Beginning

The prow points out into the morning mist. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at f/4.5 1/30 ISO 200

A photograph needs contrast to produce an interesting image. There is something special about the contrast of colours and textures. The hard smooth wood (1) of the prow pointing off into the soft vaporous mists (2) is accentuated by the shift in colour from the warm reds and ochres of the cedar (3) to the cool blues and whites of the water and the fog (4). I pushed up the contrast and the saturation values to increase the difference between the two tonal ranges in the photograph.

-Russell Berg

Photographing Glass

Eliminating reflections in glass can be a challenge. Canon EOS 7D 50mm at f/4 1/60 ISO 200

My wife makes stained glass stepping stones and she was looking for a way to market them online so I set out to photograph them. While I wouldn't call product shots high art photography they did provide and interesting challenge. It was a typical dark Nanaimo afternoon and I knew I wanted a bright well lit image to show off the deep rich colours of the glass. I started with a a flash mounted on the camera because I was feeling lazy and hoping that ETTL would give me a nice image. That didn't work, I got huge reflections. I was standing directly over the stones looking down at them so I kept the flash on the camera but bounced the light off of white shoot through umbrella that I placed on the other side of the stone. The umbrella was angled down towards the stone and while this did provide a larger more diffuse light source it did not completely eliminate my reflection issues. Finally I twigged to the idea that the light was bouncing straight back into the lens and that I needed to give it a path that still hit the stone but would not bounce back straight to the lens. I set up an umbrella with a flash in it on either side of the stone so that the main light would hit the glass and bounce off to the side leaving a reflectionless image. It worked. If you want to see more of the images check hit the Stained Glass link at the top of the page

-Russell Berg

A River In The Wood

A river of wood flows through the frame. Canon EOS XSi EF 50mm at f/4 1/3000 ISO 200

There is a river that runs through the wood.  The water is quiet and the eddy’s move slowly but the water speaks deep truths in the warm silence of a sunny evening.  The water is locked in the grain of the wood and the stillness that is there runs deep beneath the surface.  I run my hands over the wood and I can feel the age that rests there.

I found this rather large and impressive stump on a remote beach on the Juan de Fuca trail and I spent much of the evening photographing it.  The texture of the wood, the silvery colour, the way that the grain had been exposed in flowing cracks that seemed to live and breath were all very compelling to me.  This was a remarkable piece of wood and it was very special to be able to photograph it.  There were several places where the structure and grain of the wood seemed to flow like water and I wanted to photograph it with that kind of feeling to it.  I wanted an isolating depth of field but one that was open enough to allow the viewer to get a good look at the grain so I settled on f/4.

-Russell Berg

Oranges In The Light

A high key still life of oranges and pomegranates. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85mm at 65mm f/6.3 1.250

There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.

-Edouard Manet

I have always liked the effect of producing high key still life images and I wanted to try and produce one myself.  I set up a white background on our kitchen table and pulled out some fruit and a white plate.   I started with setting up a manual exposure on the camera that would eliminate all ambient light.  Basically I took pictures without flash and reduced the exposure until the picture was almost black, this indicates that there is no ambient light hitting the sensor.  Then I started to add flash.  In order to make the background disappear. I had to put a significant amount of light on it.  The background itself was not pure white, it was an off-white linen kind of material I increased the power on the flash until the background turned pure white and the texture disappeared.  Then I added another flash below the camera pointing directly at the fruit.  I had a small fabric lightbox on this flash and I increased the power until I got nice highlights from the orange.  Overall I was pretty happy but I would like to have been able to eliminate the shadows in the foreground.

-Russell Berg

Death

A piece of decaying drift wood on the shores of the Juan de Fuca Strait. Canon XSi EF 50mm at f/1.4 1/4000 ISO 200 -1 ev

I was hiking along the Juan de Fuca strait with my daughter and we had camped for the night when I came upon this piece of driftwood.  The texture of the wood as it had decayed in such a remarkable pattern was what interested me and I wanted a photograph that pulled your eye in to that.  I chose my fast 50mm and opened it right up to f/1.4 to created a very small plane of focus.  I got what I wanted but I knew that I would want to do more when I got the image back home.   I opened it up in Nik Silver Efex Pro and converted it to black and white and applied a vignette to completely black out the distracting background.  Not only does this force the eye to focus on the central subject but it also helps to set the mood of the photo.

-Russell Berg