Benetton

Three friends lie on the deck of a ship talking as the ocean washes by. Konica DiMAGE Z10 20 mm f/3.4 1/640 ISO 64

The deck was only place where air was moving.  The boat moved slowly through the equatorial waters and inside the heat was unbearable.  Even here the humid air clung to your body.  

I was walking on the upper deck of a ferry in Indonesia with a group of my students as we headed out to the jungle to do a service project.  I looked down and saw three friends laying on the deck.  They were in scattered positions and as I watched the came together to produce a very interesting composition.  The open and engaged attitude of the two girls on the left pulls in the girl on the right who appears to be listening.  I really liked the position of the black girl’s hand, in fact the photo really is about their hands rather than their faces

Death

A piece of decaying drift wood on the shores of the Juan de Fuca Strait. Canon XSi EF 50mm at f/1.4 1/4000 ISO 200 -1 ev

I was hiking along the Juan de Fuca strait with my daughter and we had camped for the night when I came upon this piece of driftwood.  The texture of the wood as it had decayed in such a remarkable pattern was what interested me and I wanted a photograph that pulled your eye in to that.  I chose my fast 50mm and opened it right up to f/1.4 to created a very small plane of focus.  I got what I wanted but I knew that I would want to do more when I got the image back home.   I opened it up in Nik Silver Efex Pro and converted it to black and white and applied a vignette to completely black out the distracting background.  Not only does this force the eye to focus on the central subject but it also helps to set the mood of the photo.

-Russell Berg

Glacier

A young woman approaches the enormous mass of the Columbia Ice Fields. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85 at 17mm f/4 1/400 ISO 200 -1ev

Harbour

Nanaimo's boats lie in harbour under a dramatic sky. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85mm at 17mm f/22 1/125 ISO 200

Hiatus

I am going to be taking a week off from my blog.  See you next Monday.

-Russell Berg