Reflections

The window as it looked before I converted it to black and white.

Another, very dramatica, black and white treatment.

Normally I hate black and white images with a splash of colour in them but this one really seemed to cry out for that kind of treatment.  The day was very gray when I took this picture and the image reflected in the window was almost monochromatic.  Almost, but not quite and the remaining colour was just distracting.  When I converted the image to black and white in Nik Silver Efex Pro the reflection of the Nanaimo area shipyards in the background really became more clear.  After that part of the image was the way that I wanted it I pulled the blue of the building back into the image.  I wish that I had been able to get up a little higher so that the camera was not looking up at the window; this makes the lines converge towards the top and I would like the image better if it had been square.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

The Glass Museum: A Short Photo Essay 3

This last image brings the geometry of the cone into focus as well as emphasizing the way that the light plays on on the stainless steel tiles.  The other images tend to emphasize the unity of the tiles but here I underexposed the image and increased the contrast and texture to the point where we can see the different ways that the light interacts with the materials on the cone.  The lighter centre and the darker edges give the image depth and we get a better sense of it’s shape.  The small aperture maintains focus as you look out to the clouds.  As you have seen in the last three images I am always looking for ways to increase contrast so I framed the shot to include the concrete wall and I increased the black point until the shape at the top of the wall almost looked like a hole cut into the cone.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

The Glass Museum: A Short Photo Essay 2

The Glass Museum in Tacoma has been built in an older area of Tacoma that is dominated by railway tracks and old warehouses.  This image is taken from the same pedestrian walkway bridge as the previous picture looking off to the south.  I loved the contrast of the modern curving stainless steel with the old square brick warehouse.  And yet our past has something to tell us about our present as the modern building is reflected in the windows of the old building.  The contrast of the steel-blue reflections with the red brick wall increases visual interest and moves the eye around the frame.  I processed this with Nik HDR to bring out the texture and colour of the brick.  The problem that I see with this photo is that I blew out the highlights in the middle of the sky.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

The Glass Museum: A Short Photo Essay 1

It may seem odd to have a photo essay about the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington without any pictures of glass but in the next three posts I want to focus on the architecture of the buildings and it’s neighbourhood.  The large conical building that houses the glass blowing gallery/workspace dominates the area with its textures and sharp geometric presence.  The stark rhombus shaped stainless steel patterns contrast with the more organic circular form of the tower itself.  In the first picture above I positioned myself on the bridge walkway so that the triangular wedge would cut across the cone, providing I hope, some visual tension in the image.  I was also please with the way that all of these harsh geometric shapes and textures contrast with the soft shapes and textures of the clouds in  the background.  I pushed the processing of the textures of the clouds in Nik Silver Efex Pro so that they would be more obvious.  The camera in the far right of the frame, and all that it implies provides an interesting counterpoint to the world that is illustrated in the next image in this series.  Available in a few days.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Reaching

I love my 10-22mm lens.  I have found it to be very versatile.  If you can get very close it can provide some dramatic sports photographs and can it ever pull a lot into the frame if you don’t have much space.  Here I was standing in a very crowded parking lot near the Seattle Steam Company.  It was the middle of the summer tourist rush and this factory is right below the Pike Place Market so there was no way that I was going to be able to wait until the parking lot emptied.  My 10-22 allowed me to walk right to the edge of the parking lot and still get everything the whole building in the frame.  I like the way that the lens pushes the smokestacks so that they almost appear to converge out of the complicated shapes and lines of the factory below.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com