I Was Chiefly Speaking of... Flowers

My wife and I went out for a little walk yesterday and a spring walk for a photographer holds all kinds of delights.  The challenge is to find new and interesting ways to present them.  I decided that I wanted to play with large open areas of sky in my compositions To make the flowers a counterpoint to the large blocks of blue colour.  In this image I liked the contrast between the blue block of colour on the left and the dark branches on the right that still hold just the budding promise of the coming spring.  The flowers hold the middle ground in this image.  In Lightroom I increased the structure and the contrast then I took the image into Photoshop and used Content Aware Spot Healing Brush to remove three power lines.  Then I took the image into Viveza and darkened the blue sky on the left. 

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

A canopy of cherry blossoms against a blue sky.  Fuji XE-2 XF 14mm 2.8 at f/6.4 1/400 ISO 400

Hiding

Do you see it?  Yes, there’s a woman asleep on the statue on the bench, that’s what I thought I was taking the picture of, but there’s something else, someone else, look carefully… Sometimes you think you are taking a picture of one thing when later you realize you were really taking a picture of something else.  Did you find it?  If you haven’t seen it take another careful look the next sentence reveals the secret.  Under the tree on the right of the frame a woman is watching the sleeping woman, watching me?  When I took the image I did not see her.  I didn’t see her until I got the image into my computer and then I jumped.    There is something a little disturbing about this shadowy presence at the edge of the frame.  Once I saw her I wanted to increase the shock and surprise when the viewer suddenly does see her so I darkened the area where she is standing under the tree and the green bush behind the sleeping woman.  Then I lightened the sleeping woman and the flowers at both foreground corners.  My hope is that the viewer’s eye will enter the image at one of the corners, be drawn in to the sleeping woman and only see the woman under the tree later.  If you don’t see it right away the surprise is bigger.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Tulips

Spring is such a wonderful time to play with colour.  I saw these tulips in someone else’s garden in Nanaimo and as I got a little closer I noticed the beautiful, striking, red fringe on the edge of the petal.  As I stood there the background was the light purple flowers that you see at the bottom of the frame.  I didn’t like this as much so I got down low and background became dark green foliage that I threw out of focus with a 3.5 aperture.  There was a very distracting light coloured branch above the flower on the far right and I cloned it out but I am still not very good with the clone brush and I feel like you can tell I was messing with it.  I wanted a gradation of tone in the background so I took the image into Viveza and darkened the portion of the background that was above the flowers.  This way the out of focus purple flowers, instead of being a distraction are a part of the background tone transition from light at the bottom to darker at the top with the tulips taking up a very striking intermediary space.

I have another treatment of tulips here and some other flowers here and here.​

www.seeingberg.com

Photographing Glass

Eliminating reflections in glass can be a challenge. Canon EOS 7D 50mm at f/4 1/60 ISO 200

My wife makes stained glass stepping stones and she was looking for a way to market them online so I set out to photograph them. While I wouldn't call product shots high art photography they did provide and interesting challenge. It was a typical dark Nanaimo afternoon and I knew I wanted a bright well lit image to show off the deep rich colours of the glass. I started with a a flash mounted on the camera because I was feeling lazy and hoping that ETTL would give me a nice image. That didn't work, I got huge reflections. I was standing directly over the stones looking down at them so I kept the flash on the camera but bounced the light off of white shoot through umbrella that I placed on the other side of the stone. The umbrella was angled down towards the stone and while this did provide a larger more diffuse light source it did not completely eliminate my reflection issues. Finally I twigged to the idea that the light was bouncing straight back into the lens and that I needed to give it a path that still hit the stone but would not bounce back straight to the lens. I set up an umbrella with a flash in it on either side of the stone so that the main light would hit the glass and bounce off to the side leaving a reflectionless image. It worked. If you want to see more of the images check hit the Stained Glass link at the top of the page

-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