Bloom

Hosta's in bloom. Canon EOS XSi EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.4 1/750 ISO 800

The sunlight hits the green and filters down to that secret place at the base of the plant.  In that place where the smell of the good earth is rich and dark the light has a character and quality that whispers of life and growth.  It is a special place.

Getting a 50mm lens with a short depth of field can instantly transform your photography.  It will set you apart from the point and shoot crowd right away.  This is the first photo that I took with my 50mm f/1.4.  The short depth of field turns the background into a beautiful blur that focuses the eye where the photographer chooses.  The colours here are more subtle but the light splashes of purple make a wonderful counterpoint to deep rich green.

-Russell Berg

Life Finds A Way

Finding plants grow inside a water boiler was very neat. Canon EOS XSi EF-s 17-85mm f/4-5.6 at f/8 1/10 85mm ISO 800The last occupant of the hotel was an quiet man.  He had walked slowly through the front doors and paused with an appraising look up at the ceilings and down and around the lobby.  He picked up his valise and walked deliberately towards the front desk.  This was clearly not the first journey that he had taken, his coat was neat but worn, the leather valise bore the scars of a hundred different train carriages and had been set down on a hundred different platforms.  The mans hand stroked his beard thoughtfully, he knew that the hotel was closing soon, he didn't realize that he was to be the very last guest.  He nodded as he approached the clerk saying, "Hello, I need a room... I'd like to have a bath drawn."

My daughter and I were travelling across BC and Alberta and we spent the night in a campground in Glacier National Park.  We went exploring after supper and came across the ruins of an old hotel that had been built before the turn of the century as the railway had pushed through that area.  The Glacier House hotel had once been bigger and more luxurious than the Lake Louise or Banff.  The ruins were quite extensive and we found some old water boilers laying on the ground.  I took some photos and then circled around to the end.  One of them had a top that had rusted out and deep down inside of there was a little niche with some moss and some plants growing inside.  Sun could shine down through and rain as well.  I could see through the pipes that heated the water down to the plants and way down there the sun was shining on this little clump of life that had found a way to flourish in this very strange place.  I made sure I was focussin on the plants and let the depth of field blur out the edge of the boiler.  It was a very neat little find.

-Russell Berg

Below is a wider shot of the boiler.  I did not Photoshop the plants into the shot.  They were right there.

Tasting Green

The textures and character of this green leaf leapt out at me. EOS 7D, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f/2.5 1/250, ISO 110, Lumopro flash at 1/32 power

I have often wondered what a blind person’s ideas about colour might be.  How do you tell someone who has been blind from birth what green is.  I had a friend who became blind as an adult due to a car accident.  She told me that when she needed to remind herself what green was she would eat an avocado.  When I made this picture I wanted the same kind of intense green feeling that biting into an avocado would give you.  That, and the texture of the leaf needed to be explored.  I took this picture in Victoria, BC on a kind of overcast, grey day and I could see that the texture was there but I didn’t feel like it would come through in a photograph without some special treatment.  I put a flash on the ground below the leaf and used Cactus brand wireless trigger to fire it.  I had to experiment with the power a little bit to get the exposure right but eventually the green just leapt off of my LCD screen and I could see the light of the flash pushing through the veins in the plant illuminating all of that glorious complexity.

-Russell Berg