The Look

The idea of shooting a wedding has never really appealed to me, I really dislike posing people and so if I were ever to do it on my own it would have to be done in a very documentary style.  I guess that this picture would best exemplify the style of photography that I like to do at a wedding.  My niece asked me to fill in the gaps where her portrait photographer couldn’t be and this was one of them.  The whole wedding party was waiting downstairs in the church and her groom called to her across the room.  I happened to be ready as she swung her head to look towards him and I got one of my favourite two shots of the 700 or so that I took.  We don’t know who either of these two individuals and yet we understand so much about the moment.  The fact that there really isn’t much identifying information makes the appeal of the image more universal.  The veil and the hairdo tell us this is a wedding, the swinging earring tells us that she has just now turned to look at her lover and even though he is in soft unfocused shadow there is a feeling of nervous anticipation to the image.  I feel as though I was lucky enough to capture what Henri Cartier-Bresson calls “the decisive moment”.  For me if there was one moment that captured the day it was this one.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Benetton

Three friends lie on the deck of a ship talking as the ocean washes by. Konica DiMAGE Z10 20 mm f/3.4 1/640 ISO 64

The deck was only place where air was moving.  The boat moved slowly through the equatorial waters and inside the heat was unbearable.  Even here the humid air clung to your body.  

I was walking on the upper deck of a ferry in Indonesia with a group of my students as we headed out to the jungle to do a service project.  I looked down and saw three friends laying on the deck.  They were in scattered positions and as I watched the came together to produce a very interesting composition.  The open and engaged attitude of the two girls on the left pulls in the girl on the right who appears to be listening.  I really liked the position of the black girl’s hand, in fact the photo really is about their hands rather than their faces

Portrait of Friends

Portrait of friends. Canon XSi EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/4 1/40 ISO 200

They look at each other and a smile is made in the moment between two sentences.  Their smiles begin, pause, and crack into laughter.  They each know the story that the other is remembering without having to acknowledge it with much more than a smile and a tilt of the head.  The friendship was born in sandboxes and sleepovers and now it is something different, something stronger.

I was doing headshots for a couple of young actors and two of them wanted to do a portrait together.  They were clearly good friends and I wanted to pose them in a way that reflected that.  I had the girl on the left lean in and touch heads, that little bit of contact seemed to speak clearly to me of their friendship.  At camera left I had a flash in an umbrella to balance the fill from a large window at camera right.  I was really happy with the way the catch light from the window is reflected in the eye of the girl at left.  They seemed to be suppressing the laughter that rises from the memory of a funny story and I was very happy to be able to capture that moment.

-Russell Berg

At The Centre

Portraits are not something I do often enough even though I really enjoy them, especially with people as intense and expressive as my daughter. EOS Rebel XSi, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f/2, 1/250, ISO 200

We look at the people we love and they look different to us from the others around us.  I think that fathers and their daughters share a special bond that can be so wonderful and complete.  Last winter I did portraits of everyone in my family and this one of my daughter has to be my favourite.  It speaks with an intensity that shimmers off the page, it reveals and conceals, it is full of movement and yet completely frozen.  It hints at a tumble of emotions and perfect calm at the centre.  I set up a black fabric drape in our basement and had one flash operating through a shoot through umbrella to the right of the camera at about a 45 degree angle to my daughter and one flash further back shooting through a small (6” x 4”) portable Aurora light box that Velcro's on to the flash head.  If I remember right the main light shooting through the umbrella was at about 50% power and the other light was at about 25%.  I used a high shutter speed to kill the ambient light which was some incandescent bulbs.  My other daughter was holding a leaf blower to get the hair movement and it worked beautifully.  Afterwards I processed it in NIK Silver Efex Pro which gave me the absolutely beautiful silver in her hair.

-Russell Berg