Dark Arch

She stands in the corner, waiting with her children.  The darkness of the twilight is beginning to press down upon them and although it is still very warm outside a chill runs up her back and she pulls the children a little closer.  Her man is out on the battlements, he is not a soldier, he is a tailor, but there he is, when the pirates come everyone is a soldier and she wonders if the night will leave her a widow.  The wind starts to pick up and she can hear the flags start to snap in the breeze.  The sound is distinct, too loud, and then she realizes that it is no longer the flags she is hearing but the crack of muskets.  The battle has begun.

Establishing mood and and emotional tone within an image can be a tenuous thing that is difficult to grab in the moment in which the image is taken.  Often this is easier to manage in post as the light and circumstances of the shot may not suit the story that you are trying to tell with the image.  This picture was taken right around midday, on a blazing hot day but my head was full of stories of marauding pirates and guardian priests as we walked around Casco Viejo in Panama City.  I wanted an image that carried with it the fear and ominous portent of an approaching invading force.  I was standing inside rock walls that had witnessed the terror and confusion of a people under attack and I wanted to be able to look up into the image and feel those emotions.  I pulled the image into Nik Silver Efex Pro and started playing with some extreme changes to contrast and texture, then I started to work on the undersides and lower levels of the rock wall to produce a dark and heavy visual weight to the image.  The perspective of the very wide angle lens puts you right at the base of the wall looking high up into history.

-Russell Berg

A Man of Will

The man turns and I am immediately struck by his eyes.  He has a heavy, prominent brow covered with grey flecked eyebrows.  His eyes appear to stare out at me from deep within his head and deep in that tunnel there is a fire burning there.  He lashes out, not yelling, but his voice has a hard steel edge that cuts through all of the noise that the city uses to try and keep us down.  He moves towards me, occupying my space, a thin line of spittle forming on his lips.  This is not a man who lays down while others roll over him, and even thought the years have softened his impact this is a man who will not be ignored… a man of will.

I was wandering around Gastown in Vancouver and walked past an alley that had this graffiti painted on it.  I loved the fact that the man who seemed to be angry was lying in shadow.  That and the earth tone colours provided an interesting contrast with the celebratory, exploding colours on the the left.

-Russell Berg

The Wall

I was walking around downtown Vancouver recently, very much enjoying that I live on the west coast of Canada as many of my friends and family who live on the prairies were suffering through and extended winter.  I have always enjoyed construction sites as places of potential photographic interest and as I walked past this one I was struck by the contrast of colour and form.  The architect appears to have designed a new building that will preserve the facade of very much older one and the construction is growing up around this wall.  The blue green windows in the background provide a contrast with the gritty greys, browns, and reds of the old wall.  Not only are the colours working in our favour but the windows curve into the background on the left side of the frame in a very modern style when compared with the square blocky windows of the old wall.  When I got the photo home I punched up the texture, contrast, and saturation of the stone, wood and glass in Nik HDR Efex.  I wish that I had been able to frame the picture from a little further to the left so that I was taking the image from exactly 90 degrees to the wall.

-Russell Berg

Variations - Let me know what you think.

Sometimes I stand in front of a subject and I find it so compelling that I stay there taking picture after picture trying to get the right image.  That was the case when I came across this lighthouse lamp.  The fact that I was photographing what is, essentially, a giant lens that has such a strong graphic statement to make was the perfect subject for a photographer.  The three pictures I have here are not terribly different in their angle and approach when I was taking the picture but I decided to take a substantially different approach as I processed each of them.  Just as, in the days of film and print, the vision of the photographer is not completely realized until the image has been processed.  I find a lot of artistic fulfillment in sitting down at my computer with good software tools to work to achieve my vision for the image.  The photographer’s job does not end when the shuttered is released, it is not complete until after the image is ready to be viewed.  I am interested in hearing from you; which of these treatments you think is best, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

-Russell Berg

Alone at The Storm

Rosa looked over her shoulder.  There was no one here but the feeling that someone was following her was palpable.  The man who had watched her so intently at the vegetable stall was gone but the metal taste in her mouth that he seemed to inspire was still there.  The wind whipped at her skirt and turned to start walking.  There was nothing to be done right now but as she turned the corner into the alley her mind again began to whip through the possibilities and the problems, right now there was too much, right now…

Just before and just after a large storm are often great times to get very dramatic sky’s.  In this image the rain part of the storm had passed and the sky seemed to be pressing down on me.  To emphasize this feeling of compression I got low on the ground with a very wide angle lens and waited for the water to approach.  The advancing and retreating waves had made the sand very smooth and I wanted the water to produce a line (1) that would echo the line of clouds (2) near the horizon.  I did not notice it when I snapped the picture but the bird (3) in the really dark clouds at right helps to balance the visual weight of the island (4) on the left.  Sometimes your most important decisions, photographically speaking, happen when you are at the computer, deciding what to keep and what let go.

For some other images of dramatic storm skys check here and here.​

​-Russell Berg