Tasting Green

The textures and character of this green leaf leapt out at me. EOS 7D, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f/2.5 1/250, ISO 110, Lumopro flash at 1/32 power

I have often wondered what a blind person’s ideas about colour might be.  How do you tell someone who has been blind from birth what green is.  I had a friend who became blind as an adult due to a car accident.  She told me that when she needed to remind herself what green was she would eat an avocado.  When I made this picture I wanted the same kind of intense green feeling that biting into an avocado would give you.  That, and the texture of the leaf needed to be explored.  I took this picture in Victoria, BC on a kind of overcast, grey day and I could see that the texture was there but I didn’t feel like it would come through in a photograph without some special treatment.  I put a flash on the ground below the leaf and used Cactus brand wireless trigger to fire it.  I had to experiment with the power a little bit to get the exposure right but eventually the green just leapt off of my LCD screen and I could see the light of the flash pushing through the veins in the plant illuminating all of that glorious complexity.

-Russell Berg

Menace In The Sand

My wife and I were walking out on Duke Point when we came across this very interesting sandstone formation. EOS Rebel XSi, EF 50mm 1.4, at f/9.5, 1/90, ISO 200

On one of those beautiful spring days that we get in Nanaimo in late March my wife and I went for a walk in an area where there is a lot of sandstone.  The ocean has worn it away in a lot of interesting formations, some of which you can climb right into.  This one looked particularly menacing to me, like something very ancient and filled with the threat of an oppressive darkness.  It  didn’t really look that way on that sunny afternoon but the image was so monochromatic that I immediately felt that it would be best served in black and white.  I imported it into NIK Silver Efex Pro and darkened the background of the image to emphasize the face-like shapes in the foreground.  I then increased the size of the grain structure to emphasize the texture of the sandstone.  I was really happy with how it turned out.

-Russell Berg

A Painter's Accident

My brother-in-law has an amazing garden where he grows some really wonderful flowers. EOS Rebel XSi, EFS 50mm 1.4, at f/2, 1/350, ISO 200

A walk through my brother-in-law’s garden is a riot of colour and texture, there are row on row of lilies.  Variety after variety in a painter’s accident, a splash and spill of colour all over a prairie backyard.  I took photo after photo but then I came across this very interesting sunflower.  I loved the colours and the contrast with the muted colours and shapes of the buds that where yet to bloom.  The smaller size as they fade into the background of the picture draws your eye in.  I love my 50mm 1.4, it produces such amazing results and the ability to isolate the subject of a photo against a busy background with shallow depth of field produces a result that just cannot be replicated with a point and shoot.  I also really like the way that it forces you to move around to compose your shot.  Zoom lenses are great but they make make me lazy and you see different things when are forced to move around to get an interesting shot.

-Russell Berg