Slicing Dawn

​Apple's wallpaper image that was the inspiration for my photograph.

I was walking along the edge of a marsh just after dawn and I saw this tangle of thick grasses.  I was immediately reminded of Apple’s desktop wallpaper image of grass and Picasso’s dictum that good artist’s borrow but great artists steal.  I am no great artist but I decided to try and go for something similar with my own interpretation.  The grass that I was looking at seemed to cut and slice across the image and the form, line and shape of the image was more compelling to me when I took a wider shot than the one that Apple used.  Using a wider point of view also meant that we did not get as direct a view of the dew drops on the grass; instead the mist and dew drops become a soft counterpoint to the slicing horizontal lines of the grass.  The wider image also allowed me to include the transition from the dark regions below to the lightening sky at the top and I believe this improves my image.  The colour seemed to be getting in the way of, instead of complementing the image so I converted to black and white and was much happier with the result.

For more natural photographs with an abstract feel check here and here.​

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Tulips

Spring is such a wonderful time to play with colour.  I saw these tulips in someone else’s garden in Nanaimo and as I got a little closer I noticed the beautiful, striking, red fringe on the edge of the petal.  As I stood there the background was the light purple flowers that you see at the bottom of the frame.  I didn’t like this as much so I got down low and background became dark green foliage that I threw out of focus with a 3.5 aperture.  There was a very distracting light coloured branch above the flower on the far right and I cloned it out but I am still not very good with the clone brush and I feel like you can tell I was messing with it.  I wanted a gradation of tone in the background so I took the image into Viveza and darkened the portion of the background that was above the flowers.  This way the out of focus purple flowers, instead of being a distraction are a part of the background tone transition from light at the bottom to darker at the top with the tulips taking up a very striking intermediary space.

I have another treatment of tulips here and some other flowers here and here.​

www.seeingberg.com

Windblown

Andrea stands wondering, her back is to the water as she leans against the rock.  She has the happy tired feeling of contentment in her bones and and a light smile plays at the corners of her lips.  This has been an incredibly difficult year but now everything that she has faced, well almost everything, is behind her.  There were moments when she wondered if it would all be possible, but now…  Now she smiles, looks down for a moment at her shoes and turns towards the water, her face into the wind.

At Neck Point in Nanaimo there is a wonderful tree that is clinging to a rock on the edge of the ocean.  It looks as though it has experienced decades of hurricane force winds that have forced it to grow sideways out of the rock.  I have photographed this tree several times but I wanted to produce something very moody and evocative that helped to tell the story of the trees struggle for survival.  I pulled one of my exposures into Nik Silver Efex Pro and began to work on it.  I used a high contrast filter and but that made the ocean and horizon almost black so I added control points to the water to increase the brightness of that area.  I also wanted a more dramatic sky so I darkened the top ⅓ of the frame.  I really like the way that the tree exists as a silhouette in a state of tension between the dark sky and the dark water with a band of light running through the middle of the frame.

-Russell Berg

If you are interested in more tree photography check here and here.  Or type 'tree' into the search bar.​

Yellow Sunshine

Across Departure Bay from my house is a small island called Newcastle Island.  One summer day I paddled across the bay to wander around with my camera.  I had been focusing on trying to photograph birds but eventually I turned around and noticed a lily blooming in the sunlight.  I took some pictures but noticed that if I got a little lower I could put the cattails, which were also catching the sunlight into a very pleasant background blur.  Together, the crisp yellow flower and the out of focus form of the cattails in the background really strengthen the image.  I really wish that I had gotten rid of the foreground foliage, I feel it really weakens the image.

-Russell Berg

Canon EOS 7D EF-S 70-300 at 300mm f/5.6 1/500 ISO 160 −1 ev

The blur in the background is produced by these molting, (not sure if that’s the correct term), cattails.  In some ways I like this image better.  It doesn’t have the strong focal point of the image above but the sunlight in the disintegrating felt provides a strong counterpoint to the dark green firs in the background and the light green of the grasses below makes an interesting 3 colour band.

The Space in His Head

Lentzer walked slowly through the park.  He had been this way before, many times.  It was the place he went when his headed needed space to breathe, when the confusion that circled inside of him now would often begin to untangle itself.  Not today.  The tangled knots remained and his head remained a claustrophobic space; a small closed room on hot summer day.  His thoughts could not get space to breathe.  He kicked through the carpet of fallen leaves on the grass and moved on maybe he needed to sit by the stream.

The vibrant colours of the fallen autumn leaves presented a compelling study in colour.  The leaves had fallen out of a single maple tree and they were scattered around.  I knew that I wanted a photograph that had a field of view that was completely dominated by this red orange colour so I had to move myself around to get a perspective that had nothing in the background.  Sometimes we photographers get lazy when we say things like “there was nothing I could do about it, that power pole was in the frame.”  We decide what is in the frame, we decide where we are standing, what is in focus, what lens to use, and where we point the camera.  If we aren’t happy with what is in the frame then we need to move, crop, change lens, or change aperture.  The photograph that we take is all of ours and everything in it is there because we have chosen to let it remain there.

-Russell Berg