Variations in The Pattern

I was walking along a beach in Panama, looking for interesting patterns and textures to photograph.  I headed out of the resort are to a quieter area where the sand had not been disturbed when I saw this coconut and a large area of undisturbed sand.  There was a culvert up the beach where the runoff from the nearby village found its way to the ocean.  There had just been a large storm (check out this image of the coming storm) and the rushing rain water had pulled the sand into this beautiful textured pattern.  The human eye craves variation within patterns and I felt that I had a pretty good example of that here.  The coconut provides an interesting interruption in the lines in the sand as they pull your from the left foreground to the the right background.  The low point of view, (I was laying on the ground), and the wide angle lens, (10mm), accentuate this movement.  

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Up Into History

In Casco Viejo in Panama City there are many 17th century buildings that are open to the weather and tourists.  The brick walls are very, very thick and have some really interesting textures.  Finding an interesting way to produce and image of them was a bit of a challenge.  I wanted something that would give a sense of their age and permanence, something that would put the viewer in the building.  It was right around noon so the sky was a very washed out light blue so I was thinking B&W right from the beginning.  I walked into a very narrow square room and looked up; the small size of the room made it darker than the open courtyard and the light from the bright sky lightened the window sills providing some contrast with the rest of the room.  When I pulled the image into Nik Silver Efex Pro to do the B&W conversion I increased the texture and this also had the effect of giving the skies an almost surrealistic smooth gray.  I only wish that I had stepped back a little to allow a little of the sky to peak in through the upper window.

-Russell Berg

Casco Viejo

My wife and I were wandering through the old city of Casco Viejo in Panama City and my eye was caught by this old building.  I think the thing that first struck me was the ragged outline of the roof against the skyline.  The overhanging roofs of the neighbouring buildings help to build the sense of compression that the wide angle lens establishes by pulling in the edges of the frame.  After I took the image I pulled it in to Nik HDR Efex Pro.  HDR Efex Pro is a piece of software that is intended to produce HDR like images from a single RAW frame without having to take 3 or more frames.  (If you are interested in HDR check out this tutorial.)  I hadn’t really used HDR Efex before and I was impressed with the results of some of the more subtle treatments.  If pulled out the detail in the overhanging eaves of the neighbouring buildings and and added real punch to the texture of the image.  Below is the image without the HDR Efex treatment.

-Russell Berg