Dark Arch

She stands in the corner, waiting with her children.  The darkness of the twilight is beginning to press down upon them and although it is still very warm outside a chill runs up her back and she pulls the children a little closer.  Her man is out on the battlements, he is not a soldier, he is a tailor, but there he is, when the pirates come everyone is a soldier and she wonders if the night will leave her a widow.  The wind starts to pick up and she can hear the flags start to snap in the breeze.  The sound is distinct, too loud, and then she realizes that it is no longer the flags she is hearing but the crack of muskets.  The battle has begun.

Establishing mood and and emotional tone within an image can be a tenuous thing that is difficult to grab in the moment in which the image is taken.  Often this is easier to manage in post as the light and circumstances of the shot may not suit the story that you are trying to tell with the image.  This picture was taken right around midday, on a blazing hot day but my head was full of stories of marauding pirates and guardian priests as we walked around Casco Viejo in Panama City.  I wanted an image that carried with it the fear and ominous portent of an approaching invading force.  I was standing inside rock walls that had witnessed the terror and confusion of a people under attack and I wanted to be able to look up into the image and feel those emotions.  I pulled the image into Nik Silver Efex Pro and started playing with some extreme changes to contrast and texture, then I started to work on the undersides and lower levels of the rock wall to produce a dark and heavy visual weight to the image.  The perspective of the very wide angle lens puts you right at the base of the wall looking high up into history.

-Russell Berg

The Wall

I was walking around downtown Vancouver recently, very much enjoying that I live on the west coast of Canada as many of my friends and family who live on the prairies were suffering through and extended winter.  I have always enjoyed construction sites as places of potential photographic interest and as I walked past this one I was struck by the contrast of colour and form.  The architect appears to have designed a new building that will preserve the facade of very much older one and the construction is growing up around this wall.  The blue green windows in the background provide a contrast with the gritty greys, browns, and reds of the old wall.  Not only are the colours working in our favour but the windows curve into the background on the left side of the frame in a very modern style when compared with the square blocky windows of the old wall.  When I got the photo home I punched up the texture, contrast, and saturation of the stone, wood and glass in Nik HDR Efex.  I wish that I had been able to frame the picture from a little further to the left so that I was taking the image from exactly 90 degrees to the wall.

-Russell Berg

Tulum

The voices of history whisper still in the rocks of ancient Tulum. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85 at 20mm f/5 1/1250 ISO 100 −1ev

The people who built this wonderful place are no longer here. Only the tourists and tour guides wander these paths now. In the quiet moments as the day is ending and as the crowds have thinned you can still hear the voices whispering in the rocks. There is a presence in the ancient places that points forward through the mists of time and begs us to stop and look, to see the things that they have done. To hear the echoes of the stories told around fires one thousand years ago.

All of the places on the earth are the same age but there is something remarkable about visiting a place where the remnants of human activity have a kind of permanence. The ruins at Tulum, in Mexico are a beautiful example of that. We visited Tulum as the sun was starting to set and the sky was a dramatic blue but I knew that for many of my pictures there would be no better way to bring out the texture and structure of the rocks than with a black and white treatment. Changing your perspective can have such a significant change in your photographs. Simply sitting down on the ground, as I did for this photograph, can really change the way that we see it. The lower point of view makes the gives the building and imposing presence in the image. I simply cannot say enough about the ability of Nik Silver Efex Pro to help produce very interesting black and white images. The structure and contrast tools alone are worth the price of admission.

-Russell Berg

Soaring Stone

Interesting stone work on a bank in Portland, Oregon. Canon EOS XSi EF 17-85mm at 17mm f/11 1/90 ISO 200

There is architecture that inspires and lifts, there are buildings that oppress and bear down.  The ability of a physical space to open our minds and set our thoughts free is something that we often overlook in our cookie-cutter office spaces and unimaginative classrooms.  There are places that I walk into and I just want to sit down and write something beautiful and there are places where I just want to leave, where I feel creativity leaking out of me.

Getting a good black and white image is all about processing.  Just clicking “convert to black and white” will not get it done.  The silver of the stone in this image are really only achieved with a very good image processor like Nik Silver Efex Pro.  While I have not used many other dedicated B&W image processors this one delivers so far above and beyond what I have ever gotten from iPhoto, Aperture, or Lightroom.  It’s flexibility, quality and ease of use are really remarkable.  At first I was disappointed that I had lost detail in the shadows under the cornice at the top of the building but I think it provides a nice contrast and a place for your eye to stop before it jumps off in the sky.

-Russell Berg