The Dancer Pauses

The dancer pauses for a moment with her hand on the barre, her chest is heaving, her calves are quivering.  She can feel the blister on the inside of her big toe beginning to open up again.  She knows that she is close... she can feel the music and her will pushing here ever closer to exactly the place where her performance needs to be but there is a deep ache in every one of her muscles that cries out for her to stop. The music starts again and she comes back to attitude á terre.

I was looking for a way to illustrate the sweat, the discipline, the pain that it takes to be a good dancer.  These stage beaten pointe shoes speak deeply of thousands of hours of rehearsal and I wanted the lighting to be evocative of that struggle.  I put one flash camera left shooting through a 3" snoot that I made out of a cardboard box, this flash I had at 1/64th power.  In this case my snoots are just cardboard sleeves placed over the head of my flash, but they are quite effective at preventing the light from bouncing all around the set. The second flash was upstage centre pointed directly at the pointe shoes.  It was on a light stand about 2m off the ground, pointing down at the shoes, this flash was at 1/128th power.  I also used a snout here but this one was longer, about 6".  This light gives, I hope, the feeling of a single light hitting the performer, the metaphorical aspiration for all of that rehearsal.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Canon 7D Mk. II EF-S 17-55mm at 55mm f/3.2 1/250 ISO 400

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

Exploring The Dry Dock

The Nanaimo Boatyards is home to a remarkable old building that holds a dry dock for large boats to come in and get some maintenance done.  I don’t know how old it is but is there ever a lot of character in the building.  The textures and tones were so interesting and they were all the more so when I converted the image to black and white.  As I was looking at the image at full magnification when I began to prepare this post I realized that I may have had more than one image here.  There were little stories that the picture was telling throughout the building so I cropped in tight on some of the interesting areas.  Check them out below, you definitely give away some resolution but I think the results are pretty interesting.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

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