Reaching

I love my 10-22mm lens.  I have found it to be very versatile.  If you can get very close it can provide some dramatic sports photographs and can it ever pull a lot into the frame if you don’t have much space.  Here I was standing in a very crowded parking lot near the Seattle Steam Company.  It was the middle of the summer tourist rush and this factory is right below the Pike Place Market so there was no way that I was going to be able to wait until the parking lot emptied.  My 10-22 allowed me to walk right to the edge of the parking lot and still get everything the whole building in the frame.  I like the way that the lens pushes the smokestacks so that they almost appear to converge out of the complicated shapes and lines of the factory below.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

A Hum Under My Feet

I found the contrast between the lines of the building in the background and curves in the foreground to be very interesting. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 at 35mm f/19 1/350 ISO 1600

Their is a hum under my feet. I can feel it, just barely, emerging from the pavements and steel pipes that run under the surface. There is a life to the city that just doesn't exist anywhere else. All of those people living and working and dreaming together in one place brings an energy and a focus that is difficult to replicate. You feel was though more of your future is possible.

I was walking around Seattle and I looked up. I saw this very interesting drain pipe/flower container, not sure what it is, hanging on the wall. I was looking straight up at it and trying to see how it would become an interesting image. It wasn't coming to me until I shifted around to the side and the building in the background came into view. That building was such an interesting combination of angles and lines and the contrast with the curves of the pipes brought everything together. The camera removes the third dimension and as photographers we sometimes bemoan that fact but it can be used to your advantage. Here the compression of the image into one plane makes the contrast of the shapes much stronger.