Celebration

The weight of the crowd is massive.  You can feel it pushing in against you from every side.  You feel it and yet there is an energy, a lightness to it that pushes back against the sheer mass of people and seems to lift you together with every other person.  There are people everywhere, for blocks and block and blocks there are nothing but streets filled with people.  The energy that rise off of each of us produces a heady mixture of excitement, anticipation, and joy.  It seems so amazing, so wonderful that all of the thousands have gathered in downtown Vancouver to celebrate and we are all, together, happy.

Getting a photograph that captured the miraculous atmosphere that pervaded downtown Vancouver throughout most of the 2010 Olympic games was a challenge. The lights of Granville St. were too large a visual monument to be left out so I knew I wanted to include them.  The crowds had to be included so I lifted my camera over my head, luckily I am tall, and prepared to take the shot.  I saw a man carrying a flag drift into view.  I didn’t want the overt patriotism of the flag completely unfurled, rather I wanted the more subtle statement that I think the partially hidden flag makes.  I waited until the guy carrying the flag was in the centre of the frame and the flag was a little lower.  I snapped and I knew I had what I was looking for.

-Russell Berg

Up Into History

In Casco Viejo in Panama City there are many 17th century buildings that are open to the weather and tourists.  The brick walls are very, very thick and have some really interesting textures.  Finding an interesting way to produce and image of them was a bit of a challenge.  I wanted something that would give a sense of their age and permanence, something that would put the viewer in the building.  It was right around noon so the sky was a very washed out light blue so I was thinking B&W right from the beginning.  I walked into a very narrow square room and looked up; the small size of the room made it darker than the open courtyard and the light from the bright sky lightened the window sills providing some contrast with the rest of the room.  When I pulled the image into Nik Silver Efex Pro to do the B&W conversion I increased the texture and this also had the effect of giving the skies an almost surrealistic smooth gray.  I only wish that I had stepped back a little to allow a little of the sky to peak in through the upper window.

-Russell Berg

Casco Viejo

My wife and I were wandering through the old city of Casco Viejo in Panama City and my eye was caught by this old building.  I think the thing that first struck me was the ragged outline of the roof against the skyline.  The overhanging roofs of the neighbouring buildings help to build the sense of compression that the wide angle lens establishes by pulling in the edges of the frame.  After I took the image I pulled it in to Nik HDR Efex Pro.  HDR Efex Pro is a piece of software that is intended to produce HDR like images from a single RAW frame without having to take 3 or more frames.  (If you are interested in HDR check out this tutorial.)  I hadn’t really used HDR Efex before and I was impressed with the results of some of the more subtle treatments.  If pulled out the detail in the overhanging eaves of the neighbouring buildings and and added real punch to the texture of the image.  Below is the image without the HDR Efex treatment.

-Russell Berg

The Banjo King

A lonely busker sits on the street, plucking at his banjo. Fuji X10 28mm f/2.8 1/1000 ISO 200

There is something that rises inside of him and pushes against the inside of his skull.  It is almost an ache, a presence there in his brain that is only relieved when his fingers are moving, when the sound comes and the vibrations pulse.  Music sits deep inside him and it must find an exit.  This creative impulse is at the centre of himself and it must needs find a way out.

Sometimes getting a good picture is simply a matter of having a camera with you.  I was driving around Victoria and stopped at a light.  I looked over to my left and saw this guy sitting on the sidewalk.  I grabbed my X10 out of my purse and quickly snapped off an image.  I wanted to put him off centre and to have a large empty space in the sidewalk so I composed and snapped before the light changed.  The amount of thought and planning I put into the image was minimal but having my camera with me and ready to go made the image possible.

-Russell Berg

Ancient Steps

Ancient steps overgrown with trees leading up to what was a residence. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85 at 24mm f/9 1/160 ISO 100 −1ev