Korakas

On the Turkish side the refugees are given rushed instructions as they huddle in a circle.  There are 47 of them, children, men and women and they strain to hear every word that the smuggler is telling them.  They know that this information might be the difference between survival and drowning.   Their nerves are jangling, everyone is on edge and you can smell the fear.  Most of these people have never been in a boat and they are about to attempt a crossing of the strait between Turkey and Greece in a dinghy.  The wind is whipping and white caps are starting to form.  “It is ok,” the smugglers say, “It will be harder for the Turks to see you.”  The darkness is complete and they get the signal.  They stumble over one another on the rocks to get into the dinghy until they are jammed in so tightly that it is difficult even to turn and look behind.  They are shoved off from shore and the motor sputters to light.  “Aim for the light!  You will be safe.”  The dinghy is sitting perilously low in the water and soon the tops of the waves are coming into the the boat.  

This is a fictional reimagining of some of the stories I heard in Skala.

The light, however, is not safety.  On the sea lights indicate hazards but these are not mariners and all they have is that little bit of information.  Over the last three years thousands of boats have made for that light and when they got there they found that there, within 50m of the Greek shore they were in the worst danger of the trip.  Untold numbers of refugees have made for the light only to have their boats break up or be torn to pieces in the last 50m of a trip that has taken them 2 years to complete.  I wanted a photograph that expressed this danger, this last great injustice for people who are running for their lives.  There are wrecked boats all up and down the north coast of Lesvos.  These ones are on Karakos.  Refugee Rescue works to make those last 50m safe and I am honoured to work alongside.

Two Greek fishermen at work in the evening off Korakas.  The rocks that are visible are not even the most dangerous ones.  There are several treacherous rocks just below the surface of the water right in front of the light house.  These are the ones that have done so much damage.

Ancient Steps

Ancient steps overgrown with trees leading up to what was a residence. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85 at 24mm f/9 1/160 ISO 100 −1ev

Blackstone

Wet rocks shining in the sun. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 70-300mm at 70mm f/11 1/100 ISO 125

It seems that many of the photos that have ended up on this blog have been taken at Neck Point.  It is a compelling place with some very interesting geography.  On the beach there is a sloping expanse of small black pebbles that get covered with water at least once a day.  On this day as I arrived in the morning someone had been out ahead of me and I was struck by the strongly graphic image that was presented by their foot-steps.  I knew this image would be best in black and white and when I processed it in Nik Silver Effects Pro I increased the structure and contrast to bring up to make the rocks really shine.

-Russell Berg

Blue Lake

A cold mountain lake near Banff. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 16mm f/9 1/160 ISO 100

She stands in the water knee deep and alone, staring off into a landscape that is overwhelming in its beauty.  The cold is seeping into her skin, slowing her blood and making her bones ache.  It is the kind of cold that takes your breath away, the kind of cold that slows movement at your joints and gives you a headache.  Tomorrow morning, before the mists have been burned away by the rising sun she will swim this lake.

My daughter raced in a triathlon in Banff and this was the lake where the swim portion of the course place in.  The lake was glacier fed and very cold so I wanted to produce an image that expressed how cold the lake was.  First I cropped the image down to produce a more symmetrical tree line at both edges of the frame.  I wanted the highest point of the tree lines to be very near the edge of the frame so both sides of the image pull down and in towards the mountain in the background.  I also adjusted the crop in the foreground to place the first rock in the very bottom right corner of the frame.  These almost completely black shapes pull your eye into the image from the bottom right an out to the mountain in the background.  The image of the mountain happens at the intersection of three curves all of which pull your eye in to the centre.  This was taken on a bright sunny day so to get the cold feeling I converted to black and white in  Nik Silver Efex Pro and then reduced the exposure to darken it and added a cross process in Aperture that introduced the blue tint.

-Russell Berg

Mountain Ridge

Dramatic Rocky Mountain ridge near Banff, AB. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 12mm f/11 1/320 ISO 100

The great rocks reach out and pull us in even while they dominate our senses and produce in us a kind of fear tinged with awe.  We stand before them and we know that our mortality is a certain thing and yet our will to live, to experience them, just to stand and see them is so strong. 

Finding a way to present a photograph of a mountain that is not tired and cliche can be a challenge.  For landscape photographers they present an irresistible draw so finding a way to stand out from the millions of mountain photographs is difficult.  When I saw this mountain ridge near Banff on a sunny afternoon I knew that I wanted a very high contrast black and white image with an almost black sky and a black foreground.  I underexposed by one stop to darken the sky and took the image.   I used a very wide angle, 12mm, to allow the range to spread out through the frame, giving the ridge lots of length instead of the traditional towering height that mountains often get in landscape photography.  The image is made more dynamic by the strong visual weight on the left of the photograph and it pulls your eye to the right as the ridge diminishes into the distance.  I brought the image into Nik Silver Efex Pro and applied a high contrast under-exeposed filter to it.  This produced the black skies and the silver mountains that appear almost to float.  Below is the unprocessed colour version of the photograph and you can see how much more dramatic, how much more powerful the image is in black and white.

-Russell Berg

Below is a more tradition composition of the same mountain with it rising higher in the frame.  I feel that the first image with it’s space to breathe and the way it pulls your eye through the frame is a much more powerful photograph.

Mountains rising out of the plain near Banff. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 22mm f/10 11/250 ISO 100