Chair – heath ofee dot com

Nasty and Delicious

Heath OFee — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 14:12:11 +0000

Today, I thought I’d take you all back to the Salton Sea for some delicious urbex. This is a shot from Bombay Beach which is quite possibly the creepiest little town I’ve ever been through. It’s set up in a small grid pattern and probably measures 10 streets by 10 streets. There are still some people living there, but most of the houses and garages have either fallen completely apart or are in the process of slowly decaying. I really wanted to explore all of the amazing urbexy goodness, but to be honest, I was scared of being chased off by some crazy person with a shotgun. Probably an unnecessary fear…but you never know

Just over the hill from the main town, there’s an old beach with some completely burned/salted over homes and trailers. What was once a nice little beach is now completely abandoned and littered with dead fish. It’s a bit sad, but makes for some very interesting images.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 16, ISO 100

If You Build It? – Score Shack

Heath OFee — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:15:59 +0000

Today, another installment of my ‘If You Build It?’ series from the abandoned baseball diamond in Seebe, Alberta. You can find the other images in the series here, here, and here.

I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of this little shack used to be, but I’m guessing it may have been where the scorekeeper used to sit during the game. It took a bit of creative maneuvering to get my tripod and camera into a decent position to take this shot. The door to the shack was not being particularly helpful, and I kept getting smacked in the face by some unruly little trees, but in the end, I was relatively happy with this composition.

I decided to go with a pretty dark look when editing this image. I really wanted to emphasize the deep shadows and bright highlights, and make sure that the chair and lone paintball strike were the focal points. To achieve this, I selectively applied the ‘Midnight’ and ‘Tonal Contrast’ filters from Nik Color Efex Pro on top of my usual application of a number of filters in Phototools. My processing for this image was definitely inspired by urbex HDR master, Jacques Gudé (aka fotofreq). If you’re unfamiliar with his work, be sure to check it out!

Canon EOS 50D, Canon TS-E 17mm f/4.0L, 17mm, F 8.0, ISO 100, 5 Exposures

Smoke Break?

Heath OFee — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:50:01 +0000

I’ve said this before, but one of the coolest things about this whole social networking thing is meeting so many other like-minded people who share the same passion for HDR photography that I do. Twitter has been a gold-mine for finding and connecting with these wonderful people, and I feel very lucky to be a part of the community as I’m able to draw daily inspiration from my tweeps.

I would never have thought to take this photo if I hadn’t connected with some great urbex photographers recently. Although I don’t think I can really classify this shot as urbex since this spot is far from abandoned, it definitely has a nice grungy, dirty feel. As soon as I saw this scene I immediately thought of the work of Brian Matiash, Bob Lussier and Jacques Gudé. The grungy barrels and brick, and especially that single old chair, reminded me of the great work all three of these photogs produce on a daily basis. So, this shot is my homage to them…thanks for the inspiration, fellas!

Oh, and as for the title of the post…while in the process of taking a set of closeup brackets of the chair and barrels, I was almost hit by that door being opened by two cooks coming out for a smoke break in the alley. I conceded the chair to them after my last exposure was done

Canon EOS 50D, Canon TS-E 17mm f/4.0L, 17mm, F 16, ISO 100, 5 Exposures