Sunrise Calm

Sunrise in the mist over Sooke Harbour. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 22mm f/7.1 1/500 ISO 200

There is a calm in the morning that speaks more from the still water and the mist on the horizon.  It speaks more than the quiet air and the soft light.  The beginning of the day is the beginning of all things and it is a time of stillness and potential.  The day spreads out before you with all that it may contain but in that moment, in that one moment it does not overwhelm or confound, or confuse, it is just there, waiting for us.

I slept on an old fishing boat this weekend and when I awoke this is what I saw.  It was a beautiful morning that calmed me.  I grabbed my wide angle zoom and looked for an interesting foreground.  I got down low so that the chain would grab your eye in the bottom left hand corner and pull you into the middle distance.  I loved the way that the sun backlit the edges and lines of the boat.  I underexposed the boat to emphasize the back lighting.  I also really liked the fact that their is an eagle sitting on the piling in the middle of the frame.  I did pull out my telephoto and get the eagle next.

-Russell Berg

The Voyage

Group photos don't have to be posed and boring, they should tell an interesting story. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 10mm f/13 1/400 ISO 400The journey always starts with more questions than answers and that is the beauty of it all.  Stepping out your front door and on to the road that leads… well it can lead you anywhere; is a step away from the things that you accept, know and trust and into the unknown.  Travel opens the mind and expands the senses, we see new people, smell new food, experience new lives and we know that we will not return unchanged and that is wonderful.

Finding a way to tell a story with your image can draw people in and make the whole thing more interesting.  The deck of the Coho Ferry that runs between Victoria, BC and Port Angeles, WA is an interesting place for a little group portrait.  I took a few standard photos of people looking out over the deck towards the horizon but they were rather uninteresting and didn’t really have much to say.  Then I noticed the ships lines laid out on the deck.  I laid down with a very wide angle lens, closed down the aperture to keep everything in focus and composed the frame so that the lines lead your eye directly to my friends and family.  Even though you cannot see the ocean the wide angle lens gives a sense of expansiveness that bespeaks the ocean and the movement of your eye as it follows the ropes to the subjects gives the image a dynamic quality.

-Russell Berg