I Was Chiefly Speaking of... Flowers

My wife and I went out for a little walk yesterday and a spring walk for a photographer holds all kinds of delights.  The challenge is to find new and interesting ways to present them.  I decided that I wanted to play with large open areas of sky in my compositions To make the flowers a counterpoint to the large blocks of blue colour.  In this image I liked the contrast between the blue block of colour on the left and the dark branches on the right that still hold just the budding promise of the coming spring.  The flowers hold the middle ground in this image.  In Lightroom I increased the structure and the contrast then I took the image into Photoshop and used Content Aware Spot Healing Brush to remove three power lines.  Then I took the image into Viveza and darkened the blue sky on the left. 

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

A canopy of cherry blossoms against a blue sky.  Fuji XE-2 XF 14mm 2.8 at f/6.4 1/400 ISO 400

Perspective

If there is one key that I could give young photographers it is to change your perspective.  We all see the world from eye level 95% of the time.  This perspective is so ubiquitous that we are instantly drawn to images that change the point of view.  I laid down on my stomach to take this photograph and with that simple step changed a picture of some pretty flowers into something interesting.  We look at the stems as they emerge from the dirt and we can almost feel them pushing upwards.  Get high, get low, do what it takes to change your perspective in interesting ways.  The other concern I had was the very busy background so I stopped down to f/2.8 and got back far enough that I could shoot it at 200mm.  This longer focal length emphasizes and strengthens the effect of the shallow depth of field, turning the distracting background into a blurry field of dark tones.  When I took the photo I was thinking black and white because the the brilliant white petals but little did I realize how converting to B&W in Nik Silver Efex Pro would give the flowers a glow as if lit from within.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

A Tree in Lorien

I know the Mallorn tree in Tolkien’s Lothlorien is supposed to have leaves of gold but the bark is a silvery grey and when I saw this tree in Butchart Gardens lit through a small hole in the clouds it made me wander if Sam and Frodo might not have taken shelter under it’s branches.  The tree was covered in droplets of water from the rain the night before and it held the light beautifully.  I did darken the area around the top and top right of the tree to emphasize the contrast between the tree and the background but the fact that I underexposed the shot by one stop meant that the light that was hitting the water droplets on the tree became the dominant light source in the frame and gave the image more punch.  I was very happy with the mood that the picture evokes and the story that it begins to tell.  I was looking for non-traditional images of Butchart Gardens and I think I succeeded in that here.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Sometimes Red...

Sometimes red is just red and sometimes it is blood and passion and loyalty.  Sometimes red is the heat of anger, the all encompassing compulsion of love, the binding rage of jealousy.  But sometimes red… is just red.

One fall I was walking around taking photos of the beautiful foliage and on impulse I picked up one leaf that I thought was particularly beautiful and I carried it around all over town taking pictures of it in different circumstances.  (See another example of a portrait of this leaf here.)  The leaf had such a wonderful colour and vein structure that I wanted an image that would really emphasize these two characteristics so I looked for a place where I could place it so that it would appear alone against the backdrop of the high sky.  I twisted the stem around a small branch that was hanging down above me, composed so that you couldn’t see any other branches and took the picture underexposing a little.  I pumped up the saturation levels a little and increased the contrast to give the red some real punch.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Variations in The Pattern

I was walking along a beach in Panama, looking for interesting patterns and textures to photograph.  I headed out of the resort are to a quieter area where the sand had not been disturbed when I saw this coconut and a large area of undisturbed sand.  There was a culvert up the beach where the runoff from the nearby village found its way to the ocean.  There had just been a large storm (check out this image of the coming storm) and the rushing rain water had pulled the sand into this beautiful textured pattern.  The human eye craves variation within patterns and I felt that I had a pretty good example of that here.  The coconut provides an interesting interruption in the lines in the sand as they pull your from the left foreground to the the right background.  The low point of view, (I was laying on the ground), and the wide angle lens, (10mm), accentuate this movement.  

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com