The Look

The idea of shooting a wedding has never really appealed to me, I really dislike posing people and so if I were ever to do it on my own it would have to be done in a very documentary style.  I guess that this picture would best exemplify the style of photography that I like to do at a wedding.  My niece asked me to fill in the gaps where her portrait photographer couldn’t be and this was one of them.  The whole wedding party was waiting downstairs in the church and her groom called to her across the room.  I happened to be ready as she swung her head to look towards him and I got one of my favourite two shots of the 700 or so that I took.  We don’t know who either of these two individuals and yet we understand so much about the moment.  The fact that there really isn’t much identifying information makes the appeal of the image more universal.  The veil and the hairdo tell us this is a wedding, the swinging earring tells us that she has just now turned to look at her lover and even though he is in soft unfocused shadow there is a feeling of nervous anticipation to the image.  I feel as though I was lucky enough to capture what Henri Cartier-Bresson calls “the decisive moment”.  For me if there was one moment that captured the day it was this one.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

The Dress

I also really like the way that the laces draped and hung on the dress.

I went to my niece’s wedding this past weekend and although she had hired a photographer she asked me to fill in the gaps and shoot the parts and places where the photographer could not be.  This was perfect for me, I really hate posing people and I am horrible at it so it is great for me to not have to do that.  I talked to the photographer about the whole situation, (it’s really important to clarify all of this when you are working alongside a professional), and she was great about it all.  When the ladies where getting ready, and after I had steamed all of the bridesmaid’s dresses, I saw the bride’s dress hanging in the door way to a walk-in closet with the veil draped over the bodice.  The line and form of the empty dress was an appealing and interesting still life so I started to shoot it.  Shooting from outside the closet left the image with a very busy background so I decided to try from the inside the small closet.  I had enough room for my wide angle zoom to get the whole dress in.  I bounced the flash off of the ceiling and turned it down ⅔ of a stop to prevent the whites in the dress from blowing out.  I the flash was bouncing around the walls of the closet so it was almost as though I was shooting from inside a giant soft box that produced some really appealing areas of light and shadow.  In post I pulled the image into Nik Silver Efex Pro, the image was crying out for black and white, darkened the background areas into blackness, and pulled some more texture from the dress.  I was really happy with the end image except for the window behind the veil.  I tried to get it all black but just couldn’t quite do it without wrecking the veil.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Vandal

There is a section of downtown Tacoma that is a haven for graffiti artists.  My wife and I were wandering around the area on a sleepy Sunday morning when we stumbled across a parking garage that was completely empty except for a painter going to work on the interior.   Every wall of the garage was covered in graffiti and deep in the interior was this guy working away on a new piece.  I took some pictures of the pieces nearer the entry and then moved closer to where he was working.  I watched him paint for a while and then asked if I could film him for a while.  He said yes and he became part of a short video that I made about the artists I encountered on the trip.  We talked a bit and he told me that the owner of the garage let them paint on the interior of the garage on Sundays when there were no cars around.  I asked if I could do a portrait of him and he agreed to stand in front of one of his pieces but he wanted to keep his mask on.  He leaned up against the wall and I got the image below.  I liked the contrast of the bright colours with his monochromatic clothing and the way that the light filters across the image from the left.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Coasting Real Slow

Jackson turned suddenly and pulled away from Paulette. There was so much about her that he didn’t understand.  He had thought he knew who she was and what she wanted with her life but as he glanced back at her, her skirt swinging lightly around her knees, the sun playing through her golden brown hair his stomach twisted and turned.  This was not someone he could just walk away from was it?  He knew that so much of their lives had been announced, determined, and foreordained from their first moments in this clearing in the glade.  He tore himself away, it would have to be something different, someone different and he turned to run, to the dark cool corner of the yard that lead down to the stream and out.

When you explore on bike you see things that you wouldn’t see in a car, including, especially other bikes.  This bike was back from the road almost completely hidden in the overgrowing rain forest.  I really liked the way that the curve of the wheel disappears into the ferns and other undergrowth to create a half circle.  The curve of the circle pulls the eye around and into the mysterious dark spot at the back of the frame.  I love it when an image has a little mystery, a hidden story.

iPhone Series # 1    iPhone Series # 2    iPhone Series # 3

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Drunken Mailboxes

I really enjoy my photographic equipment.  I like reading manuals and reviews and sometimes I get wrapped up in the technical stuff at the expense of going out and making images.  When that happens I like to force myself to simplify, so on a recent cycling trip around Hornby and Denman Islands I took only the phone that was on my camera.  I don’t often take my camera with me when I am biking but on this trip I was determined to go out with just my phone and come back with some decent images.  This week you will see them here.

I flashed past these mailboxes and as I looked back at them the image of 6 drunken friends stumbling home in the too bright sunlight of the morning after flashed through my mind.  I knew that angle and perspective would be important here as I hadn’t noticed anything until I was almost past the mailboxes so taking a picture from straight on would not produce a strong image.  I leaned in to the mailbox and allowed the right mailbox to fill the frame, this forced the further mailboxes to recede into the frame and exaggerated the lean.  When I got the image home, the fact that the mailboxes where green and the foreground and the background was green made the image pretty monochromatic anyway, and as I wanted to emphasize the form I converted everything to black and white.

iPhone Series # 1   iPhone Series # 2   iPhone Series # 3

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com