Peering In

I have to admit I was playing with shallow depth of field because I had just bought a fast 50mm lens.  I was looking for only the thinnest slices of focus and playing with that technique often at the expense of the image.  I believe, however, that when you get a new piece of equipment or learn a new technique that it is important to play with it in a kind of obsessive way as long as you can eventually pull back and find the best ways to use that technique or equipment.  I suspect that this image would have been stronger if I had allowed the beam and the bold in the foreground to remain in focus.  I do, however, really like the way your eye gets drawn into the frame.  There is a strong sense of depth and I find my mind wandering down that steel shaft into the frame to see what is hidden down there.  I like the indistinct, unknown nature of the photograph, we want to know, we want to see what’s there but we can’t.  It’s that tension that keeps us looking.

For a different look at this kind of farm equipment check here and here.​

-Russell Berg

Elbow on the Sill

I have found the city of Victoria and it’s architecture to be a significant inspiration for me.  There is something that strikes me as I wander those streets with my camera that pushes the photographer in me to see things differently.  I find the parts of a city that are on the edges of survival to have a truth in them that is so much more beautiful than the manicured lawns and refinished driveways of suburbia.  The texture of this wall jumped out at me as a wonderful background to the three black openings of the windows.  The texture of the glass that remains in the windows provides an interesting counterpoint to the yawning darkness below.  The rusty stains around the edges and the lichens growing on the window sills bear silent testimony to dozens of winters, to hundreds of eyes looking out, to the arms resting on summer evenings watching the city walk by.

Other Victoria images here, here, and here​

-Russell Berg

Green on Black

Aidan sat on the grass and leaned back.  His back rested against the bark of the pine tree and he brushed back and forth scratching his itchy back against the tree.  He looked down at his boots and saw the faded blue drop of ink where her fountain pen had leaked as they stood in front of each other.  They were so close they seemed to be breathing the other’s air and somehow the pen she had been holding in her left hand had leaked on to his faded brown boot.  He had known in that moment, he had known that he was experiencing something  that would be rare in his lifetime but he didn’t know that it would lead him here, to this mountain, to this tree.

I was wandering down Giant’s Head Mountain on a brilliantly sunny summer afternoon.  The sun was quite high so I was looking for subjects that were in the shade.  I saw this stump that was burned out and had an interesting shape.  As I got closer I saw the small tufts of brilliant green moss against the dark stump.  I circled around it, trying to find the best angle and I liked the way that the moss stood out against the charred wood.  Depth of field was very important here; I wanted the moss in the foreground and the grass in the background to both be out of focus.  The dappled sunlight in the grass took on kind of mottled background look that added interest without distracting from the the green on black.  The curve of the foreground piece of stump almost nestles the main subject in it’s arm.

-Russell Berg

Lucky

Sometimes you just get lucky, all of the planning, all of the practice and sometimes it’s just luck.  I heard the street seller long before I saw him, he was hollering in Spanish up and down the streets of Casco Viejo.  My Spanish is non-existent so I didn’t know what he was doing until I saw him stop with his plastic bags and hand over a palm leaf wrapped lunch to a customer.  I was standing outside a very interesting building covered with beautiful textures and colours, (1) hoping that he would stop there.  He did.  I waited some more hoping for him to reach into his bag and hand over the palm leaf lunch or for the man inside to reach out.  The door opened just enough and I could see the interior light bulb;(2) I slid to the right  a little.  I thought the image would be stronger if we couldn’t see all of the man inside.  I waited intently concentrating only on the doorway.  The man inside reached out with his wallet (3) and I started snapping away.  I didn’t even know that the woman in the purple shirt (4) had been there until I looked at my photos on the computer. She is the strongest graphic element in the frame and I didn’t even know she was there.  Sometimes you just get lucky.  I just wish I had been lucky enough to have the car drive off at the same moment.

For a wider view of this building and more info on how I processed this image check out this post

-Russell Berg

Celebration

The weight of the crowd is massive.  You can feel it pushing in against you from every side.  You feel it and yet there is an energy, a lightness to it that pushes back against the sheer mass of people and seems to lift you together with every other person.  There are people everywhere, for blocks and block and blocks there are nothing but streets filled with people.  The energy that rise off of each of us produces a heady mixture of excitement, anticipation, and joy.  It seems so amazing, so wonderful that all of the thousands have gathered in downtown Vancouver to celebrate and we are all, together, happy.

Getting a photograph that captured the miraculous atmosphere that pervaded downtown Vancouver throughout most of the 2010 Olympic games was a challenge. The lights of Granville St. were too large a visual monument to be left out so I knew I wanted to include them.  The crowds had to be included so I lifted my camera over my head, luckily I am tall, and prepared to take the shot.  I saw a man carrying a flag drift into view.  I didn’t want the overt patriotism of the flag completely unfurled, rather I wanted the more subtle statement that I think the partially hidden flag makes.  I waited until the guy carrying the flag was in the centre of the frame and the flag was a little lower.  I snapped and I knew I had what I was looking for.

-Russell Berg