Korakas

On the Turkish side the refugees are given rushed instructions as they huddle in a circle.  There are 47 of them, children, men and women and they strain to hear every word that the smuggler is telling them.  They know that this information might be the difference between survival and drowning.   Their nerves are jangling, everyone is on edge and you can smell the fear.  Most of these people have never been in a boat and they are about to attempt a crossing of the strait between Turkey and Greece in a dinghy.  The wind is whipping and white caps are starting to form.  “It is ok,” the smugglers say, “It will be harder for the Turks to see you.”  The darkness is complete and they get the signal.  They stumble over one another on the rocks to get into the dinghy until they are jammed in so tightly that it is difficult even to turn and look behind.  They are shoved off from shore and the motor sputters to light.  “Aim for the light!  You will be safe.”  The dinghy is sitting perilously low in the water and soon the tops of the waves are coming into the the boat.  

This is a fictional reimagining of some of the stories I heard in Skala.

The light, however, is not safety.  On the sea lights indicate hazards but these are not mariners and all they have is that little bit of information.  Over the last three years thousands of boats have made for that light and when they got there they found that there, within 50m of the Greek shore they were in the worst danger of the trip.  Untold numbers of refugees have made for the light only to have their boats break up or be torn to pieces in the last 50m of a trip that has taken them 2 years to complete.  I wanted a photograph that expressed this danger, this last great injustice for people who are running for their lives.  There are wrecked boats all up and down the north coast of Lesvos.  These ones are on Karakos.  Refugee Rescue works to make those last 50m safe and I am honoured to work alongside.

Two Greek fishermen at work in the evening off Korakas.  The rocks that are visible are not even the most dangerous ones.  There are several treacherous rocks just below the surface of the water right in front of the light house.  These are the ones that have done so much damage.

Snow Day

We had a snow day this week where school was cancelled and I decided to dedicate the day to photography.  This is my journey that day.  I went out early to the marina because I love the idea of boats with snow, there’s a juxtaposition there that I think is interesting.  I got down really low on the dock and hung my camera over the edge with a wide angle lens to place the boats in a dominant position in the frame with the snowy trees to form the background.

Canon EOS 7D Mk II EF-S 10-22mm at 10mm 1/1250 f/3.5 ISO 1250

I kept walking around the marina and I saw a place where the snow had fallen into the water in front of a sail boat.  I was sticking with my wide angle 10-22mm at its widest to play with the angles of the floating snow against the angles of the bow of the boat.  I felt like there were some interesting relationships there.

Canon EOS 7D Mk II EF-S 10-22mm at 13mm 1/1000 f/4 ISO 3200

As I was packing up my car to leave the marina, I saw the snow plow go by on Stewart Ave.  I thought to myself, what image says snow day more than a snow plow so I raced off after the plow.  They stopped in a nearby parking lot so I went up to them and asked if I could take their picture and where would they be plowing next?  They told me that they were heading up 19A but had a few repairs to do.  I went up the road, parked my car and got out to wait for them.  30 minutes of standing beside the road later I was paid off with this image as the truck roared by.  I did get soaked but it was so worth it.

Canon EOS 7D Mk II EF-S 10-22mm at 21mm 1/1250 f/4.5 ISO 2500

From there I started driving around some neighbourhoods just watching for interesting photographs and I found this older gentleman shovelling his sidewalk.  I went up to him and we had a little conversation and asked if I could photograph him while he worked.  He was fine with that, such a nice man with a face full of character and we had an interesting conversation afterwards.

Canon EOS 7D Mk II EF-S 10-22mm at 21mm 1/1250 f/4.5 ISO 2500

Canon EOS 7D Mk II EF 70–200mm + 2x at 292mm 1/12500 f/5.6 ISO 200

Later in the afternoon, after the sun came out I thought I might get some good photos of the sea lions down at Duke Point as the sun went down.  The quality of the light is so key in making a good photograph and the low winter sunset produced some beautiful light.  In my boat as I headed out there I crossed paths with a large freighter.  I loved the contrast in colours and the striking lines created by the anchor chain, it’s shadow and the other anchor in the background.  I waited until Snake Island drifted into view in the background and got this image.

Canon EOS 7D Mk II EF 70–200mm at 200mm 1/1000 f/2.8 ISO 100

My timing with the light was just about perfect as the sun began to disappear over the horizon just as I was finishing my photographs of the sea lions.  The golden light plays over their dark brown fur to create some really beautiful colours.

That was my snow day, I had a blast.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Purple Night

I recently took a solo boat trip down to DeCourcy Island and I was hoping to make some decent nighttime images.  I had been messing around on the other side of the island where my day time scouting had determined that I was going to get the best images, (turned out I couldn’t get anything good there), and was heading back to my dinghy when I saw a boat behind this old tree.  It was very dark out, almost 10:30, so it took a little bit of work to get myself and my tripod into a position to frame the boat between the two branches.  The wind was starting to come up so the fellow on the boat was going out to check the lines coming off his stern, (the green lights extending from the back of the boat are from his head lamp shining on the water as he paddle to shore).  I did four exposures of a minute each and I felt lucky that the boat was relatively sharp in this one as it was quite windy and I was sure that the motion would show up as blur.  Using a wide angle lens, 10mm, allowed me to get close to the tree and have it dominate the frame but even though the moon was out there wasn’t enough light on it so I lit it up with my flashlight during the long exposure.  I am quite happy with the result.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Painting With Light

In my last post I was playing with light indoors, both as a modifier to the image and as the subject.  For these pictures I was playing with light as I rode home on the ferry.  I live on an island so riding the ferry is a regular part of my life and one evening as we were approaching Nanaimo I was out on the deck with my camera and tripod.  I was in the bow of the boat as we headed in close to the city and I used a 30second exposure with my lens at it’s widest focal length, (17mm)  I held it there for several seconds then zoomed in during the exposure to create the light trails and stayed at the longest focal length, (55mm) for several more seconds.  When I got it back to my computer I played with the saturation and the contrast quite a bit to get a pretty striking image.  Luckily it was a pretty calm night, so the boat was not moving up and down and my light trails have just enough movement in them to give the thread like appearance but not so much that they are jiggling all over the place.  The long exposure also smoothed out the water providing a nice contrast to the harsh lines of light in the top of the frame.  The image is a not a literal representation of anything, but rather my light painting of Nanaimo at night.  Below are some of my other experiments with light on that same ferry trip.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Pushed Around

We took some of my prairie family on a little boat trip out to see the sea lions, (pictures of those are coming), that winter in Nanaimo near the Harmac Pulp Mill.  On the way we saw this crew loading a barge with logs from the log booms that were floating in the water.  The tug would maneuver logs from the boom so that they were within reach of the crane then the crane operator would hoist them up on to the barge.  It was a fascinating operation and I wanted to get an image that would capture as much of the dynamic motion as you can in a still image.  Before I got this image I got some pictures of the logs coming up out of the water and the water rushing off of them but we weren’t in the right position to get the tug in the frame as well.  I maneuvered around and waited for the next lift.  These tugs dip and dive in the water, heeling over very steeply and I was rewarded with this tug turning sharply to maneuver just as the logs came up out of the water.  The image tells whole story and the movement of the machines is accentuated by the dynamic slash of orange (1.) that cuts across the frame from bottom left corner to upper right.  The other payoff is that you can see both the tug and crane operators (2.).  I was very happy with the result.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com