Kat Eye Studio

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Six Days of Night: York

York, England is a beautiful little walled town, with such interesting architecture. I loved the overhanging second stories and the paned glass windows, perfect for spilling light into the street at night. There is an interesting mix of brick and timber frame buildings, all in a row. It was a struggle for me to photograph York in the day. These quaint streets were filled with shops and their shoppers, making it a sea of people. But as soon as the shops closed, the streets began to empty and I could get the images I wanted. With the added bonus of those wonderful patterns of light from the windows!

PS – If you read The Kat Eye View of the World in a reader, come on over to the blog and see the new header design. I was inspired by Paris in so many ways…

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Reflecting on Growth

Sometimes, something new comes along that shakes up your comfortable little world. Sometimes that something is “bad” – a crisis of some sort – but sometimes it’s “good.” Either one can shake things up. I’m experiencing a “good” shake up right now, with joining the Mortal Muses. I was working on my first post last night (to be posted tomorrow), and it was more challenging than I thought. It was a different way of working with photos and writing, it was uncomfortable, stretching me in different ways. It feels scary, putting myself out there to a new audience.

It made me realize that I have gotten comfortable here on my blog, with my photographs and words, with my routine every day. And that’s a great thing! There is a confidence and freedom that comes with knowing what I am going to do, how I want do it, and loving it each step of the way. But it is also good to stretch, to grow, to run up against those familiar old fears again and battle them down, to see things from a new angle. I can see that I need this new stretch, and it’s going to be good for me. We don’t grow by staying safe and comfortable.

I am reminded this morning that the right things always seem come along for me when I need them, when I am ready. I just have to be open to receiving their messages. Do you find that true for you too?

(Today’s photo from our hotel room in Bath, England. I love the multiple planes and angles that are visible in this image! Kind of looking inside out.)

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Symmetry and Conformity

“Georgian townhomes of Bath stone standing row upon row.” I wrote that in yesterday’s post on Door Personality, so today I thought I would show you what I meant with an image. There is wonderful symmetry in this place, the Circus in Bath. (Circus really just means “circle” for us American English speakers. No trapeze acts here.) A circle of houses, all built to the same design, using the local Bath stone. I originally tried converting this to black and white but you lose the warm color of the stone, so instead I just did some selective black and white to take out a tiny bit of distracting green from a few plants. I love the repeating patterns and lines along the curve of the street.

But in this place, there is no door personality. In this place, to maintain the original heritage of the site, the doors are all the same white, with very little room for personalization. This was a high end area (“posh” to use the British term) in it’s day, and still is now. Isn’t it interesting, that when you get to higher end neighborhoods, even in the USA, they are protected by covenants and rules and regulations to keep the look of them the same but also that reduces the opportunity for public expression. Granted, that is nice when you are a home owner and want the value of your property to remain high, but it’s also limiting.

So while I really love the lines and geometry of this place as art, it doesn’t give me the same heart-warming feel as yesterday’s door. I’ll add personality and non-conformity to the list of things that inspire me, like texture and peeling paint and imperfection. One more ray of light shed upon my soul through my photos.

PS – I forgot to mention on my Postcard Giveaway that I will be selecting the winner via random drawing. I am enjoying all of the convincing appeals that are coming through with the comments, however! You can still enter to win here until Sunday 5-Sep.

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Flowers, Postcards and a GIVEAWAY!!

Bath had the most beautiful flowers. In window boxes, hanging from streetposts, in roundabouts – just everywhere. Bath does flowers so well that they are routinely excluded from the “Britain in Bloom” contest for towns, since they always win. For good reason, everyone wins when a town is so full of beautiful, happy blooms.

I love flower pictures – they just make me happy. So I had some postcards printed with a few of my favorites that I’ve posted here. I got frustrated a few weeks ago when I wanted to send a postcard with a nice photo to someone, something with just a pretty picture and not a touristy one, and I looked all around Milan and couldn’t find anything. Along came a discount from Moo (an awesome printing company!) in my email inbox, so I decided to make my own!I went through my posted photos and realized that, for all of the flower photos I take, I really don’t share that many of them here. I will have to rectify that! But here are the posts to show the photos I chose a bit clearer:
Making Ideas Real from Murten, Switzerland
Blissful Color from Barcelona, Spain
Abundance from Split, Croatia
Illumination from Nice, France
Stepping Along Flowers from Varenna, Italy

I am sooo happy with the result, I thought I would give away a set of them here. This set of five beautiful 4x6inch color postcards could be yours – to send, to frame, to stick on the fridge or at your desk – whatever will make you smile! All you have to do is enter the giveaway.

Here’s how to enter:
– Leave a comment on this blog post by 9pm PST Sunday 5-Sep. Please be sure to include a way for me to contact you (a link to a blog, an email, a blogger profile, or an identifier if I already have your email) so that I can get your mailing address if you win. If I can’t contact you, I’ll pick someone else.
– That’s it!

I’ll pick the winner on Monday morning, Italy time, and will let you know. So enter, and you could be smiling at these lovely blooms in person soon. Spread the smiles, tell your friends too!

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Light and Dark Places

Italy has changed me. It was so clear to me on our recent trip to Switzerland, where the perfectly clean and cared for towns were pretty, but not so inspiring to me artistically. Where was the texture, the peeling paint? Where was the reality, the truth? It seemed too perfect. Like a wall erected between me and the place. Just look at the pretty picture, admire the beauty, move on. Distracting me by the surface.

But what’s underneath the surface? That’s what I want to know. What is it like inside? What I see in the buildings and towns I visit is a metaphor for what is going on inside of me. I could have the perfect, controlled, beautiful exterior, but at what internal cost? Perhaps at the cost of creativity, the cost of self-expression. Or I can have an exterior that is not quite perfect, a little bit flawed, that doesn’t follow all the rules, but is full of internal life and energy. Allows for a creative expression of the self. But with that must come honesty, an awareness and acceptance of the flaws.

Which do I want?

It might seem an easy question, of course I want the texture, the energy, the life. I want all of the creativity that comes along with it. But to get that I have to truly recognize and accept the flaws, the light and dark places inside of me. Boy, is that hard.

I guess the fact that I’m recognizing this is a start. The fact that I’m seeing the light and dark both, choosing the texture and peeling paint, feels right. Feels real. And I am amazed at how, once again, I learn about myself through my art. I can’t hide when I express myself creatively, all of me is there, in the images I create. My photographs have something to show me, they show something of me, beyond the surface impressions.

Right now, they are showing me that my time in Italy has changed me. No doubt about it.

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Blank Slate

Every morning, I come to this point, with a blank slate. An empty page, devoid of image or words. Ready to write, ready to receive some inspiration for the day. Sometimes, I have an idea of what I want to write, what photo I will select, before I sit down. Sometimes I don’t. And sometimes, even when I have an idea, I throw that idea out the window and just write whatever comes into my head at that moment. Post whatever picture calls to me. It’s become an interesting process, and I learn unexpected things from my photographs and my writing this way. A blank page becomes the window to my soul.

It’s one of the reasons I don’t write scheduled posts much while I’m on vacation. This is part of my daily practice of creativity, and I can’t seem to pre-schedule my future creativity. Sure, I could share pictures while I’m gone, but the magic of the daily choice, the daily contemplation that goes along with them is missing.

Do you have a daily creativity practice, that has become essential to your art? What is it, how did you find it? I’m curious how you practice your creativity, how you open that window to your soul.