Dancer In The Mist

This morning the fog was burning through a beautiful mist that hung over the water and it reminded me of this picture.  Joe McNally has said that if you put a dancer against almost any background and you will have a good photograph.  This summer when I was over in Tofino I was on the beach and I was feeling a bit sorry for myself because I had made the drive over the island in the early morning specifically to photograph in the morning light.  There was a thick cover of fog and there wasn’t any morning light.  I did get some decent pictures of Black Oyster Catchers but then this couple came by.  One of them clearly was a dancer, she moved with the grace and poise that only dancers posses and then she started to dance.  It was a truly beautiful thing to watch her dancing through the morning mists across the beach and I was so glad that I had gotten the “bad light”. 

Two other beach portraits that I have done

Grandpa Look!

Lovers

-Russell Berg 

www.seeingberg.com

The Sun

I hurried out to Neck Point on a May evening to catch the sunset.  I hurried around to a position so that I would be looking west over the water and discovered that I had a very striking background to a silhouette of some people who had also come out to watch the same sunset.  I snapped off a few quick ones and saw that the atmospheric conditions were giving a beautiful golden yellow glow to my pictures.  I began to watch for an interesting foreground moment with the people who were out in front watching the sun go down.  I was a long ways back so I wasn’t worried about them seeing me losing the natural body language of the moment but there was a sign in the way that kept getting into the frame.  I shifted around and finally the people moved off to the left.  I took quite a few pictures but there were two other moments that I really liked; the man and woman in the frame above sat at a picnic table and she leaned in towards him, (left), I really liked the body language in that moment.  The other one was of a group of younger people; they were standing and talking and watching and the sun caught very nicely in their hair, (bottom left).  In the end I liked the hopeful nature of the man standing, putting both his hands over his eyes and staring out into the sunset and the counterbalance on the left side of the frame that the silhouette of the tree provides.  The last element that really made the decision for me was the fact that I had closed down my aperture and produced a depth of field that produced a sharp foreground and maintained focus on the sunset.  The photo is really about the sun so having it dominate was pretty important.  A few minutes later I got a non-silhouetted image of two people watching the sunset, and, each other.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

The Art

When I took this photo I was focused on the design that the barista had produced.  I was trying to underexpose it to make the background less obvious and distracting but when I got it into Aperture I realized that I had a chance to make the background black.  I opened the image in Nik Viveza, (Viveza is the colour version of Nik Silver Efex) and began to work to darken the image.  The Nik image editing suite is an amazing piece of software that is so easy to use and yet is very versatile.  You set a circle that you determine the size of down on the image and whichever tones are under the centre of the circle will be affected by the controls that you set.  Even if there are other tones/colours under the circle they will not be affected by your changes.  It really works wonderfully and you don’t end up with hard edges as so often happens when you use brushes to edit a photo.  I worked my way around the cup until I had only the rim and the coffee floating in a pool of blackness.

For other photos from the coffee shop shoot check here and here. 

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Silhouette

I was wandering around the USGP race course at Bend Oregon I was getting down on the ground because the low angle makes the riders appear more heroic when I noticed the tree and the dramatic sky in the background.  Every camera I have, even my compact carry around camera, has a quick, manual adjustment for exposure control.  Most cameras will over expose the sky so I almost always shoot ⅔ to 1 full stop under when it is a bright sunny day.  In this case I realized that I could produce a pretty nice silhouette with a beautiful sky behind the rider.  I underexposed 1 full stop and took a few shots as the next riders came by.  I noticed the lines that the vapour trail (1) and the clouds (2) were making as they drew the eye towards the rider.  I took a few exposures with the rider dead centre but you couldn’t tell what was going on with the tree in the background.  It might have been nice to have only the rider on the horizon but I couldn’t find a spot where I could get that shot and I like the fact that the rider is taller than the tree giving him a stronger position in the frame.  As well the tree gives us a sense of place.

-Russell Berg

Into The Sun

A Great Blue Heron at Neck Point, Nanaimo flies off into the sun. Canon EOS 7D EF 70-300mm at 244mm f/11 1/200 ISO 100The great rush of air on the first downbeat of the wings pushes out past me as the heron lifts off.  It is a large gangly thing that it seems should not fly... until you see it in the air.  Then it is all grace and power full of life that not just lives in the air but belongs there.  Everything about it from the curve of its wing to the arc in its neck speaks of a supple elegance that belongs in the skies. 

This morning I went off to Neck Point with my notebook and my camera.  I could feel the day’s heat beginning to rise as I walked along the shore.    A lady who was walking by pointed out a heron standing  just off shore.  The sun was was already getting high and the light wasn’t great so I decided to expose for a silhouette instead of trying to get a standard exposure.  I needed a small aperture to put the bird into silhouette but I also wanted the sun sparkling on the water to go out of focus.  Fortunately the depth of field on a long telephoto lens is far more limited than on a wide angle so even at f/11 I got a sparkly out of focus glow from the water.  The tendency of a long lens to compress distances in the image also makes it look as though the water is rising up in the background. I was inspired to produce this image by an ebook which I am currently reading.  It is called "Finding Focus" and it is an excellent discussion of focus, depth of field, and the impact of focal length on your images.  Nicole Young writes it and she does excellent work; it is only $5.00 and there is huge value there. 

-Russell Berg