Half

​The raw image that became the portrait above.

…or How to Fix A Portrait.  Wandering around firing off your camera without giving your image a lot of thought rarely turns out well but sometimes the circumstances do not allow for a great deal of thought until afterwards when you are sitting down with the image on the computer.  This week I am focusing on photos that I took during the last musical that I directed and this portrait of this young actor is one of them.  As you can see from the image to the right, the picture that came out of the camera was nothing special.  The young lady’s expression was so full of excitement and life, it carried so much anticipation that I really wanted to do something about the fact that I had completely ruined the composition by cutting off part of her face.  I often tell my young actors “if you make a mistake commit to it completely and people will think it is an artistic choice.”  So I decided to follow my own advice and instead of bemoaning the fact that I had ruined what could have been an interesting photograph I committed completely to my mistake and cut her face right in half.  There is something very compelling about that very striking single eye peering out at us from the image and I love how it turned out.  I warmed up the colour temperature and increased the saturation, especially of the greens and that brought out the green in her eyes.  I also increased the values on the black point to give a bit more drama to the lashes around her eye.  I did a little work on some minor skin blemishes because the cropping is so tight and when I was done I was very happy with the way my ‘mistake’ turned out.

-Russell Berg

Focus

Backstage there is a whirling tornado of exhaustion, outrageous energy, and frayed nerves.  Some of them look as though they are about to come apart at the seams, some of them look as though they are about to throw up.  For many of them it is the first time and they will step out on to the boards and the light will hit them and three-hundred pairs of eyes will watch.  There are always the questions, do I know it well enough? will I hit that high G? can I time my jump just right? But in the middle of it all these two find the calm, gentle centre of themselves and they know.  They know that they are ready, they know can sing like angels and dance like demons, they know because they see it there in the other’s eyes.

I direct theatre at the school where I teach and last year as we were about to go on stage for the opening night of our big musical I caught sight of these two backstage.  They are sisters and they were quietly speaking to each other, foreheads touching, a look of intense focus and concentration on each of their eyes.  I knew I wanted the image to include both of them so I snapped off a shot over the should of one and into the eyes of the other.  I knew one image wouldn’t tell the whole story though so I slid around to the other side and took a similar image of the other sister.  Both of the girls have very striking blonde hair so I knew that I wanted a high key image so I gave it that kind of treatment in Nik Silver Efex Pro and then toned down the effect in hair of the girl on the right so that I could get back the detail.  The images work well together, producing a mirror image study of concentration and focus.

-Russell Berg

For more portraits of young actors check here, here, and here.​

Sunlight In Her Hair

The sunlight plays through her hair and dances in the whisps that have pulled out of her braids.  She has a whole wide world in front of her and it has suddenly gotten much larger.  Her mind is reaching for and pulling in all of the new things that dance into her field of view but no one thing can hold her for long there is too much.  Then, without warning, she stops, she just stops and thinks, and walks.

A few summers ago I followed my niece around as she played on Long Beach on Vancouver Island.  She is from the prairies and everything to do with the ocean was exciting for her; she was a whirlwind of activity; running to see something new, playing in the sand then up and running again.  I got quite a few good images of her in motion but for a moment she moved slowly away from me and looked down, her hands behind her back.  Her brilliant blonde hair stood out against the blue sky and she was for a moment, still and alone on the wide wide beach.  Sticking with a subject can really pay off, I got some pretty good images of her running and moving but this photo seemed to me to have more to say, she dominates the frame but is at the same so very small and seems to have something very serious on her mind.  Finding the instances in time where the image is evocative of all of these things is the photographer’s challenge.

-Russell Berg

There is  another portrait of one of my other niece's here.​

Little Boy Lost

The little boy is lost.  He has not lost his way, he has not lost his mother, but he is lost.  Lost in a world far outside the one in which he inhabits and deep inside one in which he has created.  The flow of his imagination is like a river that moves through and over and around him.  Everything that he sees, hears and touches is part of his world and it is perfect.

Getting a decent photograph of a child happens all the time.  There small forms, bright eyes, and unguarded expressions are very photogenic but you have to work a little harder to get a photograph that helps to define who this little person is and what childhood is about.  I saw this little boy playing on a sidewalk with his tractors and there was something so intent, so purposeful about what he was doing that I got down on the ground and watched him for a while.  I was using a telephoto lens so I could sit a ways back and watch him without him noticing.  Getting down low is really important when photographing children.  So many photos of children are taken from adult height but getting down on the ground puts the viewer in the child’s world.  I sat and watched and waited for the right moment, then he started to get up and squatted back down almost folding himself in half to look down into the tractor on the right and I fired away.  I love the way that this little boy is so intent on the story in his head that he is bends almost in half to see what the imaginary little man in the tractor is doing.  It felt to me like a perfect little moment of childhood.

-Russell Berg

Asleep At The Airport

She is uncertain. They are leaving the country together for the first time and he has never been off of the small island where he grew up.  Their flight is very early and they have had to be at the airport since 4:00am. That meant getting up shortly after 3.  His head flopped backwards and he fell asleep almost immediately.  Rosa has closed her eyes but the arm rest of the next seat is digging into her back and the uncertainty of how he will deal with all of the difficulties of living in Vietnam for a year is weighing on her.  She is wondering for the 37th time whether this is a good idea.  She isn’t sure how he will deal with not having hot water, or intermittent electricity, or the smells, or the crush of humanity in the city streets.  He is a good man but this is something completely new.

My wife and I were at recently at the airport very early in the morning and I saw this young couple sleeping over on the next bench.  I got out my camera because their posture told a very interesting story about their lives and about air travel.  I wasn’t, however, completely sure that that everyone would catch on that this was taken in an airport so I grabbed my wife’s suitcase, extended the handle and used it to help complete the story.  It also provides a nice frame for the girl’s face and provides some depth and visual interest to the foreground.

-Russell Berg