Goodbye Love

Mark: Mimi still loves Roger.  Is Roger really jealous or afraid that Mimi's weak

Roger: Mimi did look pale

Mark: Mimi's gotten thin.  Mimi's running out of time. Roger's running out the door--

Roger: No more! Oh no! I've gotta go.

Mark: Hey! For someone who's always been let down who's heading out of town?

Roger:  For someone who longs for a community of his own, who's with his camera, alone?  I'll call. I hate the fall.  (Mimi enters) You heard?

Mimi:  Every word. You don't want baggage without lifetime guarantees. You don't want to watch me die?  I just came to say goodbye love, goodbye love

If you'd like to see how part of the scene turned out check it out here.  James Dean as Roger, Kody Dennison as Mark, and Micalla Wallace as Mimi

If you would like to see more portraits that I have done of my actors check here, here, here, and here

My theatre club did a production of RENT this year and as we cast the show I wanted a Mimi that was able to express a fragility and vulnerability beneath a thin crust of self-confidence.  This young actor quickly found this in her work with the character and I feel like this photograph captures that.  Mimi is watching from the background as Roger, the man she is in love with, explains to his friend why he can’t be around her, why he can’t watch her die. (Mimi has AIDS.)  Mimi is trapped by her health, trapped by her relationship with Roger, trapped by her addictions, and trapped by her poverty.  As she enters the stage near the end of the musical she sees the last of her hope whither up and float away in the autumn wind.  We put her at the back of the stage to hear Roger’s last words about her where the metaphorical bars of her existence are made real in the bars of the scaffolding.  Probably, there were very few people in the audience who saw her standing there in the background but for me this image, and the character that this actor brings to it, encapsulates everything about who Mimi is.  I shot it in very low light so it was very grainy and unattractive as a colour image so I imported it into Silver Efex Pro and as a grainy B&W it had exactly the kind of gritty intensity that fit the scene.

-Russell Berg

Loneliness

One lonely window open to the night in Portland. Canon EOS EF 50mm at f/1.4 1/60 ISO 800

The cigarette hangs from the edge of her lip barely there until she inhales and it plants itself more firmly between her lips.  She inhales deeply and looks down towards the placemat covered milk crate that stands in for an end table.  The wobbly lamp that sits on top of the placemat has all of the strength that she feels in her bones.  The ragged breath and the too early age that rests on her tired shoulders bespeak a much older woman.  And here she is, alone.

I was sitting on the fire escape of my hotel enjoying the night air and the energy of the city as it rose up to meet me.  I was sitting with my camera, casting about for the right image when I looked across the street and saw someone sitting in their window without any blinds.  It immediately struck me as a very strongly graphic image.  The frame, of course, included more than the four windows pictured above but I framed the picture with a square cropping in mind.  There were closed windows all around the person but chose to put the them in the bottom right because she appears to be looking off to the left and I wanted her looking into the centre of the frame.  The loneliness of the person sitting alone in the window is accentuated by the four closed windows.  The picture didn’t look like much in colour but converting it to black and white gave it more power.  I really like the way that the light spilling upwards from the street accentuates the texture of the brick wall.

-Russell Berg

Glacier

A young woman approaches the enormous mass of the Columbia Ice Fields. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85 at 17mm f/4 1/400 ISO 200 -1ev