Peering In

I have to admit I was playing with shallow depth of field because I had just bought a fast 50mm lens.  I was looking for only the thinnest slices of focus and playing with that technique often at the expense of the image.  I believe, however, that when you get a new piece of equipment or learn a new technique that it is important to play with it in a kind of obsessive way as long as you can eventually pull back and find the best ways to use that technique or equipment.  I suspect that this image would have been stronger if I had allowed the beam and the bold in the foreground to remain in focus.  I do, however, really like the way your eye gets drawn into the frame.  There is a strong sense of depth and I find my mind wandering down that steel shaft into the frame to see what is hidden down there.  I like the indistinct, unknown nature of the photograph, we want to know, we want to see what’s there but we can’t.  It’s that tension that keeps us looking.

For a different look at this kind of farm equipment check here and here.​

-Russell Berg

Bike and Bricks

I struggled with this photo for quite a while.  I loved the curve and shape of the bike, (1) the fact that the handlebars have tassels, (2) the fact that both tires are too flat to ride, (3) the battered old seat (4).  All of these things were great but the bike was a mottled rusty dark green against an orange brick wall and it just didn’t have the punch that I felt the image needed.  Recently I have gone back through some of my images with the intent of reevaluating my images with  a B&W treatment in mind.  I liked it much better this time around.  I really wish I had taken the time to move the potted tree outside of the frame.

-Russell Berg

Photographing Glass

Eliminating reflections in glass can be a challenge. Canon EOS 7D 50mm at f/4 1/60 ISO 200

My wife makes stained glass stepping stones and she was looking for a way to market them online so I set out to photograph them. While I wouldn't call product shots high art photography they did provide and interesting challenge. It was a typical dark Nanaimo afternoon and I knew I wanted a bright well lit image to show off the deep rich colours of the glass. I started with a a flash mounted on the camera because I was feeling lazy and hoping that ETTL would give me a nice image. That didn't work, I got huge reflections. I was standing directly over the stones looking down at them so I kept the flash on the camera but bounced the light off of white shoot through umbrella that I placed on the other side of the stone. The umbrella was angled down towards the stone and while this did provide a larger more diffuse light source it did not completely eliminate my reflection issues. Finally I twigged to the idea that the light was bouncing straight back into the lens and that I needed to give it a path that still hit the stone but would not bounce back straight to the lens. I set up an umbrella with a flash in it on either side of the stone so that the main light would hit the glass and bounce off to the side leaving a reflectionless image. It worked. If you want to see more of the images check hit the Stained Glass link at the top of the page

-Russell Berg

Oranges In The Light

A high key still life of oranges and pomegranates. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85mm at 65mm f/6.3 1.250

There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.

-Edouard Manet

I have always liked the effect of producing high key still life images and I wanted to try and produce one myself.  I set up a white background on our kitchen table and pulled out some fruit and a white plate.   I started with setting up a manual exposure on the camera that would eliminate all ambient light.  Basically I took pictures without flash and reduced the exposure until the picture was almost black, this indicates that there is no ambient light hitting the sensor.  Then I started to add flash.  In order to make the background disappear. I had to put a significant amount of light on it.  The background itself was not pure white, it was an off-white linen kind of material I increased the power on the flash until the background turned pure white and the texture disappeared.  Then I added another flash below the camera pointing directly at the fruit.  I had a small fabric lightbox on this flash and I increased the power until I got nice highlights from the orange.  Overall I was pretty happy but I would like to have been able to eliminate the shadows in the foreground.

-Russell Berg

Boat

The curve of a rowboat’s gunwhale. Canon EOS XSi EF 75-300 at 90mm f/6.3 1/200 ISO 200

Stanley walked down to the edge of the dock. He knew that the decisions had been made and that his life was going to have to change. But the things that tore at his heart where still there, the fear and the loneliness that stretched out in front of him was still there, waiting for him. Abigail skipped along the dock in front of him, her little pony-tail bouncing as she moved. She turned and smiled back at him and then looked down at the boat at the edge of the dock. "Is this the one daddy? Is this the one?"

Living in an ocean city there are m any opportunities to take pictures of some very photogenic boats. I was wandering down at the marina and I wanted a different approach, something almost abstract. The curves and lines of boats, driven as they are by their life in the water, are beautiful and interesting so I got down low and found a perspective that forced the eye to examine the lines, to follow them in their sweep and curve. We don't always have to take a photo of our whole subject to get and interesting image. In fact quite the opposite. Leaving some of the subject out of the picture or shooting it from a non-traditional point of view can end up producing a far better image.

-Russell Berg