The Spanish Dancer

I was wandering the streets of Gastown waiting for the Gastown Criterium Cycling Race to begin and I sat down on a bench next to this very interesting gentleman.  I said hello and we had a conversation about his life.  The lines in his face told the hints of an interesting story and his words filled in the gaps.  He was a folk singer, who had grown up in Montreal and made a living singing Spanish folk songs and jazz in easter Canada.  One day as he was singing in a dark club in Montreal, the kind that you enter by stairs coming down from the sidewalk, he saw a woman dancing.  She moved through the smokey room with a grace that bewitched him and he felt his voice reach out to meet the beauty of her movement.  She danced, he sang.  He sang, she danced and they seemed to rise to make the other better.  Early that morning he sat down to have a drink with her and 6 months later they had moved out to Vancouver.  “That’s how I got to this bench,” he said.  

“Well, thats a more interesting path than most,” I replied. “Do you mind if I take your portrait?  That dancer is written into the lines of your face.”  He smiled and nodded.

Other parts of my Inspired By Harry Callahan series Jumanji In Vancouver

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

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

Celebration

The weight of the crowd is massive.  You can feel it pushing in against you from every side.  You feel it and yet there is an energy, a lightness to it that pushes back against the sheer mass of people and seems to lift you together with every other person.  There are people everywhere, for blocks and block and blocks there are nothing but streets filled with people.  The energy that rise off of each of us produces a heady mixture of excitement, anticipation, and joy.  It seems so amazing, so wonderful that all of the thousands have gathered in downtown Vancouver to celebrate and we are all, together, happy.

Getting a photograph that captured the miraculous atmosphere that pervaded downtown Vancouver throughout most of the 2010 Olympic games was a challenge. The lights of Granville St. were too large a visual monument to be left out so I knew I wanted to include them.  The crowds had to be included so I lifted my camera over my head, luckily I am tall, and prepared to take the shot.  I saw a man carrying a flag drift into view.  I didn’t want the overt patriotism of the flag completely unfurled, rather I wanted the more subtle statement that I think the partially hidden flag makes.  I waited until the guy carrying the flag was in the centre of the frame and the flag was a little lower.  I snapped and I knew I had what I was looking for.

-Russell Berg

Vancouver

A skyline view of Vancouver from the harbour. Canon EOS XSi EF 17-85mm at 17mm f/22 1/90 ISO 200