Watch The Artist

The streets of downtown Vancouver, well any city really, are a wonderful source of some very interesting photographs.  This gentleman was doing chalk/pastel art on the sidewalk.  At first I was so enamoured with what he was doing that I was mainly taking photographs of his art work.  But yesterday as I was going through my edits of this shoot I realized that the better, the more compelling, human photograph was one that focused directly on the artist.  There was an intensity in his face and a light touch in his fingers as he worked his art.  Editing, selecting your best pictures out of your good pictures is a huge part of the becoming a good photographer.  The picture at left is the picture I chose first and eventually rejected as the best in this lot.  Let me know if you think I’ve made a mistake.  I really like the fact that this image is at eye level with the artist, I had to watch for traffic, get out in the street, squat down low and grab the image.  The only thing I am unhappy with in this frame is the over-exposed skin of the woman to the artist’s right.  It is too bright and distracting.

-Russell Berg

Little Boy Lost

The little boy is lost.  He has not lost his way, he has not lost his mother, but he is lost.  Lost in a world far outside the one in which he inhabits and deep inside one in which he has created.  The flow of his imagination is like a river that moves through and over and around him.  Everything that he sees, hears and touches is part of his world and it is perfect.

Getting a decent photograph of a child happens all the time.  There small forms, bright eyes, and unguarded expressions are very photogenic but you have to work a little harder to get a photograph that helps to define who this little person is and what childhood is about.  I saw this little boy playing on a sidewalk with his tractors and there was something so intent, so purposeful about what he was doing that I got down on the ground and watched him for a while.  I was using a telephoto lens so I could sit a ways back and watch him without him noticing.  Getting down low is really important when photographing children.  So many photos of children are taken from adult height but getting down on the ground puts the viewer in the child’s world.  I sat and watched and waited for the right moment, then he started to get up and squatted back down almost folding himself in half to look down into the tractor on the right and I fired away.  I love the way that this little boy is so intent on the story in his head that he is bends almost in half to see what the imaginary little man in the tractor is doing.  It felt to me like a perfect little moment of childhood.

-Russell Berg

The Banjo King

A lonely busker sits on the street, plucking at his banjo. Fuji X10 28mm f/2.8 1/1000 ISO 200

There is something that rises inside of him and pushes against the inside of his skull.  It is almost an ache, a presence there in his brain that is only relieved when his fingers are moving, when the sound comes and the vibrations pulse.  Music sits deep inside him and it must find an exit.  This creative impulse is at the centre of himself and it must needs find a way out.

Sometimes getting a good picture is simply a matter of having a camera with you.  I was driving around Victoria and stopped at a light.  I looked over to my left and saw this guy sitting on the sidewalk.  I grabbed my X10 out of my purse and quickly snapped off an image.  I wanted to put him off centre and to have a large empty space in the sidewalk so I composed and snapped before the light changed.  The amount of thought and planning I put into the image was minimal but having my camera with me and ready to go made the image possible.

-Russell Berg