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

Layers

I was out walking through downtown Nanaimo looking for ways to introduce depth into a two dimensional image, looking for images that pulled the eye into the frame.  I am drawn to subjects that speak of urban decay, of a place that had once been brimming with life and energy but now was left only a shell.  I came across this window that wrapped around a triangular shaped building that was partly covered with paper left after the tenant moved out.  This image brought both of these things together. The portion of the window that was covered reflected the street behind me, I could see through the middle section of the window, to the street on the other side but the second window picked up more reflections at a different angle.  It all worked together to give about 6 different views of the street behind me and the street in front of me.  I had to work hard to find the right position so that I would not become part of the image.  I really like the way that the layers of glass produced and almost double exposure effect for portions of the frame.  There is a lot of see in this image but I am especially drawn to the way that the street light pole is repeated in a shadowy reflection and the vague idea of a person in the deep background.

Looking down into the pillared entry of a courtyard. Canon EOS 7D Mk. II EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.6 1/80 ISO 250

Earlier that same grey morning I had come across this location and I really had to hunt to find the right angle from which to shoot it.  It is near the China Steps in Nanaimo and getting above the arches gave them a more interesting appearance.  I leaned against the wall in the extreme right of the frame to anchor the image.  I used an extremely large aperture, f/1.6, to push the wall out of focus and dark out of focus portion of the right side of the frame provides a contrast to the crisp shapes of the arches and brick patio and fence beyond.  The light and the light coloured tiles pull the eye deep into the frame, away from the dark anchor on the left.  I also darkened the edges of the frame and lightened the centre portion of the arches so that your eye would be pulled deep into the centre of the frame both by what’s in focus, and by where the light is. Finding ways to introduce depth into, what essentially is, a flat medium can really add interest to your photographs.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

A Tree in Lorien

I know the Mallorn tree in Tolkien’s Lothlorien is supposed to have leaves of gold but the bark is a silvery grey and when I saw this tree in Butchart Gardens lit through a small hole in the clouds it made me wander if Sam and Frodo might not have taken shelter under it’s branches.  The tree was covered in droplets of water from the rain the night before and it held the light beautifully.  I did darken the area around the top and top right of the tree to emphasize the contrast between the tree and the background but the fact that I underexposed the shot by one stop meant that the light that was hitting the water droplets on the tree became the dominant light source in the frame and gave the image more punch.  I was very happy with the mood that the picture evokes and the story that it begins to tell.  I was looking for non-traditional images of Butchart Gardens and I think I succeeded in that here.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Holding Tight

The old girl wallows a bit in heavy seas, the bilge pumps too slowly, and the starter needs a tap of the hammer to get it going but she has plied the waters of the inside passage for 6 decades, hauled halibut, herring, crab, and prawns, and brought her crew home safely every time.  At times the water, has come over the bow, the engine has refused to sputter to life, the electrical systems have all gone dark but every time, with the help, urging, and cursing of her crew she has eventually roared to life and brought them safely home.  Now she rests, the water laps gently agains the wooden hull in this protected passage and she holds tightly to the safety of the dock.

I was floating down Newcastle Passage heading back to my slip when I saw this old boat.  I knew that it would provide for an interesting subject but there were a few challenges.  There was a mess of distracting and uninteresting colours and a very busy background.  The first step was to convert to black and white.  That instantly improved the image but I still wasn’t getting the texture and the age of the vessel.  I have tried this kind of thing in Silver Efex Pro but Nik has another plugin called HDR Efex that really pulls the texture out of an image in an interesting way.  The peeling paint, the dents and the age of the boat really came forward.  Next I had to deal with the background.  I added control points all over the background in each different tonal area that allowed me to darken the background and separate the boat from it.  It’s better but still not completely successful.  The fact that I am using a telephoto lens here works against me being able to separate the boat from the background as telephotos tend to compress your image.  The next thing that I wanted to do was to enhance and brighten the silvery smooth water.  I felt like this would provide an interesting contrast to the battered boat so I brightened the water and increased the contrast.  If there is one thing that I am still unhappy with it is that I wish there where a little more breathing space on either end of the boat inside the frame.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com