Dark Arch

She stands in the corner, waiting with her children.  The darkness of the twilight is beginning to press down upon them and although it is still very warm outside a chill runs up her back and she pulls the children a little closer.  Her man is out on the battlements, he is not a soldier, he is a tailor, but there he is, when the pirates come everyone is a soldier and she wonders if the night will leave her a widow.  The wind starts to pick up and she can hear the flags start to snap in the breeze.  The sound is distinct, too loud, and then she realizes that it is no longer the flags she is hearing but the crack of muskets.  The battle has begun.

Establishing mood and and emotional tone within an image can be a tenuous thing that is difficult to grab in the moment in which the image is taken.  Often this is easier to manage in post as the light and circumstances of the shot may not suit the story that you are trying to tell with the image.  This picture was taken right around midday, on a blazing hot day but my head was full of stories of marauding pirates and guardian priests as we walked around Casco Viejo in Panama City.  I wanted an image that carried with it the fear and ominous portent of an approaching invading force.  I was standing inside rock walls that had witnessed the terror and confusion of a people under attack and I wanted to be able to look up into the image and feel those emotions.  I pulled the image into Nik Silver Efex Pro and started playing with some extreme changes to contrast and texture, then I started to work on the undersides and lower levels of the rock wall to produce a dark and heavy visual weight to the image.  The perspective of the very wide angle lens puts you right at the base of the wall looking high up into history.

-Russell Berg

Up Into History

In Casco Viejo in Panama City there are many 17th century buildings that are open to the weather and tourists.  The brick walls are very, very thick and have some really interesting textures.  Finding an interesting way to produce and image of them was a bit of a challenge.  I wanted something that would give a sense of their age and permanence, something that would put the viewer in the building.  It was right around noon so the sky was a very washed out light blue so I was thinking B&W right from the beginning.  I walked into a very narrow square room and looked up; the small size of the room made it darker than the open courtyard and the light from the bright sky lightened the window sills providing some contrast with the rest of the room.  When I pulled the image into Nik Silver Efex Pro to do the B&W conversion I increased the texture and this also had the effect of giving the skies an almost surrealistic smooth gray.  I only wish that I had stepped back a little to allow a little of the sky to peak in through the upper window.

-Russell Berg

Casco Viejo

My wife and I were wandering through the old city of Casco Viejo in Panama City and my eye was caught by this old building.  I think the thing that first struck me was the ragged outline of the roof against the skyline.  The overhanging roofs of the neighbouring buildings help to build the sense of compression that the wide angle lens establishes by pulling in the edges of the frame.  After I took the image I pulled it in to Nik HDR Efex Pro.  HDR Efex Pro is a piece of software that is intended to produce HDR like images from a single RAW frame without having to take 3 or more frames.  (If you are interested in HDR check out this tutorial.)  I hadn’t really used HDR Efex before and I was impressed with the results of some of the more subtle treatments.  If pulled out the detail in the overhanging eaves of the neighbouring buildings and and added real punch to the texture of the image.  Below is the image without the HDR Efex treatment.

-Russell Berg