The Death of Purple

He had not thought that the anger would rise in him this quickly.  He had thought himself a more rational, reasonable man.  Someone who could work his way through most any situation but the emotions boiled in his belly and he hoped that he would not see her.  He did not feel up to the level of self-control it would require if she was there, standing at the railing as she so often did.  He turned the corner on to the street and looked down the block.  She wasn’t there.  He quickly mounted the steps and laid the black tulip on to the mat, turned on his heel and left.

My wife and I were on a garden show and I had been taking pictures of the flowers that I came across.  Some of them were really remarkable and almost gaudy in their appearance and then I was struck by what appeared to be an almost black tulip standing off by itself.  Contrast is an element of photography that sometimes gets overlooked but can produce some very interesting images.  I wanted to increase the level of contrast by turning the foliage in the background into an amorphous green blur so I switched to my fast 50mm and opened up to f/2.2  This allowed even the stalk of the tulip to go out of focus and set the bud floating on a field of green.  I was pleased to see that the tulip’s leaf remained in focus to increase the visual interest of the bottom of the frame.

-Russell Berg

Casco Viejo

My wife and I were wandering through the old city of Casco Viejo in Panama City and my eye was caught by this old building.  I think the thing that first struck me was the ragged outline of the roof against the skyline.  The overhanging roofs of the neighbouring buildings help to build the sense of compression that the wide angle lens establishes by pulling in the edges of the frame.  After I took the image I pulled it in to Nik HDR Efex Pro.  HDR Efex Pro is a piece of software that is intended to produce HDR like images from a single RAW frame without having to take 3 or more frames.  (If you are interested in HDR check out this tutorial.)  I hadn’t really used HDR Efex before and I was impressed with the results of some of the more subtle treatments.  If pulled out the detail in the overhanging eaves of the neighbouring buildings and and added real punch to the texture of the image.  Below is the image without the HDR Efex treatment.

-Russell Berg

Tidal Stairway

He stands at the edge of the land and looks out over the water.  The old staircase is still there, it was there when he first moved to the coast and it would be there long after he was gone.  They had once lead directly from the guest house down to water and he had stood there many mornings as he waited for the others to begin to stir.  The wooden guest house had been destroyed in a storm, but the stairs, the stairs were still there.

I went for a long walk down the beach and came across a large concrete staircase that extended down into the sand and the water at high tide.  It was tilted at such a crazy angle and it didn’t really lead anywhere, just up on to some rocks on the beach.  I found the thing very compelling and spent quite a while working to get the best image of it.  I really liked the way that the railings draw you into the picture and pull you down towards the the horizon and the dramatic sky.  The B&W treatment emphasizes the form and the lines of the image.

-Russell Berg

Grandpa Look

Her grandfather walks the beach with her.  This is not a little stroll to water’s edge to watch her swim kind of walk.  They walk for kilometres down the beach. He walks, she sprints ahead, she finds something absolutely enthralling in the sand and stops to dig it out; he walks.  She runs ahead to try and chase the sand pipers; he walks.  She is a like a rubber band that is attached to him; first stretching far out behind, then shooting back to him.  It is a relationship that is characterized by love and trust but with enough freedom to breathe.

Sometimes it takes more than one image to tell the story.  I saw these two walking on the beach in Panama and I loved what appeared to be the casual yet clearly close nature of their relationship.  I wanted illustrate this relationship and I felt that I couldn’t really do that with just a single image.  The whole thing was too much to squeeze into one image or at least I am not a good enough photographer to see a way to do that.  So I settled on a little triptych that would work together to tell the story.

-Russell Berg

Threatening Skies

The heat of the mid-afternoon sun had begun to ease as the skies in the south had darkened.  There was a tension in the air as the storm rolled up the coast.  The wind picked up and palms began to whip stiffly in the breeze.  It was coming fast and then it was upon us, the sky opened up and released its water.  The rain was warm and wet and delicious, rinsing the sweat salt from my skin, easing the warmth that pulsed underneath.

I went out into a storm on the beach in Panama to enjoy the rain and then as it ended the most amazing, dramatic skies appeared.  I rushed back to our room for my camera and headed down to the beach.  I knew I needed to underexpose to increase the drama of the sky and dramatic skys are great on their own but the picture is so much stronger if there is something with some visual interest in the foreground.  I remembered that there had been a boat down the beach so I hurried down there.  I knew I wanted to use a wide angle lens to get as much of the sky as possible but that also mean that the boat would appear smaller so I waded out to get as close as possible, (I was chest deep in the water).  I really am happy with what I got.  I feel like the photo has a strong sense of the drama of the passing storm and the boat adds some visual weight to the foreground.  I did have to lighten the boat with the Brushes tool in Aperture to make it pop a bit more.

-Russell Berg