A Painter's Accident

My brother-in-law has an amazing garden where he grows some really wonderful flowers. EOS Rebel XSi, EFS 50mm 1.4, at f/2, 1/350, ISO 200

A walk through my brother-in-law’s garden is a riot of colour and texture, there are row on row of lilies.  Variety after variety in a painter’s accident, a splash and spill of colour all over a prairie backyard.  I took photo after photo but then I came across this very interesting sunflower.  I loved the colours and the contrast with the muted colours and shapes of the buds that where yet to bloom.  The smaller size as they fade into the background of the picture draws your eye in.  I love my 50mm 1.4, it produces such amazing results and the ability to isolate the subject of a photo against a busy background with shallow depth of field produces a result that just cannot be replicated with a point and shoot.  I also really like the way that it forces you to move around to compose your shot.  Zoom lenses are great but they make make me lazy and you see different things when are forced to move around to get an interesting shot.

-Russell Berg

At The Centre

Portraits are not something I do often enough even though I really enjoy them, especially with people as intense and expressive as my daughter. EOS Rebel XSi, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f/2, 1/250, ISO 200

We look at the people we love and they look different to us from the others around us.  I think that fathers and their daughters share a special bond that can be so wonderful and complete.  Last winter I did portraits of everyone in my family and this one of my daughter has to be my favourite.  It speaks with an intensity that shimmers off the page, it reveals and conceals, it is full of movement and yet completely frozen.  It hints at a tumble of emotions and perfect calm at the centre.  I set up a black fabric drape in our basement and had one flash operating through a shoot through umbrella to the right of the camera at about a 45 degree angle to my daughter and one flash further back shooting through a small (6” x 4”) portable Aurora light box that Velcro's on to the flash head.  If I remember right the main light shooting through the umbrella was at about 50% power and the other light was at about 25%.  I used a high shutter speed to kill the ambient light which was some incandescent bulbs.  My other daughter was holding a leaf blower to get the hair movement and it worked beautifully.  Afterwards I processed it in NIK Silver Efex Pro which gave me the absolutely beautiful silver in her hair.

-Russell Berg

A Hitch In The Neck

I follow herons around Newcastle Island from time to time and this time it paid off. EOS 7D, EF 70-300mm 4.5-5.6 at 280mm, f/5.6, 1/2000, ISO 500

I live in, Nanaimo, BC on Vancouver Island so I have ready access to the ocean.  There is an island about 2 km out into Departure Bay called Newcastle Island and I paddled across to it in my kayak. I spent the morning following Great Blue Heron around the island ant this one in particular was very comfortable with me hanging around, photographing it and watching.  I spent probably 30 minutes watching this one and taking pictures.  I noticed him, her? I don’t know, make a particular motion with his neck just before he stabbed his beak into the water in an attempt to get food.  I was ready the next time the motion came and I hammered down the motor drive.  8 fps provides coverage for a lot of action and this was the best one of the group.  The photo is not quite as sharp as I would like it to be but the action was so remarkable that I had to share it.

-Russell Berg

Links... To The Past

Old machinery rusting away in a field has always held a strong attraction for me. EOS Rebel XSi, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f/1.4, 1/750 ISO 200

On the first morning of our Stein Family Gathering at a ’30’s haying festival in rural Alberta I woke early and started wandering around the fields.  There was a lot of machinery from the era that was in use but there was also a long row of rusting hulks that had long ago finished their part in delivering food to our tables.  I really liked the grainy texture of the metal in the links of the chain and depth of field that an aperture of 1.4 gave me made that area of texture stand out in the frame.  I also liked the way that the angles of the machinery in the top right and bottom right converge in lines that draw your eye towards the chain and then the axle moving to the left pulls your eye out of the frame.  I processed the original RAW colour image in NIK Silver Efex Pro.  It helped to emphasize the grain structure in chain links and to deepen the shadows in the bottom right and the bottom right and top right.  Silver Efex Pro produces B&W images like nothing I have ever seen.

-Russell Berg