Group photos don't have to be posed and boring, they should tell an interesting story. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 10mm f/13 1/400 ISO 400The journey always starts with more questions than answers and that is the beauty of it all. Stepping out your front door and on to the road that leads… well it can lead you anywhere; is a step away from the things that you accept, know and trust and into the unknown. Travel opens the mind and expands the senses, we see new people, smell new food, experience new lives and we know that we will not return unchanged and that is wonderful.
Finding a way to tell a story with your image can draw people in and make the whole thing more interesting. The deck of the Coho Ferry that runs between Victoria, BC and Port Angeles, WA is an interesting place for a little group portrait. I took a few standard photos of people looking out over the deck towards the horizon but they were rather uninteresting and didn’t really have much to say. Then I noticed the ships lines laid out on the deck. I laid down with a very wide angle lens, closed down the aperture to keep everything in focus and composed the frame so that the lines lead your eye directly to my friends and family. Even though you cannot see the ocean the wide angle lens gives a sense of expansiveness that bespeaks the ocean and the movement of your eye as it follows the ropes to the subjects gives the image a dynamic quality.
-Russell Berg
