Flowers In The Mist

A dreamy purple flower in the morning mist. Canon EOS XSi EF 70-300mm at 300mm f/5.6 1/350 ISO 800 −1ev

I found this flower after wandering around the edges of a prairie slough on an early summer morning.  I caught a glimpse of it through the mass of green reeds and grasses.  I couldn’t get very close to it without getting wet but I was drawn by the contrast in colour and texture.  Everything was very soft. And the droplets of dew accentuated that.  I pulled out my telephoto zoom to pull the flower in close and I noticed the contrasting texture of the hair on the stems of the plant.  Normally I don’t like to have something obstructing my view of the main subject but I feel as though the out of focus stem of grass in the foreground adds to the sense of crowding and compression that was a part of the live scene.  Normally I don’t play much with filters or heavy post processing effects but in this case I applied some effects from Nik Colour Efex Pro and I was quite happy with the result.  

-Russell Berg

The same image after processing. Canon EOS XSi EF 70-300mm at 300mm f/5.6 1/350 ISO 800 −1ev

Dragonfly

The dramatic colours of a dragonfly. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 22mm f/4.5 1/250 ISO 200

I was driving around town with my windows open and a dragonfly flew in the passenger window smacked against something hard and died.  When I got home I took looked at the poor insects and his body was still in remarkably good shape so I took it out to a very shady part of the the backyard and setup to photograph it.  I set up my flash on a stand and began to figure out my exposure.  As I learned from David Hobby (He has a very good tutorial on learning to use your flash in manual mode.  Check it out you will learn a lot.), I started with an exposure that would allow me to eliminate the ambient light so that the background would go very dark.  This meant using a relatively high shutter speed.  If you look at this image without flash it is basically black even though it was the middle of the day.  This allowed me to completely control the light in the scene.  From there it is just a matter of adjusting the power of the flash until I got the effect I wanted.  I used one Sigma EF-G 530 flash inside a shoot-through umbrella set at 1/16 power.  The umbrella gave the light a nice wrap around effect and placed a nice circular blue-white highlight in the tops of the dragonfly’s eyes.

-Russell Berg

Dawn

Dawn comes slowly to the deep blue waters of the Pacific. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 22mm f/7.1 1/160 ISO 200

Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.

-Emily Dickinson

I woke up early to a beautiful misty, golden dawn and I immediately started taking pictures of the very striking sunrise.  It was beautiful but I soon turned the other direction and I was struck by the combination of deep but muted colours in the west.  The sunrise was all garish gold and sparkly but in many ways the image I got when I turned in the other direction was just as strong.  I under exposed a little to add depth and saturation to the colour and I got a beautiful deep dark blue in the foreground.  Finding ways to pull your eye into the image is not all about using lines, sometimes colour transition can also have a powerful effect.  The passage from almost black in the foreground to the yellow light on the shore to the light purples of mountains in the background pulls the eye forward into the image and gives the image more dynamic strength.  

Friends

The old man turns to look at me from where he sits and from eyes that are hooded with age he starts to smile. It is a gentle and knowing smile, a smile from a man that has grown very comfortable in his own skin. He has paused for the moment in his gentle banter, his back and forth with the woman who is cutting his hair. They have clearly been doing this a long time. This Saturday morning ritual where he comes and sits and she stands and cuts and they both talk. He knows the names of the children who are in pictures pasted on the mirror and she knows exactly how low his hairline should be at the back of his neck so that it does not rub on the collars of his shirts; he hates that. They share a quiet knowing intimacy that has never extended beyond this chair and these Saturday mornings but it is, nevertheless, important for each of them. They are friends.

As a photographer, imposing yourself into these kinds of situations can be intimidating and difficult. I have, however, found that people are usually willing to engage in some conversation and will let you you photograph them. That was sure the case with these two I had to force myself to go in and talk to them but once I did we had a great time and I got some amazing portraits of them. For more on the story of this portrait and another shot from this series check out this post.

-Russell Berg

Pushing Down

Looking up a brick wall into the lamp. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 10mm f/22 1/20 ISO 160

Looking Up 3

(Cont. From Previous Post)  The light turned green and she pushed off the curb, walking quickly at first then running.  There was an insistence in her stride that propelled her forward.  The sense of purpose in her eyes was reflected in the rapid sure step of her feet and the set of her shoulders.  She took a quick glance around, he wasn’t over across the street or in the intersection she was crossing but she couldn’t be completely sure.  She had almost reached the alley when she felt hand on her bicep, she wrenched a way turning quickly.  It wasn’t him… it was Phillip.

This image, in some respects, brought elements from each of my first two images in this series together.  It has the strong visceral pull of the colours combined with the form elements of the ivy.  I felt like having the lamp looking down on me brought a dynamic push to the image that was lacking in the first one.  It almost seems to push down against the viewer.  Here we also see again the benefits of image stabilization and good camera position to eliminate shake.  I am still constantly amazed by the benefits of image stabilization.  When I shot film I would never even think about going below 1/60 of a second.  Now part of the benefit is a result of pushing the base of the camera against the wall but this shot is a 1/20 of a second and it still is very sharp.