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

The Pour

A little while back my son asked if I would photograph a coffee shop for a website that he was designing for them.  It was an interesting challenge and I enjoyed the work, the next three blog entries are going to be from that project.  I love to be able to tell a story in a photograph and for me this image goes a long way to telling the story of The Buzz.  There is motion in the image as the coffee is being poured (1).  The lighting is warm and soft and through the steam there is a couple of friends talking in the background (2).  As I was shifting around trying not to appear in reflection in the coffee pot I noticed that I could achieve a position where the stream of coffee appeared to reverse itself and flow up into the cup that is reflected in the pot (3).  I love it that we can see both the outside of the cup and the inside in the reflection.  If you would like to see the website check out The Buzz.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Background Noise

I found this old ship's engine sitting outside a small maritime museum in Cowichan Bay Canon EOS XSi 17-85mm f4.5-5.6 at f/5.6 1/60 55mm ISO 320

The old man's patience was wearing like a the corners of a ragged edge of paper wrapped around a package for too long.  He had been on the water 2 weeks and the young deck hand who he had hired was an idiot.  He could no longer put up with the inane stream of chatter that poured from the between boy's fleshy lips.  The boy didn't talk about anything in particular, the words had become background noise of the kind that runs up and down your spine with all the comfort of a bag of nails wrapped in sandpaper.  This was going to end.  The old man stepped toward the boy and was about to speak when he heard the engine cough, and sputter... and die.

My family and I went to a restaurant in Cowichan Bay one afternoon and we saw a small maritime museum next door.  We went to wander through it and as we left I noticed this very large ship's engine mounted on block outside the entrance.  I know nothing about ship's engines but I loved the heavy industrial look of the machinery and as I moved around it taking more pictures I was looking for just the right angle to eliminate the background and to find dynamic shapes that spoke of movement and power.  I knew right away that this was going to be a black and white image and after I imported it into Nik Silver Efex Pro I processed it, increasing the structure to give it the grainy appearance.

-Russell Berg