Hiding

Do you see it?  Yes, there’s a woman asleep on the statue on the bench, that’s what I thought I was taking the picture of, but there’s something else, someone else, look carefully… Sometimes you think you are taking a picture of one thing when later you realize you were really taking a picture of something else.  Did you find it?  If you haven’t seen it take another careful look the next sentence reveals the secret.  Under the tree on the right of the frame a woman is watching the sleeping woman, watching me?  When I took the image I did not see her.  I didn’t see her until I got the image into my computer and then I jumped.    There is something a little disturbing about this shadowy presence at the edge of the frame.  Once I saw her I wanted to increase the shock and surprise when the viewer suddenly does see her so I darkened the area where she is standing under the tree and the green bush behind the sleeping woman.  Then I lightened the sleeping woman and the flowers at both foreground corners.  My hope is that the viewer’s eye will enter the image at one of the corners, be drawn in to the sleeping woman and only see the woman under the tree later.  If you don’t see it right away the surprise is bigger.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Improvisation

This is what the pen looked like without the iPhone light

How to build a two light off camera setup without any photo gear.

This summer my car was broken into and just about all of my camera gear was stolen so I haven’t really felt much like keeping this blog updated.  Last night I was fiddling with one of my fountain pens and the orange celluloid of my Delta Dolce Vita seems to glow with an internal fire.  I thought to myself that it would be awesome to have a lamp shade made of this material so I turned off the lights and set the cap of my pen on top of a little flashlight.  It was so beautiful.  I took some pictures of the cap with the one camera I had that wasn't stolen, but then I realized that  with the high contrast setup the carving details on the cap band were lost.  If I had had all of my gear my instinct would have been to pull out one of my flashes, put an orange gel on it to match the light coming from inside the pen and fire away.  Since all of my stuff was stolen I didn’t have that option so it occurred to me to remove the blind cap from the back of the pen cover and use it to cover the light on my iPhone and use that to light up the carving on the cap band.  This had the benefit of turning the light exactly the same colour as the light that was glowing out of the cap but the drawback of being very dim so I had to hold the whole thing very close.  I like the way it turned out and the fact that I didn’t have all my gear meant that I had to come up with a pretty innovative solution that probably made the image better.  Who knows, it certainly was fun.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

For those of you unfamiliar with fountain pens this is the Delta Dolce Vita Oro in a more traditional lighting treatment.

The Glass Museum: A Short Photo Essay 3

This last image brings the geometry of the cone into focus as well as emphasizing the way that the light plays on on the stainless steel tiles.  The other images tend to emphasize the unity of the tiles but here I underexposed the image and increased the contrast and texture to the point where we can see the different ways that the light interacts with the materials on the cone.  The lighter centre and the darker edges give the image depth and we get a better sense of it’s shape.  The small aperture maintains focus as you look out to the clouds.  As you have seen in the last three images I am always looking for ways to increase contrast so I framed the shot to include the concrete wall and I increased the black point until the shape at the top of the wall almost looked like a hole cut into the cone.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

The Glass Museum: A Short Photo Essay 2

The Glass Museum in Tacoma has been built in an older area of Tacoma that is dominated by railway tracks and old warehouses.  This image is taken from the same pedestrian walkway bridge as the previous picture looking off to the south.  I loved the contrast of the modern curving stainless steel with the old square brick warehouse.  And yet our past has something to tell us about our present as the modern building is reflected in the windows of the old building.  The contrast of the steel-blue reflections with the red brick wall increases visual interest and moves the eye around the frame.  I processed this with Nik HDR to bring out the texture and colour of the brick.  The problem that I see with this photo is that I blew out the highlights in the middle of the sky.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

The Glass Museum: A Short Photo Essay 1

It may seem odd to have a photo essay about the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington without any pictures of glass but in the next three posts I want to focus on the architecture of the buildings and it’s neighbourhood.  The large conical building that houses the glass blowing gallery/workspace dominates the area with its textures and sharp geometric presence.  The stark rhombus shaped stainless steel patterns contrast with the more organic circular form of the tower itself.  In the first picture above I positioned myself on the bridge walkway so that the triangular wedge would cut across the cone, providing I hope, some visual tension in the image.  I was also please with the way that all of these harsh geometric shapes and textures contrast with the soft shapes and textures of the clouds in  the background.  I pushed the processing of the textures of the clouds in Nik Silver Efex Pro so that they would be more obvious.  The camera in the far right of the frame, and all that it implies provides an interesting counterpoint to the world that is illustrated in the next image in this series.  Available in a few days.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com