A Victoria building covered in vibrant graffiti art. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85 at 21mm f/14 1/50 ISO 400
he back of a building, hidden from view reveals an incredible trove of detailed graffiti. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85 at 44mm f/14 1/80 ISO 400
Photographing Glass
Eliminating reflections in glass can be a challenge. Canon EOS 7D 50mm at f/4 1/60 ISO 200
My wife makes stained glass stepping stones and she was looking for a way to market them online so I set out to photograph them. While I wouldn't call product shots high art photography they did provide and interesting challenge. It was a typical dark Nanaimo afternoon and I knew I wanted a bright well lit image to show off the deep rich colours of the glass. I started with a a flash mounted on the camera because I was feeling lazy and hoping that ETTL would give me a nice image. That didn't work, I got huge reflections. I was standing directly over the stones looking down at them so I kept the flash on the camera but bounced the light off of white shoot through umbrella that I placed on the other side of the stone. The umbrella was angled down towards the stone and while this did provide a larger more diffuse light source it did not completely eliminate my reflection issues. Finally I twigged to the idea that the light was bouncing straight back into the lens and that I needed to give it a path that still hit the stone but would not bounce back straight to the lens. I set up an umbrella with a flash in it on either side of the stone so that the main light would hit the glass and bounce off to the side leaving a reflectionless image. It worked. If you want to see more of the images check hit the Stained Glass link at the top of the page
-Russell Berg
Speed Through Water
A swimmer slices through the water bringing up a graceful curve of water. Canon EOS 7D EF 100-400 at 210mm f/5 1/800 ISO 200
At the BC Summer Games of 2010 the triathlon events were in a small artificial lake, this made for not very interesting swimming as they went around in laps but it did make for some very good opportunities for photographers. The light was strong but still had some interesting characteristics especially as it play over the water. I could see that the most interesting time to take a photograph would be as the swimmer came up for a breath and her arm was reaching forward with a trailing stream of water. I set my shutter speed high and worked on trying to get the timing right. A long lens that I had rented for the occasion and a motor drive that would fire at 8fps both helped to catch that decisive moment when the swimmer was up for a breath, her arm was over her head and the trail of water had not yet fallen back. It took many tries and yielded some other interesting photos but this is the best of those.
-Russell Berg
A triathlete emerges from the water running hard before the water has even run off her body. Canon EOS 7D EF 100-400 at 100mm f/4 1/800 ISO 400
Getting a still photograph to elicit a feeling of movement and speed can be a difficult thing. Here at the same event I allowed the water to continue to help tell the story. The iconic image of a number written on the atheletes calf and the spray of water coming up off her gives us a lot of information in a non-traditional and interesting manner.
Stillness
The reach of a an old growth cedar far exceeds our grasp. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85 at 17mm f/5.6 1/60 ISO 200
The stillness that settles over you as you walk into an old growth forest is almost tangible. Not the tourist forests, the museum forests but a real portion of a real forest; one that you have walked for three days to get to. That kind of forest has a very real sense of presence. You can almost feel it breathing, and you are made stronger by pulling its oxygen into your own lungs.
It is so very difficult to get a sense of the size of one of these large old growth cedars, these 300 year old trees. I stood with my back to this one and twisted backwards with my camera over my head to look up towards the top. The site is dizzying and I wanted an image that reflected that fact. I had on a wide angle lens and I put the base of the camera against the tree so that the trunk would fill the bottom of the frame. The wide angle perspective pulls all of the other trees towards the same vanishing point. Recently as I was preparing this image for this blog post I played around with rotating the image to have the big cedar emerge from the bottom of the frame instead of the top but I really like the slight sense of disorientation that comes from having the big tree emerge from the top of the frame.
-Russell Berg
A River In The Wood
A river of wood flows through the frame. Canon EOS XSi EF 50mm at f/4 1/3000 ISO 200
There is a river that runs through the wood. The water is quiet and the eddy’s move slowly but the water speaks deep truths in the warm silence of a sunny evening. The water is locked in the grain of the wood and the stillness that is there runs deep beneath the surface. I run my hands over the wood and I can feel the age that rests there.
I found this rather large and impressive stump on a remote beach on the Juan de Fuca trail and I spent much of the evening photographing it. The texture of the wood, the silvery colour, the way that the grain had been exposed in flowing cracks that seemed to live and breath were all very compelling to me. This was a remarkable piece of wood and it was very special to be able to photograph it. There were several places where the structure and grain of the wood seemed to flow like water and I wanted to photograph it with that kind of feeling to it. I wanted an isolating depth of field but one that was open enough to allow the viewer to get a good look at the grain so I settled on f/4.
-Russell Berg