Seeing With Both Eyes

The broken texture of a tree branch Fuji X10 at 7mm f/2.5 1/125 ISO 1000

Sometimes the most beautiful things in our lives are right there in front of us, brilliant and flashy and colourful; sometimes they are hidden in the shadows, or under a pile of rotting leaves.  Seeing those things requires both our eyes and mind that is willing to search. 

I was standing around waiting for the sun to move from behind a cloud so that it would give me some wonderful light for a row of brilliant red maples that I wanted to photograph.  It seems as though when I go out to take pictures I am either rushing to catch the light or waiting for it, or wishing it would be better.  On this day I though to myself, ‘you are a photographer don’t just stand there, make an image.’  I started to look around and I saw a tree branch that had made some very interesting textures and shapes as it emerged from the trunk.  I started to imagine it in black and white and I wanted to get in really close so that the texture would be very apparent.  The Fuji X10 has a pretty decent macro mode so I turned it on and got in nice and close.  I was quite happy with how this turned out and the brilliant red maples… the sun came out but I didn’t get anything worth keeping.  I’m glad I turned around.  (All of photographs from the last three posts were taken within an hour of each other.)

-Russell Berg

A Negotiated Peace

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