A Hole In The Sky

A hole in the glass provides the perfect frame for a building that is being destroyed. Canon 7D, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f18 1/80, ISO 3200A Perfect Photographic Morning Part 2

As I left the parking lot with the view of the blue window I walked around the block and came to the other side of the building that was being destroyed  I really wanted to see what was inside but the bottom floor was all boarded up and I couldn’t see anything.  There was, however, scaffolding over the sidewalk to protect the people who were walking by.  This was a Sunday morning so there wasn’t any work going on but I still hesitated, a little unsure of myself, as I swung my camera over my neck and scrambled up the scaffolding.  I thought to myself “no one is going to look up.”  I was initially really disappointed as the second floor was all windows but they had been painted from the inside, really strange.  But then I notice the hole, it wasn’t large, smaller than my fist but I could see inside and it looked like there was some real possibilities here.  I loved the fact that hole in the window provided a frame for the image, I loved the fact that I could just barely see the window frame in the top left corner from my previous image, and I loved the way the planks on the floor lead your to that mysterious darkened doorway.  I had to stop the exposure way down to f18 or the glass just became a blurry amorphous mass this pushed my ISO up to 3200 but luckily the 7D handles that pretty well.  As I brought the doorway into focus something really interesting happened, I could see writing on the glass in the top right corner. At first I thought it was a sticker on the glass but I pulled my eye off the camera to look and I realized that I was looking at a reflection from a store on the other side of the street and even though the glass itself is out of focus the reflection is the same apparent distance from the glass as the doorway is, (remember your high school physics?), so it was in focus as well.  I really liked how many layers I was playing with here and was really happy with the image.  Afterwards I pulled it into Aperture and did the black and white conversion with Nik Silver EFex Pro and I darkened the image, and increased the grain to add some drama and mystery.

-Russell Berg

As I looked to the left, in the middle of the all the destruction was a circular life preserver. Irony, anyone? Canon 7D, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f8 1/60, ISO 1250

Beauty In The Decay

Beauty in the decay of a city. Canon 7D, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f9 1/60, ISO 400A Perfect Photographic Morning Part 1

I went out walking around Victoria one December morning as my wife slept in and I had a wonderful photographic adventure.  It started as I walked past a parking lot that had, at one end, an old building that was in the the process of being demolished.  This idea of finding beauty and art in the midst of decay and destruction was one that has always appealed to me and it became sort of a theme for the morning.  I took a few photos and then turned to my left and saw the blue grating and window frame over the tumbled red bricks and I knew I had a pretty good image.  I really liked the contrast of colours and textures.  After I had imported into Aperture I did increase the saturation of the blue around the window and red in the bricks a little until I had the image that I was looking for.  I will tell/show you more about my morning in future posts.

-Russell Berg