Work

A 1930’s era hay rack leans into a prairie morning. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85 at 17mm f/9.5 1/200 ISO 400

Cecil walked slowly from the field.  There was an ache in his shoulders, a special ache that only arrived during haying when 14 hours of pitching bundles up to the rack had slowed him to the point of exhaustion.  He turned and looked back.  The old hay rack was on its last legs and he would have to build a new frame for it.  He looked down and kicked at a clump of dirt in the stubble, it crumbled into dust.  It was very dry again this year.  It was at these times that he felt the weight of the responsibility for his family as heavily as the work that he had just demanded of his shoulders.  This was not going to be an easy year.  Cecil turned again and walked back towards his truck.

I took this photo at a 1930’s haying festival in north eastern Alberta.  The people at this festival demonstrate how their work was done in the ’30’s and I was reminded again of how hard the people who built this country worked.  I grew up on the prairies and my early life was permeated with farm culture.  They are a special breed and I feel honoured to have known many of them.

-Russell Berg

Open Rest

Dramatic prairie sky's darken as a storm breaks over a field of wheat. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 10mm f/9 1/60 ISO 100

My wheels hum down the open highway as the wide prairie spaces open up in front of me.  This place has been called empty but for me it is not empty, it is open.  There is a beauty in the openness that invites you to examine yourself rather than overwhelm you with the ‘other’ that surrounds you.  There is space to breath and think.  The prairies are like the rest between the notes, the pause in the well crafted sentence, the negative space that defines the image.  They are the place where we can understand the rest of our lives because for the moment we can consider the rest of our lives with spaces for the thoughts to breath.

One more from my trip to the prairies.  I went out for a bike ride in the early morning and as I got closer to home the wind started to whip up and the sky started to darken in the south.  I love a dramatic prairie sky over a sunlit wheat field and I went back out with my car to find the right angle under the right sky.  I got this image but I knew that I had to do some work on it.  The sensor on my 7D does not have the dynamic range to cover the variation in light and darkness in the image.  I exposed for the highlights and then went to work on the image in Aperture.  I really liked the ‘U’ shaped ring of dramatic clouds so I emphasized this  by brushing in more contrast to the edges of the ‘U’ where they bordered the softer clouds.  I then darkened the softer clouds in the middle of the frame near the horizon line.  Next was the wheat.  I painted in light with the dodge tool in Aperture and then added saturation to the yellow-greens of the wheat.  I was quite happy with the drama that resulted.

-Russell Berg  

Sunset Over Canola

A beautiful prairie sunset over a field of ripe canola. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 22mm f/5 1/250 ISO 200 -.67EV

I have returned to the prairies and although I love Vancouver Island and it has definitely become home for me there is something very special about the draw of these skies.  There is an openness here, a welcoming in the landscape that doesn’t try to overwhelm you the way that giant forests, towering mountains, or rushing rivers do.  You can simply ‘be’ here and there is a wonderful sense of self that grows in the solitude of those wide open spaces that helps you understand your place in the world.  You can pull in a breath, let it go and you understand a little more.

Getting an image that has a glowing sunset over a foreground that is not completely black can be a challenge and I am not sure that I have completely succeeded here.  I wanted a sweeping landscape that told more of a story than just the beautiful colours of a the sunset.  I wanted a sense of place and space that was evocative of the prairie in a special way.  I exposed for the sunset without letting the foreground canola go completely dark.  This is where the value of a RAW file comes into play.  I was able to use the dodge (lighten) tool in Aperture to paint in a lighter exposure and bring back the detail in the canola flowers.  In my experience it is better to expose for the highlights and then allow the software to pull the detail out of the dark areas of the photo.  They are there but the camera sensor cannot display them without a little help.  I then added a touch of the shadow tool to finish the job and increased the saturation to give the sunset a bit more punch. Below I have included a copy of the same image before I started doing any processing.

-Russell Berg