Laundry Art

Good images happen when you walk around with your camera.  I was walking with friends around downton Seattle and as we wandered past an alley I happened to look up and this is what I saw.  I believe, although I am not sure, that it was an urban art installation.  They way that the wires crossed back and forth from all different levels, the fact that every piece of laundry was white, it all spoke to and intentional piece of art.  I thought it was beautiful and your experience of it changed as you walked underneath and the lines and placement of the pieces changed as my perspective changed.  I knew that I wanted a photograph of it but it presented a challenging exposure situation.  I was standing in deep shadow with dark shadows falling on parts of both walls and a bright blue sky right behind the main subject.  I didn’t want the walls to go black because the sense of context that they give is really important so I took my initial reading using spot metering off of one of the shirts and then underexposed by one stop.  I wasn’t concerned about preserving detail in the sky because there was none, but I didn’t want the shirts to blow out the highlights.  Luckily the shirts were all in shadow so they weren’t too hot, exposure wise.  By going -1 on the exposure the walls were very dark in my original image but there was enough dynamic range in the file to pull the detail out in post processing.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

The Walls Close In

A narrow alleyway in downtown Victoria. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 10mm f/8 1/20 ISO 1250

Victoria, BC has a wonderful old downtown area with some very interesting and narrow alleys.  I stumbled on to this as I was wandering through the city and was struck by the graphic nature of the tight brick walls, the plank ceiling and the bare bulb that hung in the middle.  I used a wide angle lens to emphasize the enclosing feeling of the alley and the shift in perspective almost makes it feel as though the walls wrap around you.  In the original frame the bare bulb light was visible but I cropped it out as the extreme contrast in brightness was distracting.  I also really liked the way that the splashes of light on the walls imply the bulb on the ceiling without us having to see it.  The exposure was also somewhat tricky, it the camera read the exposure off the bright area in the centre all of the walls would have been very close to black.  I used spot metering and took a reading off of the area just this side of the light area and I got a decent exposure.  I am still not entirely happy with how bright the opening is but of course at the end of every tunnel…

-Russell Berg

The Words Flow

I discovered this person writing in an alley in Victoria. Fuji X10 28mm f/2.8 1/125 ISO 500

An author sits alone.  Sometimes the words flow, they trip over themselves before the ink can form them on the page. The stories tell themselves to the author and he simply writes them down.  Sometimes the blank page mocks, the empty whiteness is scornfull and contemptuous and all of the author's attempts are rebuffed. Sometimes he needs to take a break, sometimes he needs to experience something new, sometimes all he needs is the write space.

I was following my camera around Victoria last weekend and I was taken in by some of the narrow alleys in the older areas of downtown.  I took quite a few photos but I was walking quickly down the street to meet my wife and I happened to glance down this one to my left.  I saw this person sitting in a kind of an alcove in the brick wall with their legs out in the alley as they wrote in a notebook.  I immediately knew that I had a great image if he or she would stay their long enough.  I only had a 10-22mm on my 7D and I snapped off a few but she appeared so far away that I pulled out my X10 and moved in a little closer.  The little Fuji is a perfect street camera, it is small, light, and quiet and most importantly it has that fast f/2.0-2.8 lens.  In post I cropped out the top of the photo as the end of the alley was a filled with very bright, distracting sunlight.  I was very, very pleased with the result.

-Russell Berg

The Sounds of Commerce

A slum behind the pasar (market) in Sentani, Papua, Indonesia. DiMAGE Z10 6mm at f/3.2 1/100 ISO 64The smell hits you first. You are wandering undering the unrelenting sun and as you approach the pasar, market, it is redolent with the odors of decaying meat, rotting garbage, and unwashed bodies. There is a strength to it that pushes back and leaves the uninitiated wondering if they can continue. The crush of bodies, the sounds of commerce, street style pushes in around you and you begin to wish you didn't need to shop here. Then you see a nod, and you stumble through a greeting in your halting Indonesian. They smile warmly help you correct your words and shake your hand. You wonder if there are any tomatoes this week and soon they are they pulling you through sprawling market to the one corner where they sit, decent sized tomatoes.

The market where we shopped for vegetables in Indonesia was a large collection of tin huts, lean-to rooves and tarp covered stalls. It was always full of life and sound and action. One day I wandered out the back and through the little alleys and homes that bordered it. I walked around a corner and glanced through the laundry hanging in front of me seeing a man in a motorcycle helmet coming home. I. Whipped up my camera and snapped just as he disappeared in a home.

-Russell Berg