Limitations can push creativity. I recently got a Fuji X-E2 and the only lens I have is a 14mm. I have always been a slave to the zoom and I feel like I always feel as thought I am going to miss shots if I leave a certain focal range at home. This means that I am often walking around with a lot of gear, and I still like the versatility that this gives me but the other day, with my new Fuji I found my creativity being pushed in interesting directions because I had some self-imposed limits. The single prime lens became a stimulus to think about the photos that I would make in a different way and I came up with some interesting results. In this image the sky was very dramatic and the stump provided a compelling foreground element. With a 14mm lens you can get quite close and by stopping down the aperture to f/11 everything from one metre in front of me out to the horizon was in focus. The light was really helping to make things dramatic and the dynamic range of this Fuji sensor did not let the front of the backlit stump lose detail in the blacks. Below I have included a little gallery of other images I got on and around this stump.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

A small part of a large log that I found on the beach of the Juan de Fuca Trail. Canon EOS XSi EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.4 1/2000 ISO 200My hand runs along the softly weathered cracks, this giant of the forest has somehow come to rest on the rocky shore of the Juan de Fuca Strait. There is a silver light that seems to glow from deep within. It is as though somewhere deep deep inside is a wooden heart that still beats and gives the log a vitality that makes it shine in the dying light of a summer sunset. Years of rocks and waves have pounded the surface so smooth that my hand wants to run along the surface, to find the secret of all those years, to discover a thing through which the wine of life pumped so strongly that it reached towards the very heavens and yet... it fell.

My daughter and I walked the Juan de Fuca Trail a few years ago and we had an absolutely wonderful time together. One night on Chin Beach, after we had set up camp I discovered a very large log with a huge weathered stump attached. The sun was going down and it was lit beautifully. I pulled out my fast 50 because I knew that I wanted to play with depth of field on this amazing piece of wood. I kep my aperture wide open and the light was low enough to manage all that light giving me some wonderfully flowing, almost water-like backgrounds.

-Rusell Berg