Andrea stands wondering, her back is to the water as she leans against the rock. She has the happy tired feeling of contentment in her bones and and a light smile plays at the corners of her lips. This has been an incredibly difficult year but now everything that she has faced, well almost everything, is behind her. There were moments when she wondered if it would all be possible, but now… Now she smiles, looks down for a moment at her shoes and turns towards the water, her face into the wind.
At Neck Point in Nanaimo there is a wonderful tree that is clinging to a rock on the edge of the ocean. It looks as though it has experienced decades of hurricane force winds that have forced it to grow sideways out of the rock. I have photographed this tree several times but I wanted to produce something very moody and evocative that helped to tell the story of the trees struggle for survival. I pulled one of my exposures into Nik Silver Efex Pro and began to work on it. I used a high contrast filter and but that made the ocean and horizon almost black so I added control points to the water to increase the brightness of that area. I also wanted a more dramatic sky so I darkened the top ⅓ of the frame. I really like the way that the tree exists as a silhouette in a state of tension between the dark sky and the dark water with a band of light running through the middle of the frame.
-Russell Berg
If you are interested in more tree photography check here and here. Or type 'tree' into the search bar.