The Walls Close In

A narrow alleyway in downtown Victoria. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 10mm f/8 1/20 ISO 1250

Victoria, BC has a wonderful old downtown area with some very interesting and narrow alleys.  I stumbled on to this as I was wandering through the city and was struck by the graphic nature of the tight brick walls, the plank ceiling and the bare bulb that hung in the middle.  I used a wide angle lens to emphasize the enclosing feeling of the alley and the shift in perspective almost makes it feel as though the walls wrap around you.  In the original frame the bare bulb light was visible but I cropped it out as the extreme contrast in brightness was distracting.  I also really liked the way that the splashes of light on the walls imply the bulb on the ceiling without us having to see it.  The exposure was also somewhat tricky, it the camera read the exposure off the bright area in the centre all of the walls would have been very close to black.  I used spot metering and took a reading off of the area just this side of the light area and I got a decent exposure.  I am still not entirely happy with how bright the opening is but of course at the end of every tunnel…

-Russell Berg

Poplar

A row of poplar trees on the prairies. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85 f/4-5.6 at 30mm f/5.6 1/125 ISO 200

I was wandering around some fields in northern Alberta when I came across this grove of poplar trees. The strong vertical lines of the trees against the dark background was striking. I took the photo and decided to frame it with a strong horizontal crop. The fact that the photo is horizontal makes your eye pull across the strong vertical lines of the image like a boy running a stick across the slats of a wooden picket fence. There is more energy in the image than if I had framed it with a vertical crop.

The Words Flow

I discovered this person writing in an alley in Victoria. Fuji X10 28mm f/2.8 1/125 ISO 500

An author sits alone.  Sometimes the words flow, they trip over themselves before the ink can form them on the page. The stories tell themselves to the author and he simply writes them down.  Sometimes the blank page mocks, the empty whiteness is scornfull and contemptuous and all of the author's attempts are rebuffed. Sometimes he needs to take a break, sometimes he needs to experience something new, sometimes all he needs is the write space.

I was following my camera around Victoria last weekend and I was taken in by some of the narrow alleys in the older areas of downtown.  I took quite a few photos but I was walking quickly down the street to meet my wife and I happened to glance down this one to my left.  I saw this person sitting in a kind of an alcove in the brick wall with their legs out in the alley as they wrote in a notebook.  I immediately knew that I had a great image if he or she would stay their long enough.  I only had a 10-22mm on my 7D and I snapped off a few but she appeared so far away that I pulled out my X10 and moved in a little closer.  The little Fuji is a perfect street camera, it is small, light, and quiet and most importantly it has that fast f/2.0-2.8 lens.  In post I cropped out the top of the photo as the end of the alley was a filled with very bright, distracting sunlight.  I was very, very pleased with the result.

-Russell Berg