Goodbye Love

Mark: Mimi still loves Roger.  Is Roger really jealous or afraid that Mimi's weak

Roger: Mimi did look pale

Mark: Mimi's gotten thin.  Mimi's running out of time. Roger's running out the door--

Roger: No more! Oh no! I've gotta go.

Mark: Hey! For someone who's always been let down who's heading out of town?

Roger:  For someone who longs for a community of his own, who's with his camera, alone?  I'll call. I hate the fall.  (Mimi enters) You heard?

Mimi:  Every word. You don't want baggage without lifetime guarantees. You don't want to watch me die?  I just came to say goodbye love, goodbye love

If you'd like to see how part of the scene turned out check it out here.  James Dean as Roger, Kody Dennison as Mark, and Micalla Wallace as Mimi

If you would like to see more portraits that I have done of my actors check here, here, here, and here

My theatre club did a production of RENT this year and as we cast the show I wanted a Mimi that was able to express a fragility and vulnerability beneath a thin crust of self-confidence.  This young actor quickly found this in her work with the character and I feel like this photograph captures that.  Mimi is watching from the background as Roger, the man she is in love with, explains to his friend why he can’t be around her, why he can’t watch her die. (Mimi has AIDS.)  Mimi is trapped by her health, trapped by her relationship with Roger, trapped by her addictions, and trapped by her poverty.  As she enters the stage near the end of the musical she sees the last of her hope whither up and float away in the autumn wind.  We put her at the back of the stage to hear Roger’s last words about her where the metaphorical bars of her existence are made real in the bars of the scaffolding.  Probably, there were very few people in the audience who saw her standing there in the background but for me this image, and the character that this actor brings to it, encapsulates everything about who Mimi is.  I shot it in very low light so it was very grainy and unattractive as a colour image so I imported it into Silver Efex Pro and as a grainy B&W it had exactly the kind of gritty intensity that fit the scene.

-Russell Berg

The Look

The idea of shooting a wedding has never really appealed to me, I really dislike posing people and so if I were ever to do it on my own it would have to be done in a very documentary style.  I guess that this picture would best exemplify the style of photography that I like to do at a wedding.  My niece asked me to fill in the gaps where her portrait photographer couldn’t be and this was one of them.  The whole wedding party was waiting downstairs in the church and her groom called to her across the room.  I happened to be ready as she swung her head to look towards him and I got one of my favourite two shots of the 700 or so that I took.  We don’t know who either of these two individuals and yet we understand so much about the moment.  The fact that there really isn’t much identifying information makes the appeal of the image more universal.  The veil and the hairdo tell us this is a wedding, the swinging earring tells us that she has just now turned to look at her lover and even though he is in soft unfocused shadow there is a feeling of nervous anticipation to the image.  I feel as though I was lucky enough to capture what Henri Cartier-Bresson calls “the decisive moment”.  For me if there was one moment that captured the day it was this one.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Vandal

There is a section of downtown Tacoma that is a haven for graffiti artists.  My wife and I were wandering around the area on a sleepy Sunday morning when we stumbled across a parking garage that was completely empty except for a painter going to work on the interior.   Every wall of the garage was covered in graffiti and deep in the interior was this guy working away on a new piece.  I took some pictures of the pieces nearer the entry and then moved closer to where he was working.  I watched him paint for a while and then asked if I could film him for a while.  He said yes and he became part of a short video that I made about the artists I encountered on the trip.  We talked a bit and he told me that the owner of the garage let them paint on the interior of the garage on Sundays when there were no cars around.  I asked if I could do a portrait of him and he agreed to stand in front of one of his pieces but he wanted to keep his mask on.  He leaned up against the wall and I got the image below.  I liked the contrast of the bright colours with his monochromatic clothing and the way that the light filters across the image from the left.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Lovers

I was wandering around Neck Point because I came to see the sunset and make some photographs. It was a beautiful warm evening with the sun dropping into the ocean in a beautiful warm glow.  The sun had gone down behind some clouds and the showy part of the sunset was over when I saw this couple alone  on the grass.  I circled behind them and snapped a few pictures from a distance.  He leaned forward to kiss her cheek and it was the perfect instance that defined their moment together.    It is a moment filled with little intimacies, the little tattoo behind her ear, his arm around her back and... the kiss.  With the the sun still glinting in the grasses around them it is a tender moment shared by two lovers with the ocean the mountains in the background.  Henri Cartier-Bresson, an amazing French photographer, talked about finding the decisive moment that defines a situation or a personality or a relationship.  I think this moment comes pretty close to matching Cartier-Bresson’s criteria.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Into The Distance

Ogden Point in Victoria is a large breakwater designed to protect the port in Victoria but it has a large walkway paved on to the top of it.  There are no railings or other distracting visual elements except for a lighthouse positioned at the far end.  It makes for an interesting compositional element and I decided to use it as a context for a portrait of my daughter.  I got right down on the ground and the relatively wide angle of the lens stretched the pat almost all the way across the bottom of the frame.  The path quickly narrows of to the vanishing point, pulling your eye into the frame.  I thought about perhaps removing the person in the white jacket from the picture but I like the way that they give a sense of size and perspective.  Without the tiny people far out on the path your eye would not have a way to understand the distances that are involved.

I did another very different portrait at Ogden Point that used the breakwater in a very different yet equally striking way.  You can see it here.​

www.seeingberg.com