nice shot of the streets of the town and the weather of the day, but nothing special. But today, just for fun, I decided to play around with it.

You see, the Pioneer Woman Photography blog recently offered their free actions for Photoshop Elements. Yay! So today I played with them on this photo and was amazed at the all of the different feelings I could get with this one photograph. I view actions as a little like candy – easy to overdose on if you’re not careful, but a little bit is fine! I would love to hear your comments on these. Which do you like? Which don’t you like? Why not? (There is no special order to these, I’ve just uploaded them in alphabetical order by action name – because it was easiest!)

Boost

B&W

Define&Sharpen

Dim the Lights

Fresh & Colorful

Heartland

Lovely & Ethereal

Sepia

Seventies

Soft & Faded

Vintage

I didn’t include all of the actions here, just the ones that I thought “worked” in some way with this image. Some really didn’t work at all! What’s fun about all of this playing is that you learn in the process. I hope you have some time to play too!

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Patterns

Everywhere there are patterns. In our behaviors, our preferences and in the world around us. This is one thing I’ve always loved about engineering, finding the patterns so that you can solve the problem.

This kind of brickwork is a very common European pattern. I love how the individual squares are used to create these arcs. This image is of Patrick and Brandon’s shadows on a street in Bolzano.

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Happy Valentine’s Day


We are in the states this week, our “Home Leave” in Corvallis, so starting with Valentine’s Day today I thought I would post a few pics of various hearts I’ve collected in my photos.

This photo is one of my early favorites from our time here in Italy, from Bergamo. I actually didn’t see the graffiti heart at all when I took the picture, but when I was reviewing on the screen it just popped out at me. This is a time I’m sure that my inner eye saw something that my conscious brain didn’t even register. These types of images are what make me trust my instincts in my photography.

So enjoy this heart today, and a Valentine’s wish from me!

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Night Scenes

Here is Bolzano, at night. It was an pretty town, but amazingly quiet as soon as the stores closed. Very few restaurants open past 8 or 8:30pm. It’s like it’s not even Italy! Things are barely getting starting in restaurants around Milan at that time. My colleagues told me that this region is “not really Italy” but I guess I had to live it myself to believe it. It also shows how much we’ve gotten used to “Italian time” and come to expect certain things to be a certain way. It was a little reminder that’s not true! That’s what travel does for you, keeps you from getting complacent in how you think the world “is” – you realize that things in the world are a lot more relative than you had come to believe.

I’ve gotten much more into night photography lately, as this photo attests. Part of it has been the time change, we are out a lot more at night. When we travel in the summer and the days are soooo long – we barely make it to dark and we’re done. We aren’t wandering at midnight with an 8 year old in tow. 🙂 So, in winter, I find that I’ve gotten to enjoy taking photos at night of more places. It’s cold, but it’s nothing some warm clothes and a periodic hot chocolate can’t solve.

The other part of the increase in night photography has been this wonderful new 35mm lens I got in December, which has an aperture of a whopping 1.4 and allows me to just get more light into the camera. It has extended the range of light I can use to take photos while still hand holding the camera. It’s enough that I tote around my big lenses (2 now!), I’m not interested in carrying a tripod and then setting it up, etc. So this lens does a fabulous job of extending my range at night while still keeping me mobile. It’s like a whole new world to photograph!

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Create

This is one of my favorite photos from one of our many trips into the city of Milan, our “home” city if you will. Since we live in the small “suburban” town of Vedano al Lambro, we go into Milan to get the big city feel. I love the energy of the city! There is nothing like the feel of the Piazza del Duomo, packed with people on a Saturday, all just out for the sake of being out.

This is the vegetable carving guy that we saw in the same place everytime we went into the city this summer. He carves amazing works of art from carrots and turnips and beets, like this rose. It is amazing to watch. It’s more like he frees the object from inside the vegetable rather than carves it, he’s just removing the unnecessary parts.

We’re going into Milan today for the day, to see what we can see, explore the town a bit. I have a couple of art exhibits to choose from and I’ve looked up a couple of toy stores for Brandon to search for Lego train track. We won’t see our vegetable carver, it’s too cold this time of year, but I’m sure we’ll see something interesting!

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Quiet Evening

This photo is from Bergamo alta citta (high city), a beautiful town about 30 minutes away from here. The old part of the city, alta citta, is on a hill and goes back to Roman days. It has its own architecture and personality and it’s not very touristy, it’s one of my favorite cities in Italy so far. This was a rainy evening we visited with my Mom, sister and cousin when they first arrived. I loved all of the reflections of the window light on the paving stones, and the umbrellas.

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