Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85 f/4-5.6 at 85mm f/11 1/250 ISO 100 This older lady wandered into view on the Victoria Breakwater and I just had to have a picture of her amazing face.
There is a woman who walks down the pier. She does so slowly and with a deliberation forced on her by the pain in her joints and the weakness in her knees. This is not the tragic story of a dancer whose knees gave out on her or a singer who lost it all. She was not a dancer or a singer, she did not once command the attention of great audiences. She raised a family, she washed clothes, she made meals and now her body betrays her. Her husband has been dead many years and even though her step is slow and her heart is many times heavy she still moves with purpose and will. Life still courses in her veins. She looks up to see the sails of the boat in the distance fill with wind and snap and surge and she smiles.
I was walking with my daughter on the Victoria Breakwater and on our way back we decided to walk on the quarried stone below instead of on the walkway proper. It was a beautiful sunny day and there were several scuba divers heading out. As we were walking I saw an older lady approaching us on the walkway above. I knew that the concrete was going to be in the frame so I quickly decided to make it a design element, using it to bisect the frame diagonally. I also had to move quickly because she was going to see me soon and I didn't want her expression to change if she saw me. Her face had an amazing quality in it with so many wonderful stories in the lines, I wish I could have talked to her.
-Russell Berg