Poplar

A row of poplar trees on the prairies. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85 f/4-5.6 at 30mm f/5.6 1/125 ISO 200

I was wandering around some fields in northern Alberta when I came across this grove of poplar trees. The strong vertical lines of the trees against the dark background was striking. I took the photo and decided to frame it with a strong horizontal crop. The fact that the photo is horizontal makes your eye pull across the strong vertical lines of the image like a boy running a stick across the slats of a wooden picket fence. There is more energy in the image than if I had framed it with a vertical crop.

Portrait of Friends

Portrait of friends. Canon XSi EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/4 1/40 ISO 200

They look at each other and a smile is made in the moment between two sentences.  Their smiles begin, pause, and crack into laughter.  They each know the story that the other is remembering without having to acknowledge it with much more than a smile and a tilt of the head.  The friendship was born in sandboxes and sleepovers and now it is something different, something stronger.

I was doing headshots for a couple of young actors and two of them wanted to do a portrait together.  They were clearly good friends and I wanted to pose them in a way that reflected that.  I had the girl on the left lean in and touch heads, that little bit of contact seemed to speak clearly to me of their friendship.  At camera left I had a flash in an umbrella to balance the fill from a large window at camera right.  I was really happy with the way the catch light from the window is reflected in the eye of the girl at left.  They seemed to be suppressing the laughter that rises from the memory of a funny story and I was very happy to be able to capture that moment.

-Russell Berg

To Look Them in The Eye

Looking up into the red leaves at the coming winter. Canon XSi EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.4 1/1000 ISO 200

I am wondering where all those years have gone.  Those years where my little ones tore off through the park, a trail of dry leaves fluttering behind them.  Those years where they returned to me so excited and at having found a snake, or a wood bug, or a rock.  Those years where I squatted to look them in the eye.  I miss having to get down on the ground to look them in the eye.  Instead I lean here against this tree and the remnants of my children's youth flutter to the ground next to my feet.

I was wandering around in fall really looking for photos of single leaves on the ground when I looked up.  I was really attracted by the mass of colour and the contrast of the brown branches and tree trunk.  I love being able to play with the way that the eye moves within a photograph so I composed a shot that pulls your eye upward from the out of focus trunk at the bottom up through the clearly defined shape and form of the leaves to the amorphous mass of colour at the top.  The shallow depth of field of my fast 50 made the photograph possible.  The imposition of an area of focus within the photograph gives your eye somewhere to travel.

-Russell Berg

A Hum Under My Feet

I found the contrast between the lines of the building in the background and curves in the foreground to be very interesting. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 at 35mm f/19 1/350 ISO 1600

Their is a hum under my feet. I can feel it, just barely, emerging from the pavements and steel pipes that run under the surface. There is a life to the city that just doesn't exist anywhere else. All of those people living and working and dreaming together in one place brings an energy and a focus that is difficult to replicate. You feel was though more of your future is possible.

I was walking around Seattle and I looked up. I saw this very interesting drain pipe/flower container, not sure what it is, hanging on the wall. I was looking straight up at it and trying to see how it would become an interesting image. It wasn't coming to me until I shifted around to the side and the building in the background came into view. That building was such an interesting combination of angles and lines and the contrast with the curves of the pipes brought everything together. The camera removes the third dimension and as photographers we sometimes bemoan that fact but it can be used to your advantage. Here the compression of the image into one plane makes the contrast of the shapes much stronger.

Life

A clump of moss on a rotting stump on the Juan de Fuca Trail. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 at 85mm f/5.6 1/60 ISO 1600

This is a very old place. You can feel it in the give in the soil under your feet, in the still air that seems to breathe in the silences, in the trees that tower over you. Everything about this place speaks to the life that has struggled and lived and grown here for thousands of years. It is a cathedral without walls that honors the creative spirit and that breathed life into the dust.

Every time I hike the Juan de Fuca trail I watch out for and photograph interesting fungi. My daughter and I were hiking it a couple of years ago and we came across something I had never seen before, a fungus completely covered in moss. It was really quite beautiful. I opened up the lens to 5.6 mostly because the light was so dim under the rainforest canopy but it ended up giving me beautiful bokeh in the background. Bokeh is the term used to describe the soft out of focus circles in the background. The tone of the light is very soft and leaf filtered and I was happy with how those elements came together.