Layers

I was out walking through downtown Nanaimo looking for ways to introduce depth into a two dimensional image, looking for images that pulled the eye into the frame.  I am drawn to subjects that speak of urban decay, of a place that had once been brimming with life and energy but now was left only a shell.  I came across this window that wrapped around a triangular shaped building that was partly covered with paper left after the tenant moved out.  This image brought both of these things together. The portion of the window that was covered reflected the street behind me, I could see through the middle section of the window, to the street on the other side but the second window picked up more reflections at a different angle.  It all worked together to give about 6 different views of the street behind me and the street in front of me.  I had to work hard to find the right position so that I would not become part of the image.  I really like the way that the layers of glass produced and almost double exposure effect for portions of the frame.  There is a lot of see in this image but I am especially drawn to the way that the street light pole is repeated in a shadowy reflection and the vague idea of a person in the deep background.

Looking down into the pillared entry of a courtyard. Canon EOS 7D Mk. II EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.6 1/80 ISO 250

Earlier that same grey morning I had come across this location and I really had to hunt to find the right angle from which to shoot it.  It is near the China Steps in Nanaimo and getting above the arches gave them a more interesting appearance.  I leaned against the wall in the extreme right of the frame to anchor the image.  I used an extremely large aperture, f/1.6, to push the wall out of focus and dark out of focus portion of the right side of the frame provides a contrast to the crisp shapes of the arches and brick patio and fence beyond.  The light and the light coloured tiles pull the eye deep into the frame, away from the dark anchor on the left.  I also darkened the edges of the frame and lightened the centre portion of the arches so that your eye would be pulled deep into the centre of the frame both by what’s in focus, and by where the light is. Finding ways to introduce depth into, what essentially is, a flat medium can really add interest to your photographs.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Fixing The Window

I stood in the parking lot of a 7-11 looking at this house.  I had been out driving around looking for interesting images and this house grabbed my eye, I had done a u-turn at the next intersectionand now I had to figure out how to make the image.  I felt as though the house needed to have a very straightforward angle, nothing fancy, so I chose to shoot it straight on, so the viewer could only see the front wall of the house.  It felt almost as though this is what would have been drawn in the set director’s sketchbook when the scene from the movie called for a rundown house with some character so I wanted it to look, as much as possible like a facade so I shot it straight on.  I was also pretty sure that I wanted to end up with a square frame, I felt that it fit the visual language of the house so now I just had to choose which side of the house put on the edge of the frame.  The rather lifeless looking tree on the right side, fit into the frame better than the spruce trees on the left and they added to the mood and tone that already existed in the house.  I was also pretty sure, right from the start that the house needed to be slightly off-centre so all of these ideas came together in the composition that you see here.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Paul leaned forward on the ladder his position, somewhat precarious.  He felt the old gutter pipe bend and give a little more as he leaned forward.  The stairwell window had been leaking and there was now a brown stain on the plaster on the the inside wall.  He had watched the stain grow every time he climbed the stairs to his room over the last two months.  He had noticed it when it was just a small semi-circle under the moulding around the window but now it was overlapping layers of brown streaks running from the edge of the window to the floor.  In some ways it had marked the passage of time in his life better than the calendar, better than the schedule at his job assembling fences at construction sites, better than the mounting number of days that had passed since he had last spoken to his father.  But now, now it was time to fix it, now it was time to put a fresh layer of caulk around each pane.  This might stop the water from making the stain grow, but it wouldn’t stop the unending rows of construction fencing and it for sure would not make his father pick up the phone.  But… it would stop the leak.

Holding Tight

The old girl wallows a bit in heavy seas, the bilge pumps too slowly, and the starter needs a tap of the hammer to get it going but she has plied the waters of the inside passage for 6 decades, hauled halibut, herring, crab, and prawns, and brought her crew home safely every time.  At times the water, has come over the bow, the engine has refused to sputter to life, the electrical systems have all gone dark but every time, with the help, urging, and cursing of her crew she has eventually roared to life and brought them safely home.  Now she rests, the water laps gently agains the wooden hull in this protected passage and she holds tightly to the safety of the dock.

I was floating down Newcastle Passage heading back to my slip when I saw this old boat.  I knew that it would provide for an interesting subject but there were a few challenges.  There was a mess of distracting and uninteresting colours and a very busy background.  The first step was to convert to black and white.  That instantly improved the image but I still wasn’t getting the texture and the age of the vessel.  I have tried this kind of thing in Silver Efex Pro but Nik has another plugin called HDR Efex that really pulls the texture out of an image in an interesting way.  The peeling paint, the dents and the age of the boat really came forward.  Next I had to deal with the background.  I added control points all over the background in each different tonal area that allowed me to darken the background and separate the boat from it.  It’s better but still not completely successful.  The fact that I am using a telephoto lens here works against me being able to separate the boat from the background as telephotos tend to compress your image.  The next thing that I wanted to do was to enhance and brighten the silvery smooth water.  I felt like this would provide an interesting contrast to the battered boat so I brightened the water and increased the contrast.  If there is one thing that I am still unhappy with it is that I wish there where a little more breathing space on either end of the boat inside the frame.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Laundry Art

Good images happen when you walk around with your camera.  I was walking with friends around downton Seattle and as we wandered past an alley I happened to look up and this is what I saw.  I believe, although I am not sure, that it was an urban art installation.  They way that the wires crossed back and forth from all different levels, the fact that every piece of laundry was white, it all spoke to and intentional piece of art.  I thought it was beautiful and your experience of it changed as you walked underneath and the lines and placement of the pieces changed as my perspective changed.  I knew that I wanted a photograph of it but it presented a challenging exposure situation.  I was standing in deep shadow with dark shadows falling on parts of both walls and a bright blue sky right behind the main subject.  I didn’t want the walls to go black because the sense of context that they give is really important so I took my initial reading using spot metering off of one of the shirts and then underexposed by one stop.  I wasn’t concerned about preserving detail in the sky because there was none, but I didn’t want the shirts to blow out the highlights.  Luckily the shirts were all in shadow so they weren’t too hot, exposure wise.  By going -1 on the exposure the walls were very dark in my original image but there was enough dynamic range in the file to pull the detail out in post processing.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com

Support

It’s been a long time since I have been posting regularly and that is largely because all of my gear was stolen and I was waiting for it to be replaced by my insurance company.  I’d like to thank Steve Julien who was a big help.  He’s a fantastic photographer check him out here.  On my first shoot I went out to a local marina and I came across this image underneath one of the piers.  The texture and tone of the wooden posts was very compelling against the glassy smooth ripples of the water and I wanted a treatment that would emphasize this.  I pulled the image into Nik Silver Efex Pro and pulled up the contrast and the structure while maintaining the silver tones in the wood.  Without really intending to this gave the water a glassy smooth texture that contrasted beautifully with rough wood.  The pier on left provided enough visual weight to anchor all of the visual activity on the right side of the frame but I didn’t want it to be distracting so I darkened it substantially.  I think this gives the eye an entry point in the left side of the frame but allows the eye to move into the more complicated structures on the right side.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com