The Spanish Dancer

I was wandering the streets of Gastown waiting for the Gastown Criterium Cycling Race to begin and I sat down on a bench next to this very interesting gentleman.  I said hello and we had a conversation about his life.  The lines in his face told the hints of an interesting story and his words filled in the gaps.  He was a folk singer, who had grown up in Montreal and made a living singing Spanish folk songs and jazz in easter Canada.  One day as he was singing in a dark club in Montreal, the kind that you enter by stairs coming down from the sidewalk, he saw a woman dancing.  She moved through the smokey room with a grace that bewitched him and he felt his voice reach out to meet the beauty of her movement.  She danced, he sang.  He sang, she danced and they seemed to rise to make the other better.  Early that morning he sat down to have a drink with her and 6 months later they had moved out to Vancouver.  “That’s how I got to this bench,” he said.  

“Well, thats a more interesting path than most,” I replied. “Do you mind if I take your portrait?  That dancer is written into the lines of your face.”  He smiled and nodded.

Other parts of my Inspired By Harry Callahan series Jumanji In Vancouver

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Dancer In The Mist

This morning the fog was burning through a beautiful mist that hung over the water and it reminded me of this picture.  Joe McNally has said that if you put a dancer against almost any background and you will have a good photograph.  This summer when I was over in Tofino I was on the beach and I was feeling a bit sorry for myself because I had made the drive over the island in the early morning specifically to photograph in the morning light.  There was a thick cover of fog and there wasn’t any morning light.  I did get some decent pictures of Black Oyster Catchers but then this couple came by.  One of them clearly was a dancer, she moved with the grace and poise that only dancers posses and then she started to dance.  It was a truly beautiful thing to watch her dancing through the morning mists across the beach and I was so glad that I had gotten the “bad light”. 

Two other beach portraits that I have done

Grandpa Look!

Lovers

-Russell Berg 

www.seeingberg.com

Hope

There is nothing like the warm comforting lightness of a newborn baby as she nestles against your body.  She lays there in the crook of your arm and all of the possibility of humanity is present in that soft warm bundle.  She is the embodiment of hope, the expectation of a life yet to be lived, she holds all of the aspirations of a sunrise.  She is all of these things and yet she is so fragile, so in need of our love, our care, our protection.  It is this tension that draws us to her, that pulls us in, that makes us want to do everything we can for her.

A few months ago a friend of mine and her husband had their first child.  I went over to their house shortly after to congratulate them, to hear the story, but most of all to hold the baby.  I got to hold her for quite some time but then the grandfather showed up and if there is anything that I know well, it is the fact that grandparents trump friends.  The little girl’s grandfather is a giant man who held his granddaughter with the kind of fluid, protective grace that only a grandfather can.  His hands have been worn by a lifetime of hard work and as his granddaughter was sleeping she instinctively grabbed his finger.  I had had my camera out and was waiting for this kind of moment, a moment that would illustrate so clearly the contrast and the connection between these two people.  The contrast is illustrated in the textures of their skin and the size of their hands; the connection in the trusting grasp of the sleeping baby.  When I got the image back to my computer I wanted to emphasize the difference in the textures of the skin on their hands so I increased the contrast and the structure of his hand and left hers smooth.  I am very happy with the result.  I wish that I had been able to wait until her eyes were open but, when photographing babies, sometimes you take what you can get.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Hiding

Do you see it?  Yes, there’s a woman asleep on the statue on the bench, that’s what I thought I was taking the picture of, but there’s something else, someone else, look carefully… Sometimes you think you are taking a picture of one thing when later you realize you were really taking a picture of something else.  Did you find it?  If you haven’t seen it take another careful look the next sentence reveals the secret.  Under the tree on the right of the frame a woman is watching the sleeping woman, watching me?  When I took the image I did not see her.  I didn’t see her until I got the image into my computer and then I jumped.    There is something a little disturbing about this shadowy presence at the edge of the frame.  Once I saw her I wanted to increase the shock and surprise when the viewer suddenly does see her so I darkened the area where she is standing under the tree and the green bush behind the sleeping woman.  Then I lightened the sleeping woman and the flowers at both foreground corners.  My hope is that the viewer’s eye will enter the image at one of the corners, be drawn in to the sleeping woman and only see the woman under the tree later.  If you don’t see it right away the surprise is bigger.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Eyes

When I came across these two young ladies and their very beautiful, striking eyes I knew that I wanted to do a portrait of the pair of them.  I wanted that portrait to be focused, with a laser like intensity on their eyes.  I also wanted both of their eyes to be in the same image and I wanted the viewers experience of the image to be dominated by their eyes.  Taking a portrait this close up means that the lighting has to be done carefully or the reflection coming back at you will be distracting.  I could have done it with natural light, I had a window right nearby but I wanted a dramatic intensity to the light that would punch up the image.  I had discovered a very cheap way to convert an off camera flash into a pretty decent ring light by a company called DIY Lighting Kits.  It’s kind of a folding plastic contraption that captures the light from your flash and reflects it outward in a ring.  I put the camera’s lens through the middle of the ring flash, dialled in the exposure manually to darken the background and shot away.  I wanted a dramatic intense look so I upped contrast and saturation in the eyes.  You have to be careful when doing this as you can really ruin the skin tone if you take it too far.  Viveza by Nik allows you to focus your adjustments on small areas, (like the blue of their eyes), and not ruin the rest of your image.  I also added a vignette to further darken the edges of the photograph.  

For a different lighting setup of another closeup portrait check out this image.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

I also did a black and white version but settled on the colour because of the striking blue grey in both their eyes that has such a different character in each of them.

The only issue that I have is that I did not adjust the model on the bottom so that she was straight on to me.  Her head is very slightly tilted to her left and I wish that I had noticed this when I did the portraits.