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January 23, 2014 by Kat

Dealing with Disappointment

Yesterday I found out that something I applied for, related to my photographic art, I didn’t get. It’s one of those things… Lots and lots of people applied. Only a few were going to be selected. The odds were low. The selection process is always subjective with the jurors. The other work submitted was amazing. There are so many reasons I wasn’t selected. I can list them all.

Yet… I’m still disappointed.

It always happens when I hear I wasn’t chosen for something I applied for. Even though I know the odds are really low in anything art-related, I always apply with hope. There is always a piece of me that believes I have a chance at whatever it is. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t spend the time, energy and (sometimes) money to apply.

And so, there is the disappointment. It’s usually short, but it’s there. I feel the anticipation and excitement of receiving that letter or email or phone call… Hoping for the answer I’ve dreamed of… Only to get a sinking feeling in my gut as I find out the real results. It’s not me. I wasn’t chosen. As my dream world reconciles with the real world, the disappointment sets in. For a brief time, my inner child comes out: Why not me? What’s so great about this other work? What’s the point of it all? I hate to admit it, but that is almost always the first reaction.

And then… I take a step back and look at it more objectively. I turn on my mother voice, to talk to that petulant child… Now, you knew the odds going in. These things are subjective. And wow, isn’t the art that was chosen amazing? See what you can learn.

So I mentally pick myself up, brush myself off, and start all over again.

Such is the life of the artist. If we are going to put our work out there, if we are going to submit, there will be disappointment. The funny thing is, we usually only share the successes. So on the outside it looks like it’s smooth sailing. That someone is blessed, getting everything they want. I tell you, from the very real inside, that’s just not true.

For every success I share here, there are five times… no, make that ten times… the number of disappointments. For every step forward I make, the are many, many more steps back. It’s only because I have some inner drive, some passion for what I do that I continue on through all of the disappointments. I have belief in myself that I can succeed. And so the disappointment is all the more real.

Being an artist is not for the faint of heart. We put our selves, our soul, into the work we create and then we put it out there in the world. We open ourselves, knowingly, to the possibility of hurt. By the very nature of a selection process, we open ourselves to the likelihood of hurt. And yet we do it. Over and over again.

It takes both courage and resilience to be an artist. I’m calling on both today, to deal with my disappointment.

January 16, 2014 by Kat

Adding Color (A Mobile Tutorial)

One wonderful thing about being an artist: Adding color to a black and white world. Isn’t that awesome? By the way, that statement is true in more than one sense. In the literal sense, as in my photograph today, as an artist I get to choose to add color to my work or not. I can leave my photograph as a direct interpretation of what I saw or I can change it, just with color.

And in the figurative sense, artists often add color and move outside of the lines of conventional rules of life. Who challenges the cultural norms of how we are supposed to act? To live? Historically, it’s the artists. And that adds color, lots of color, to a world that can otherwise seem black and white. You may or may not like the color, but that color enables our culture to continue to evolve and grow.

But enough of these deep thoughts… how about a mobile tutorial today, hmmm? It’s been a while! I created this piece a couple of days ago and thought it would be a perfect one to share with you, both for the relative simplicity of the steps compared to many of my edits, as well as I can share a new app I’ve been enjoying.

We start with the photograph, captured using ProCamera 7. As I mentioned in my blog post on Tuesday, I was feeling the urge to get out and photograph, and Tuesday morning was wonderfully foggy. I left for work early and spent some time photographing the trees in the fog on campus. There was this little tree with interesting lines I had never noticed before:

The photo looks a bit underexposed, which often happens in fog, even with the exposure control I have in ProCamera 7. The first step of the edit was pulling it into Snapseed, where I increased brightness and used the grunge filter to add color and texture. The nice thing about the way the grunge filter works, the bits of trees along the bottom, which are a bit of a distraction I thought I might have to clone out, end up blurred so there is no cloning work required. Bonus! And this is the first step to adding color, with the purple tint.

Next, the image went into Distressed FX. There are some great filters in this app for adding color! I use it all the time, playing with the different options and seeing which looks best. I love the range of color blends after using Distressed FX:

The next step is running the image from Distressed FX through a couple of other apps. First, the Autopainter app (I use the HD version, on my iPad) using the Benson filter. The great thing about this app is that you can stop it mid-processing to get different effects. I stopped the app at the end of Step 2, before Step 3 where all the detail strokes get added. It gives the image a rougher, more painterly, feel.

I also took the image out of Distressed FX, and ran it through a new app I’ve been playing with called Waterlogue. This simple app gives fantastic watercolor effects! I used the Soaked filter, set to Dark, and turned off the border. Love it!

The final step is blending the two images in Image Blender, to get more softness in the branches and a greater depth of color. I believe I used the “Darken” blending mode.

And that’s it! A very simple edit, but a wonderful result, adding a great depth of color to the black and white world I experienced that morning.

I’m going to be adding something a little extra to these mobile tutorials in the future! A map of the process I used, which I’m calling a “mobile recipe,” so that you can more easily follow the steps and try them out on your images. You can save these recipes and refer to them in the future when you’re looking for a little editing inspiration.

I know I’ve said there will be a Smartphone Art eCourse this year, but writing an eCourse takes a lot of time and energy, and as I move into 2014 I’m just not seeing when I will have that much available time and energy. So instead of a full-on eCourse, online I’ll be continuing these mobile tutorials, and will help you use the resources I already have available to learn more about mobile photography. Stay tuned.

And in person, I’d love to bring the Smartphone Art workshop to your area! This is such a fun class, and absolutely the best way to learn this material is in person. I’ll be adding a second day with more great content and we can make it a weekend thing. Contact me and let’s chat!

November 28, 2013 by Kat

Giving Thanks

Today, in the US, we are pausing to give thanks. At this moment I’m giving thanks for my son snuggled up next to me under the quilt, for sunshine, and for creating art. My list will change throughout the day.

For those of you in the US, I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with your family and friends. For those of you outside the US, I hope you can take a moment today and give thanks for what is good in your life, what makes you happy, and the beauty of the work around you.

And for the US expats, my heart is with you today. I remember the feeling of going to work, having a regular old week day, while my home nation was celebrating my favorite holiday. But I’m also a little envious, because I look back fondly on all of the work it took to make Thanksgiving in Italy happen, and I see how much more I cherished the holiday, even if celebrated two days late.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, wherever you are. I am giving thanks for you today, too.

November 21, 2013 by Kat

Inviting Inspiration

Hey, do you know my friend Inspiration? She’s great fun. When she comes to visit we have an amazing time.

Were a good team, she and I. We are amazingly productive together when she shows up, always creating new work like crazy, generating wonderful ideas, and moving in new directions. I love the feeling of having her around. She makes me bold and confident, not caring what’s going on in the world around me. Could there be a better friend?

There’s one problem with Inspiration though, and it’s a big one. She’s flighty and unpredictable. She doesn’t show up when it’s convenient and she’ll leave suddenly without warning. No matter how much you beg or plead, when she’s ready to go, she’s gone.

If she wasn’t so much fun to have around when she came to visit, I’d probably end my friendship with her. I mean, who really wants a friend so fickle? But I know what she does is not intentional. It’s as much me as it is her.

You see, if I don’t give her my attention, she’ll move on. If I think I can delay her departure by saying, “I can’t right now, hang on until tomorrow,” I’m deluding myself. She doesn’t have time for that, she’s got other people to inspire. If I don’t drop everything and take what she has to give, I can’t expect her to hang around indefinitely.

But I often do just that. Inspiration comes to visit and I say, “No thanks, not right now. I’ve got other things on my plate.” I forget what a great team we are, how much fun we have. I forget that I may not see her for a while, if I say no.

I forget that it’s my choice, in the end, whether Inspiration comes to visit. I might not have any control in when she shows up, how long she stays, or what we do while she’s here. But being open and willing and inviting her through the door… That’s all me.

She’s gone from here for the moment. Hopefully she’s having a grand time with you right now, since she’s not with me. I miss her, but her absence helps me realize that next time, I can’t put her off. I’ll rearrange my schedule and invite Inspiration in.

November 12, 2013 by Kat

Repeating Myself

I’m on a roll these days. A roll creating imagery filled with delicate branches and fading leaves. It’s my own personal quest… Can I create just one more? Can I convey the grace and beauty of this transitory time? Can I create another piece that touches my soul? Maybe touches another’s?

What do you think?

Sometimes the thought pops into my head, I shouldn’t share yet another image like this. People will get bored. I remember feeling that last year with my bare trees too. But out of that came a body of work, Treescapes. Out of that came a more cohesive vision than I’ve had before in my photography.

So… maybe a fascination with something is really needed to develop vision. The desire to try to create just one more piece with a specific subject, a specific technique, a specific feeling isn’t so wrong.

I only need to look to the great masters, painters like Picasso and Van Gogh, to see they repeated themselves. They would often paint and repaint the same subject and scene, varying things slightly to see what happened. Why do I feel I shouldn’t do the same?

Maybe I’ll reframe it… I’m not repeating myself, I’m exploring the theme. I’m seeing how far I can take it. And when I get bored with it, I’ll move on. Until then, there are still branches with leaves to capture, for a little while yet. Then there are branches without leaves, too. Oh yes, I’ve noticed them. Their time will come.

What about you? Do you worry about repeating yourself, or do you follow your fancy even if it leads to the same place every time? Where do you think this idea that we must create something “novel” every time comes from?

November 1, 2013 by Kat

Photo-Heart Connection: October

There is beauty in autumn. And no, this time I don’t mean the vivid colors that some trees and plants use to herald their demise. I mean the quiet beauty of transition.

The beauty of a graceful exit.

I love the lines of the bare trees of winter, that is no secret. But as this fall has progressed, I’ve enjoyed the emerging lines which are accentuated with the receding leaves. Some leaves go out in a blaze of glory, falling from the tree en mass in their bright colors, still flexible and pliant until days on the ground. One day the tree is full, the next it is bare. It’s startling. But other leaves age in place, slowly and quietly making their transition, losing a bit of themselves here and there with a whisper until one day they are all gone.

It’s these leaves I’m noticing. They speak to me of tenacity. Of a will to continue, even with the inevitability of the end. And wow, aren’t they beautiful? In their demise, they are so graceful. They accentuate the beauty of the bare tree beneath, rather than covering it, as the summer leaves do. It’s almost as if this is their finest hour, their greatest contribution. This is when the tree and leaf are truly one. They tell me that a tree is not either/or, bare or full, it’s both. I can see both seasons, appreciate both, together in this brief moment. These leaves chastise me in my wishing for one or the other; in my desire to hurry or slow time. They remind me there is only this moment. Can I not see?

This time, as any other, I look to the trees for lessons. This season’s lesson for me: How to appreciate the transition. Regardless of what is coming, it can be approached and experienced in the moment, with grace.

“Graceful” is a word that keeps coming to me, over and over, to describe the lines that I want to capture in my photographs. The way I want to live my life. Lately, I see grace all the time in the lines around me, whether it’s in the trees or the sand or extension of a human hand. This month it’s been especially clear to me in the transition of the seasons, as my Photo-Heart Connection expresses. It seems so dramatic to say this, but I ache for the beauty of it all. I do. I am deeply touched by the grace I see in the face of inevitability. I want to have that kind of stoic strength in my approach to the transitions of life. I observe it, I photograph it, and I know I fall short. But I keep going, hanging on, working toward that kind of being. I wonder: Do you have to first see, before you can be?

What is your Photo-Heart Connection this month? Do you see deep longings or light playfulness in your photographs? Your heart is telling you something. Explore the message. Share it with us here.

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