Goose Neck Barnacles

Goose Neck Barnacles on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Canon EOS XSi 50mm f/1.4 at f5.6 1/60 −1ev

I am a pretty public person, some are probably annoyed with the fact that I sometimes push myself into the spotlight.  I am often loud and assertive but I love the quiet of time to myself.  I was searching for this one day when I drove out to the west coast of the island.  I walked out on to Long Beach in the misty October morning and the rain stopped as I walked across the beach.  I remembered a colony of barnacles on the seaward side of a large rock on the beach and I had timed my arrival to coincide with low tide.  I found my spot in a gap between two large rocks that opened out towards the ocean and began to photograph the barnacles.  I loved the quiet solitude of these moments as I searched for  the right image.  The light wasn’t great so I set up my flash and put an orange gell on my snooted flash.  I wanted orange to warm up the light and give the appearance of sunlight on a very overcast day.  The snoot allowed me to focus the light in a smaller area.  I made my snoot out of cardboard folded into a sleeve that slides over my flash.  I liked the way it brought focus to the barnacle colony.

-Russell Berg

Iguana In The Sun

An Iguana suns itself on the rocks in Tulum, Mexico. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 70-300mm at 300mm f/7.1 1/400 ISO 250

The animal twitches in the sun.  Flies have settled on it’s tail and it lazily flicks it against the rock to dislodge them.  The heat from the rocks radiates up into it’s body and the lizard settles into the warmth.  

I wanted this picture to be a study in composition.  I saw the opportunity to divide the picture in two with the brightly lit rocks on the left and the dark background on the left.  The line that separates the two areas is very sharp and clearly defined not just by differences in tone but also by the shift in focus.  The background has been thrown out of focus and this makes the sharp edge of the light rocks even more distinct.  However, the element that really makes the picture effective is the fact that the focal point, the Iguana, bridges these two areas.  The viewers eye is drawn either up or down the the dividing line between the two areas and towards the lizard.  It’s head points out into the negative space of the shadow and is clearly defined there.

-Russell

Oranges In The Light

A high key still life of oranges and pomegranates. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85mm at 65mm f/6.3 1.250

There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.

-Edouard Manet

I have always liked the effect of producing high key still life images and I wanted to try and produce one myself.  I set up a white background on our kitchen table and pulled out some fruit and a white plate.   I started with setting up a manual exposure on the camera that would eliminate all ambient light.  Basically I took pictures without flash and reduced the exposure until the picture was almost black, this indicates that there is no ambient light hitting the sensor.  Then I started to add flash.  In order to make the background disappear. I had to put a significant amount of light on it.  The background itself was not pure white, it was an off-white linen kind of material I increased the power on the flash until the background turned pure white and the texture disappeared.  Then I added another flash below the camera pointing directly at the fruit.  I had a small fabric lightbox on this flash and I increased the power until I got nice highlights from the orange.  Overall I was pretty happy but I would like to have been able to eliminate the shadows in the foreground.

-Russell Berg

The Walls Close In

A narrow alleyway in downtown Victoria. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 10-22mm at 10mm f/8 1/20 ISO 1250

Victoria, BC has a wonderful old downtown area with some very interesting and narrow alleys.  I stumbled on to this as I was wandering through the city and was struck by the graphic nature of the tight brick walls, the plank ceiling and the bare bulb that hung in the middle.  I used a wide angle lens to emphasize the enclosing feeling of the alley and the shift in perspective almost makes it feel as though the walls wrap around you.  In the original frame the bare bulb light was visible but I cropped it out as the extreme contrast in brightness was distracting.  I also really liked the way that the splashes of light on the walls imply the bulb on the ceiling without us having to see it.  The exposure was also somewhat tricky, it the camera read the exposure off the bright area in the centre all of the walls would have been very close to black.  I used spot metering and took a reading off of the area just this side of the light area and I got a decent exposure.  I am still not entirely happy with how bright the opening is but of course at the end of every tunnel…

-Russell Berg

Work

A 1930’s era hay rack leans into a prairie morning. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85 at 17mm f/9.5 1/200 ISO 400

Cecil walked slowly from the field.  There was an ache in his shoulders, a special ache that only arrived during haying when 14 hours of pitching bundles up to the rack had slowed him to the point of exhaustion.  He turned and looked back.  The old hay rack was on its last legs and he would have to build a new frame for it.  He looked down and kicked at a clump of dirt in the stubble, it crumbled into dust.  It was very dry again this year.  It was at these times that he felt the weight of the responsibility for his family as heavily as the work that he had just demanded of his shoulders.  This was not going to be an easy year.  Cecil turned again and walked back towards his truck.

I took this photo at a 1930’s haying festival in north eastern Alberta.  The people at this festival demonstrate how their work was done in the ’30’s and I was reminded again of how hard the people who built this country worked.  I grew up on the prairies and my early life was permeated with farm culture.  They are a special breed and I feel honoured to have known many of them.

-Russell Berg