Reflections

The window as it looked before I converted it to black and white.

Another, very dramatica, black and white treatment.

Normally I hate black and white images with a splash of colour in them but this one really seemed to cry out for that kind of treatment.  The day was very gray when I took this picture and the image reflected in the window was almost monochromatic.  Almost, but not quite and the remaining colour was just distracting.  When I converted the image to black and white in Nik Silver Efex Pro the reflection of the Nanaimo area shipyards in the background really became more clear.  After that part of the image was the way that I wanted it I pulled the blue of the building back into the image.  I wish that I had been able to get up a little higher so that the camera was not looking up at the window; this makes the lines converge towards the top and I would like the image better if it had been square.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Elbow on the Sill

I have found the city of Victoria and it’s architecture to be a significant inspiration for me.  There is something that strikes me as I wander those streets with my camera that pushes the photographer in me to see things differently.  I find the parts of a city that are on the edges of survival to have a truth in them that is so much more beautiful than the manicured lawns and refinished driveways of suburbia.  The texture of this wall jumped out at me as a wonderful background to the three black openings of the windows.  The texture of the glass that remains in the windows provides an interesting counterpoint to the yawning darkness below.  The rusty stains around the edges and the lichens growing on the window sills bear silent testimony to dozens of winters, to hundreds of eyes looking out, to the arms resting on summer evenings watching the city walk by.

Other Victoria images here, here, and here​

-Russell Berg

Port Window

A stark and lonely parking garage looking over the port in Portland. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85mm at 70mm f/5.6 1/500 ISO 100

I walked into this parking garage in Tacoma because the walls were coved with graffiti and I love photographing graffiti. I spent about 40 minutes photographing the art and talking with and filming the artist who was painting there. As I was about to leave I looked up towards the back wall and for the first time I noticed the very interesting way that the screen covered window was framing the loading cranes in the port of Portland. When you are focused on photographing a certain subject you may miss some other pretty remarkable images. It wasn't until I allowed my eyes to adjust to the brightness of the outdoor light that I saw the potential in the image. I exposed for the blue sky, throwing the walls and floor of the garage into darkness, creating a very interesting, urban frame for the image. I increased the contrast of the image to bring up the reflective portions of the floor. Without the black portions of the photograph this is a very boring image, with them we introduce some drama and a stronger sense of place.

-Russell Berg

Loneliness

One lonely window open to the night in Portland. Canon EOS EF 50mm at f/1.4 1/60 ISO 800

The cigarette hangs from the edge of her lip barely there until she inhales and it plants itself more firmly between her lips.  She inhales deeply and looks down towards the placemat covered milk crate that stands in for an end table.  The wobbly lamp that sits on top of the placemat has all of the strength that she feels in her bones.  The ragged breath and the too early age that rests on her tired shoulders bespeak a much older woman.  And here she is, alone.

I was sitting on the fire escape of my hotel enjoying the night air and the energy of the city as it rose up to meet me.  I was sitting with my camera, casting about for the right image when I looked across the street and saw someone sitting in their window without any blinds.  It immediately struck me as a very strongly graphic image.  The frame, of course, included more than the four windows pictured above but I framed the picture with a square cropping in mind.  There were closed windows all around the person but chose to put the them in the bottom right because she appears to be looking off to the left and I wanted her looking into the centre of the frame.  The loneliness of the person sitting alone in the window is accentuated by the four closed windows.  The picture didn’t look like much in colour but converting it to black and white gave it more power.  I really like the way that the light spilling upwards from the street accentuates the texture of the brick wall.

-Russell Berg

A Hole In The Sky

A hole in the glass provides the perfect frame for a building that is being destroyed. Canon 7D, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f18 1/80, ISO 3200A Perfect Photographic Morning Part 2

As I left the parking lot with the view of the blue window I walked around the block and came to the other side of the building that was being destroyed  I really wanted to see what was inside but the bottom floor was all boarded up and I couldn’t see anything.  There was, however, scaffolding over the sidewalk to protect the people who were walking by.  This was a Sunday morning so there wasn’t any work going on but I still hesitated, a little unsure of myself, as I swung my camera over my neck and scrambled up the scaffolding.  I thought to myself “no one is going to look up.”  I was initially really disappointed as the second floor was all windows but they had been painted from the inside, really strange.  But then I notice the hole, it wasn’t large, smaller than my fist but I could see inside and it looked like there was some real possibilities here.  I loved the fact that hole in the window provided a frame for the image, I loved the fact that I could just barely see the window frame in the top left corner from my previous image, and I loved the way the planks on the floor lead your to that mysterious darkened doorway.  I had to stop the exposure way down to f18 or the glass just became a blurry amorphous mass this pushed my ISO up to 3200 but luckily the 7D handles that pretty well.  As I brought the doorway into focus something really interesting happened, I could see writing on the glass in the top right corner. At first I thought it was a sticker on the glass but I pulled my eye off the camera to look and I realized that I was looking at a reflection from a store on the other side of the street and even though the glass itself is out of focus the reflection is the same apparent distance from the glass as the doorway is, (remember your high school physics?), so it was in focus as well.  I really liked how many layers I was playing with here and was really happy with the image.  Afterwards I pulled it into Aperture and did the black and white conversion with Nik Silver EFex Pro and I darkened the image, and increased the grain to add some drama and mystery.

-Russell Berg

As I looked to the left, in the middle of the all the destruction was a circular life preserver. Irony, anyone? Canon 7D, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f8 1/60, ISO 1250