Eyes

When I came across these two young ladies and their very beautiful, striking eyes I knew that I wanted to do a portrait of the pair of them.  I wanted that portrait to be focused, with a laser like intensity on their eyes.  I also wanted both of their eyes to be in the same image and I wanted the viewers experience of the image to be dominated by their eyes.  Taking a portrait this close up means that the lighting has to be done carefully or the reflection coming back at you will be distracting.  I could have done it with natural light, I had a window right nearby but I wanted a dramatic intensity to the light that would punch up the image.  I had discovered a very cheap way to convert an off camera flash into a pretty decent ring light by a company called DIY Lighting Kits.  It’s kind of a folding plastic contraption that captures the light from your flash and reflects it outward in a ring.  I put the camera’s lens through the middle of the ring flash, dialled in the exposure manually to darken the background and shot away.  I wanted a dramatic intense look so I upped contrast and saturation in the eyes.  You have to be careful when doing this as you can really ruin the skin tone if you take it too far.  Viveza by Nik allows you to focus your adjustments on small areas, (like the blue of their eyes), and not ruin the rest of your image.  I also added a vignette to further darken the edges of the photograph.  

For a different lighting setup of another closeup portrait check out this image.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

I also did a black and white version but settled on the colour because of the striking blue grey in both their eyes that has such a different character in each of them.

The only issue that I have is that I did not adjust the model on the bottom so that she was straight on to me.  Her head is very slightly tilted to her left and I wish that I had noticed this when I did the portraits.

Focus

Backstage there is a whirling tornado of exhaustion, outrageous energy, and frayed nerves.  Some of them look as though they are about to come apart at the seams, some of them look as though they are about to throw up.  For many of them it is the first time and they will step out on to the boards and the light will hit them and three-hundred pairs of eyes will watch.  There are always the questions, do I know it well enough? will I hit that high G? can I time my jump just right? But in the middle of it all these two find the calm, gentle centre of themselves and they know.  They know that they are ready, they know can sing like angels and dance like demons, they know because they see it there in the other’s eyes.

I direct theatre at the school where I teach and last year as we were about to go on stage for the opening night of our big musical I caught sight of these two backstage.  They are sisters and they were quietly speaking to each other, foreheads touching, a look of intense focus and concentration on each of their eyes.  I knew I wanted the image to include both of them so I snapped off a shot over the should of one and into the eyes of the other.  I knew one image wouldn’t tell the whole story though so I slid around to the other side and took a similar image of the other sister.  Both of the girls have very striking blonde hair so I knew that I wanted a high key image so I gave it that kind of treatment in Nik Silver Efex Pro and then toned down the effect in hair of the girl on the right so that I could get back the detail.  The images work well together, producing a mirror image study of concentration and focus.

-Russell Berg

For more portraits of young actors check here, here, and here.​

Through a Glass Darkly

A gorilla stares intently in the Seattle Zoo. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 75-300mm f/4-5.6 at 250mm f/5.6 1/45 ISO 800

His eyes stare out intently, not at me, not at someone else but out into the middle distance.  Out to the place in his hindbrain where the pack lived in lush tree covered hillsides.  Out to the place where his father was king and his family moved in freedom.  It is a dimly remembered reflection seen through a glass darkly but it is there, deep down in his DNA every cell in his body reminding him of what he could be.

Visiting a zoo is interesting and exciting but always a little sad.  The people who run the Seattle Zoo do a very good job at producing interesting and stimulating enclosures for the animals but still…  I wanted a photo that captured this tension and when I saw this gorilla I hoped I might catch it.  The zoo has thick glass windows that look into the gorilla’s den and this always produces issues of reflection and dirt on the glass.  The other concern was that it was quite dark in the area where I was shooting but there was just enough light for my lens to capture even thought the maximum aperture was only f/5.6.  After I got the image home I cloned out the reflections and dirt on the glass in Aperture.  Luckily these where mainly in the side of the photo that I wanted to go dark.  I  then exported into Nik Silver Efex Pro and darkened the left side of the photo.  I was really happy with the way that the texture of the skin came through and the way that the his face is in the borderland between dark and light.  It adds to the tension in the image of a wild thing not living in a place where he belongs. 

-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.

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