Vanishing Point

Finding new perspectives in architectural photography can really yield some striking and compelling images.  Usually I get stuck working from a low point of view looking up.  This time, however, I noticed the very striking lines and forms of the open atrium tower of our hotel in Panama City.  I leaned over the balcony as far as I dared, opened up to as wide a focal length as I was able, tried to get everything square and snapped the photo.  The extremely wide angle lens helps to emphasize the compression of the image at the vanishing point.  Every line in the image pulls you down to the point at the middle of the frame and you feel as though you could fall into the picture.  Line and form where so important in this image that it had to be in black and white.  Even though the hardwood floors of the balconies on the right were a rich red the colour only really distracted from the power of the image.

-Russell Berg

Here's another look at how I have interpreted form and shape in architecture ​

www.seeingberg.com

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Sunlight In Her Hair

The sunlight plays through her hair and dances in the whisps that have pulled out of her braids.  She has a whole wide world in front of her and it has suddenly gotten much larger.  Her mind is reaching for and pulling in all of the new things that dance into her field of view but no one thing can hold her for long there is too much.  Then, without warning, she stops, she just stops and thinks, and walks.

A few summers ago I followed my niece around as she played on Long Beach on Vancouver Island.  She is from the prairies and everything to do with the ocean was exciting for her; she was a whirlwind of activity; running to see something new, playing in the sand then up and running again.  I got quite a few good images of her in motion but for a moment she moved slowly away from me and looked down, her hands behind her back.  Her brilliant blonde hair stood out against the blue sky and she was for a moment, still and alone on the wide wide beach.  Sticking with a subject can really pay off, I got some pretty good images of her running and moving but this photo seemed to me to have more to say, she dominates the frame but is at the same so very small and seems to have something very serious on her mind.  Finding the instances in time where the image is evocative of all of these things is the photographer’s challenge.

-Russell Berg

There is  another portrait of one of my other niece's here.​

Windblown

Andrea stands wondering, her back is to the water as she leans against the rock.  She has the happy tired feeling of contentment in her bones and and a light smile plays at the corners of her lips.  This has been an incredibly difficult year but now everything that she has faced, well almost everything, is behind her.  There were moments when she wondered if it would all be possible, but now…  Now she smiles, looks down for a moment at her shoes and turns towards the water, her face into the wind.

At Neck Point in Nanaimo there is a wonderful tree that is clinging to a rock on the edge of the ocean.  It looks as though it has experienced decades of hurricane force winds that have forced it to grow sideways out of the rock.  I have photographed this tree several times but I wanted to produce something very moody and evocative that helped to tell the story of the trees struggle for survival.  I pulled one of my exposures into Nik Silver Efex Pro and began to work on it.  I used a high contrast filter and but that made the ocean and horizon almost black so I added control points to the water to increase the brightness of that area.  I also wanted a more dramatic sky so I darkened the top ⅓ of the frame.  I really like the way that the tree exists as a silhouette in a state of tension between the dark sky and the dark water with a band of light running through the middle of the frame.

-Russell Berg

If you are interested in more tree photography check here and here.  Or type 'tree' into the search bar.​

Little Boy Lost

The little boy is lost.  He has not lost his way, he has not lost his mother, but he is lost.  Lost in a world far outside the one in which he inhabits and deep inside one in which he has created.  The flow of his imagination is like a river that moves through and over and around him.  Everything that he sees, hears and touches is part of his world and it is perfect.

Getting a decent photograph of a child happens all the time.  There small forms, bright eyes, and unguarded expressions are very photogenic but you have to work a little harder to get a photograph that helps to define who this little person is and what childhood is about.  I saw this little boy playing on a sidewalk with his tractors and there was something so intent, so purposeful about what he was doing that I got down on the ground and watched him for a while.  I was using a telephoto lens so I could sit a ways back and watch him without him noticing.  Getting down low is really important when photographing children.  So many photos of children are taken from adult height but getting down on the ground puts the viewer in the child’s world.  I sat and watched and waited for the right moment, then he started to get up and squatted back down almost folding himself in half to look down into the tractor on the right and I fired away.  I love the way that this little boy is so intent on the story in his head that he is bends almost in half to see what the imaginary little man in the tractor is doing.  It felt to me like a perfect little moment of childhood.

-Russell Berg

The Night Slides By

The brisk night air pushes its way down into the crooks and crevices of her lungs.  She can feel the close, warm, dirty air of the bar being pushed out of her and she breathes deep, holding it in as she fights back the tears.  She turns, puts her head down and begins to walk.  The energy of the city tries to lift her but lead in her belly will not let it.  She has walked away from him for the last time, but somehow… somehow it doesn’t feel like the last anything. This, is the beginning.

Oh why weightless as I close my eyes? Oh why the ceiling opens in disguise? Such a painful trip to find out this is it           -Ben Folds “Cologne”

When my wife and I sat down at this table in the Swan in Victoria I was transfixed by the big old building across the street.  I knew I wanted a picture of it but I also knew that I wanted something more than what I would get if I went out into the street and took a photograph from the sidewalk.  I wanted the building to be a part of a story and from where I was sitting I began to see that I had a chance to build an image with lots of layers, lots of depth.  I knew that I would be dealing with reflections so I just decided to embrace them.  I started by adding the salt and pepper shakers to the right side of the frame.  I knew that I was going to leave the window frame in the shot so I needed something to balance the visual weight.  The fact that they are substantially shorter than the visual anchor on the left side of the frame helps to reenforce the energy of the image which is moving towards the vanishing point at the right of the frame.  I set my camera on the table to keep it steady during the long exposures but it was too low so I crumpled up the napkin and propped up the lens to get the right angle.  Focus in these conditions is almost impossible for AF so I set it manually and fired off a frame every time someone walked by.  I probably took 70+ frames during supper to get this one.  There was a very distracting for sale sign on the building that I cloned out and I played with the tonal values to increase the texture and contrast in the building.  The blurred image of the woman walking by adds to the surrealism of the reflections reaching out into the street.  I am really happy with how it turned out.

-Russell Ber