Sunlight In Her Hair

The sunlight plays through her hair and dances in the whisps that have pulled out of her braids.  She has a whole wide world in front of her and it has suddenly gotten much larger.  Her mind is reaching for and pulling in all of the new things that dance into her field of view but no one thing can hold her for long there is too much.  Then, without warning, she stops, she just stops and thinks, and walks.

A few summers ago I followed my niece around as she played on Long Beach on Vancouver Island.  She is from the prairies and everything to do with the ocean was exciting for her; she was a whirlwind of activity; running to see something new, playing in the sand then up and running again.  I got quite a few good images of her in motion but for a moment she moved slowly away from me and looked down, her hands behind her back.  Her brilliant blonde hair stood out against the blue sky and she was for a moment, still and alone on the wide wide beach.  Sticking with a subject can really pay off, I got some pretty good images of her running and moving but this photo seemed to me to have more to say, she dominates the frame but is at the same so very small and seems to have something very serious on her mind.  Finding the instances in time where the image is evocative of all of these things is the photographer’s challenge.

-Russell Berg

There is  another portrait of one of my other niece's here.​

Games With String

A little girl plays with string. Canon EOS XSi EF 50mm at f/3.5 1/80 ISO 200 −1ev

She leans back in the desk, a little mind filled with big ideas.  Her hands move quickly and without thought, cycling through the patterns and  movements of the cradle.  All the while her mind circles around and around.  She is lost in places I can never see, worlds I will never visit and the string is just a tool to keep her hands busy while her mind travels.

I spent some time with my brothers and their families last summer and a few of my nieces were using string to play ‘cats in the cradle’.  We all went to a museum together on a very hot day and this little girl sat down in a desk and leaned back.  I was immediately struck by the way that she was absently playing with the string while her eyes were a million miles away.  I watched for a moment and waited for her to turn her eye towards me.  When she did I snapped the picture.  There are moments for a person where we really get to see who they are.  Sometimes they are hidden in a momentary glance, they are fleeting; they are there and then gone but the camera sees them in a way that nothing else does.   

-Russell Berg

That Peculiar Silence

A headshot that I took of an intense young actor with remarkable blue eyes. Canon EOS 7D 50mm f/1.4 at f/5.6 1/200 ISO 400The young actor steps into the light.  She feels the warmth of it touch her cheeks, she feels the boards under her feet, she hears that peculiar silence of 200 pairs of eyes watching her, and she feels their anticipation.  The theatre is old and battered, a thousand different actors have walked these same boards and felt these same things.  She can feel their eyes watching her too.  She takes two steps to the right, downstage centre right, and breathes deep and slow.  It is time... to tell her story.

I teach theatre and I always take headshots of my actors as we prepare to perform.  I knew that I wanted to do something to accentuate the red hair and blue eye of this young lady.  I felt like putting her in a pose that was looking up at me, partially through her hair would draw the viewers eye in dramatically.  I was using two off camera flashes using Cactus V4 radio triggers to light her.  The key, at camera right, was in a shoot-through umbrella and was at a slightly higher power than the one at camera left.  I wanted fairly even light but this did produce a small amount of shadow.  Both lights were set low enough and the background was far enough back so that it went to full black.  I also made a slight increase to the saturation levels of her eyes and hair in Aperture.

-Russell Berg

Below is the picture I took just before the image above.  I feel like the two of them tell a bit of a story.

The Open Spaces

My daughter, sitting in the sunset at Neck Point. Canon EOS 7D EFS 17-85 f4-5.6 at f4 1/8000 70mmThe sun hits the water like mercury on broken glass and spills around her.  The breeze lifts her hair and sets it down and it catches that quicksilver light as well.  The great open spaces threaten to loose her in their vastness but there she sits, calm, thoughtful, and alone.  A strong young woman able to see the world around her.  The mountains stretch out and fade into the mists and the distances call to her.  These are the places and times when great journies begin.  Whether they be journies of the mind or of the the road we do not know yet but soon one step follows another.

My daughter and I went out to catch a summer sunset at Neck Point in Nanaimo.  We both love this spot and I almost always get a decent photo when I am out there.  She walked off while I was photographing some rocks and few minutes later I looked up to see where she was.  I was immediately struck by how small she looked but how dominant a presence she seemed.  I wanted to emphasize the large spaces so slid her over to the left of the frame.  I had noticed that on the right side of course we had the sunset on the water but the hill background also provided some visual weight, a counter to the presence of my daughter and the rock she is sitting on, pulling your eye into the image.

-Russell Berg

Faster This Time!

I thought that a shoe was an interesting place to put your cookie while waiting for the zip line. Canon EOS 7D EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/3.2 1/640 ISO 100The little girl runs to the the zip line again.  She grips the handles with a fierce determination and wild smile.  I reach up to steady her and she smiles down at me.  "Faster this time!" and she giggles.  My hand in the small of her back I push her and she flies down the length of the contraption, her strawberry blonde hair a fiery trail in the mid-morning sun.  It is all freedom, and laughter, flying and exhiliration but this time she has... a cookie

I swear to you I did not pose this picture.  I was out in a park with family friends and I was pushing their daughters on the zip line.  Somehow taking off their shoes made them fly faster.  They were enjoying it with the abandon that only children can and at one point they got a cookie from their mom as they ran back to the platform.  What to do? they weren't going to stop going on the zip line to eat.  They could eat on the platform while they waited for their turn and of course the shoe was a perfect place to store their cookies.  I felt like this photo captured the joy and innocence and abandon of a child at play.

-Russell Berg