Death of A Leaf

A leaf dies slowly on the tree, it’s decay an amazing mixture of colour and form. Fuji X10 at 7mm f/2 1/1000 ISO 400

I continued wandering through Beban Park and saw this leaf just barely clinging to the tree and dying in such a beautiful display.  I loved the way that the colour and form, especially the negative space formed by the parts of the leaf that had already decayed to be especially interesting.  The light was so bright, however, that it was hard to distinguish the background from the foreground when I took the photo and I knew that this picture had a lot of potential but that it was going to require some work in post.  After importing the image into Aperture I increased the saturation slightly and started to play with ways to pull the leaf off of the background.  I increased the definition and this helped to make the edges more distinct but it still needed more so I burned in the photo on the edges and the parts of the background that showed through the holes in the leaf to darken it.  This got me part of the way there but the colours were still so bright on the edges so I applied a gamma vignette that desaturated and darkened the edges some more.  I applied a little more burn in to the holes in the leaf and it was there.  The treatment added a lot of depth to the image and allowed this wonderful leaf to stand out from the background.

-Russell Berg

To Look Them in The Eye

Looking up into the red leaves at the coming winter. Canon XSi EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.4 1/1000 ISO 200

I am wondering where all those years have gone.  Those years where my little ones tore off through the park, a trail of dry leaves fluttering behind them.  Those years where they returned to me so excited and at having found a snake, or a wood bug, or a rock.  Those years where I squatted to look them in the eye.  I miss having to get down on the ground to look them in the eye.  Instead I lean here against this tree and the remnants of my children's youth flutter to the ground next to my feet.

I was wandering around in fall really looking for photos of single leaves on the ground when I looked up.  I was really attracted by the mass of colour and the contrast of the brown branches and tree trunk.  I love being able to play with the way that the eye moves within a photograph so I composed a shot that pulls your eye upward from the out of focus trunk at the bottom up through the clearly defined shape and form of the leaves to the amorphous mass of colour at the top.  The shallow depth of field of my fast 50 made the photograph possible.  The imposition of an area of focus within the photograph gives your eye somewhere to travel.

-Russell Berg

"We Are More"

Canon EOS XSi EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/13 1/250 ISO 800. Bruised in the pavement, I love the colours of this leaf.

It is a difficult thing to define a country. Such a big thing, an idea, a set of peoples, and perceptions. One starts and stops, begins again and finds oneself up against a barrier of language and expression. Lately I have been listening to spoken word artists like Sage Francis and Shane Coyczan and it is Coyczan's poem "We Are More" that I think comes closest to overcoming those barriers. It is joyously hopeful and very Canadian without being jingoistic.

I wanted a photo that said some of the same things. I wanted it to use Canadian imagery in a non-traditional way. One fall I drove around Nanaimo to photograph the change in colour and I found some beautiful maple leaves. I took some standard pictures then took one leaf home with me. I wanted an image that would go beyond the traditional pastoral landscapes and reflect the growing importance of urban landscapes in the Canadian psyche. I put the leaf on the pavement and drove over it a few times with my car, they are surprisingly tough, to bruise and mark it. This was getting closer but the pavement didn't provide the right contrast yet; it needed more punch so I brought out my hose and wet it down. This left me with exactly the right kind of colour and shine for both the leaf and the pavement and the textures just jumped. I was quite happy with the image, my only hesitation is that the end of the stem runs out of the frame.

-Russell Berg

The original leaf before I drove over it is below.