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.

Goodbye Love

Mark: Mimi still loves Roger.  Is Roger really jealous or afraid that Mimi's weak

Roger: Mimi did look pale

Mark: Mimi's gotten thin.  Mimi's running out of time. Roger's running out the door--

Roger: No more! Oh no! I've gotta go.

Mark: Hey! For someone who's always been let down who's heading out of town?

Roger:  For someone who longs for a community of his own, who's with his camera, alone?  I'll call. I hate the fall.  (Mimi enters) You heard?

Mimi:  Every word. You don't want baggage without lifetime guarantees. You don't want to watch me die?  I just came to say goodbye love, goodbye love

If you'd like to see how part of the scene turned out check it out here.  James Dean as Roger, Kody Dennison as Mark, and Micalla Wallace as Mimi

If you would like to see more portraits that I have done of my actors check here, here, here, and here

My theatre club did a production of RENT this year and as we cast the show I wanted a Mimi that was able to express a fragility and vulnerability beneath a thin crust of self-confidence.  This young actor quickly found this in her work with the character and I feel like this photograph captures that.  Mimi is watching from the background as Roger, the man she is in love with, explains to his friend why he can’t be around her, why he can’t watch her die. (Mimi has AIDS.)  Mimi is trapped by her health, trapped by her relationship with Roger, trapped by her addictions, and trapped by her poverty.  As she enters the stage near the end of the musical she sees the last of her hope whither up and float away in the autumn wind.  We put her at the back of the stage to hear Roger’s last words about her where the metaphorical bars of her existence are made real in the bars of the scaffolding.  Probably, there were very few people in the audience who saw her standing there in the background but for me this image, and the character that this actor brings to it, encapsulates everything about who Mimi is.  I shot it in very low light so it was very grainy and unattractive as a colour image so I imported it into Silver Efex Pro and as a grainy B&W it had exactly the kind of gritty intensity that fit the scene.

-Russell Berg

Into The Distance

Ogden Point in Victoria is a large breakwater designed to protect the port in Victoria but it has a large walkway paved on to the top of it.  There are no railings or other distracting visual elements except for a lighthouse positioned at the far end.  It makes for an interesting compositional element and I decided to use it as a context for a portrait of my daughter.  I got right down on the ground and the relatively wide angle of the lens stretched the pat almost all the way across the bottom of the frame.  The path quickly narrows of to the vanishing point, pulling your eye into the frame.  I thought about perhaps removing the person in the white jacket from the picture but I like the way that they give a sense of size and perspective.  Without the tiny people far out on the path your eye would not have a way to understand the distances that are involved.

I did another very different portrait at Ogden Point that used the breakwater in a very different yet equally striking way.  You can see it here.​

www.seeingberg.com

Sunlight In Her Hair

The sunlight plays through her hair and dances in the whisps that have pulled out of her braids.  She has a whole wide world in front of her and it has suddenly gotten much larger.  Her mind is reaching for and pulling in all of the new things that dance into her field of view but no one thing can hold her for long there is too much.  Then, without warning, she stops, she just stops and thinks, and walks.

A few summers ago I followed my niece around as she played on Long Beach on Vancouver Island.  She is from the prairies and everything to do with the ocean was exciting for her; she was a whirlwind of activity; running to see something new, playing in the sand then up and running again.  I got quite a few good images of her in motion but for a moment she moved slowly away from me and looked down, her hands behind her back.  Her brilliant blonde hair stood out against the blue sky and she was for a moment, still and alone on the wide wide beach.  Sticking with a subject can really pay off, I got some pretty good images of her running and moving but this photo seemed to me to have more to say, she dominates the frame but is at the same so very small and seems to have something very serious on her mind.  Finding the instances in time where the image is evocative of all of these things is the photographer’s challenge.

-Russell Berg

There is  another portrait of one of my other niece's here.​

Grandpa Look

Her grandfather walks the beach with her.  This is not a little stroll to water’s edge to watch her swim kind of walk.  They walk for kilometres down the beach. He walks, she sprints ahead, she finds something absolutely enthralling in the sand and stops to dig it out; he walks.  She runs ahead to try and chase the sand pipers; he walks.  She is a like a rubber band that is attached to him; first stretching far out behind, then shooting back to him.  It is a relationship that is characterized by love and trust but with enough freedom to breathe.

Sometimes it takes more than one image to tell the story.  I saw these two walking on the beach in Panama and I loved what appeared to be the casual yet clearly close nature of their relationship.  I wanted illustrate this relationship and I felt that I couldn’t really do that with just a single image.  The whole thing was too much to squeeze into one image or at least I am not a good enough photographer to see a way to do that.  So I settled on a little triptych that would work together to tell the story.

-Russell Berg