The voices of history whisper still in the rocks of ancient Tulum. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85 at 20mm f/5 1/1250 ISO 100 −1ev

The people who built this wonderful place are no longer here. Only the tourists and tour guides wander these paths now. In the quiet moments as the day is ending and as the crowds have thinned you can still hear the voices whispering in the rocks. There is a presence in the ancient places that points forward through the mists of time and begs us to stop and look, to see the things that they have done. To hear the echoes of the stories told around fires one thousand years ago.

All of the places on the earth are the same age but there is something remarkable about visiting a place where the remnants of human activity have a kind of permanence. The ruins at Tulum, in Mexico are a beautiful example of that. We visited Tulum as the sun was starting to set and the sky was a dramatic blue but I knew that for many of my pictures there would be no better way to bring out the texture and structure of the rocks than with a black and white treatment. Changing your perspective can have such a significant change in your photographs. Simply sitting down on the ground, as I did for this photograph, can really change the way that we see it. The lower point of view makes the gives the building and imposing presence in the image. I simply cannot say enough about the ability of Nik Silver Efex Pro to help produce very interesting black and white images. The structure and contrast tools alone are worth the price of admission.

-Russell Berg

A wonderful battered old Gary Oak on the shores of Vancouver Island. Canon EOS XSi EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.4 1/4000 ISO 200

The wind blows here. It winds and twists over the rocks and finds its way through the trees to the place where you are sitting. The wind does find you but not until after the trees have negotiated a kind of peace for you. They have protected you and they are true. You look out from your protected space at the centre of the grove and the sweep of the ocean, the grand rise of the mountains on the mainland, and these trees they all seem to conspire to give you peace. They all seem to slow your mind and calm your spirit and you take a deep breath.

There is a wonderful grove of twisted, gnarled old Gary Oak trees at Piper's Lagoon in Nanaimo that is really beautiful. The trees have grown up on the shore line and have twisted and turned themselves in an apparent attempt to get out of the wind. They stand on top of a hill that overlooks the Georgia Strait. I wanted to capture the texture of the bark of these trees so I opened up my lens as far as it would go to get that shallow depth of field and isolate the tree against the background. I got the shot I wanted but I still wanted to emphasize the texture of the bark some more so I added a bleach bypass filter in Nik Colour Efex Pro.

-Russell Berg