Church – heath ofee dot com

Wooden Faith

Heath OFee — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 16:31:31 +0000

This tiny church has made a number of appearances on my blog…well, 3 in addition to this one, to be exact, and I think this will be the last in the series. I had a ton of fun shooting the exterior of the church with those amazing clouds, and I feel very lucky to have been given the opportunity to photograph the interior as well. To close out the series, I’m giving you a view from the entrance straight down the aisle to the altar. Tiny church, right? Despite it’s small size, it’s still pretty impressive when walking in. The wood panels are a very deep, rich red/brown and the stained glass windows really are as vibrant as they look in the photo. Enjoy!

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 11, ISO 100, 5 Exposures

Mistakes…

Heath OFee — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:33:02 +0000

We all make ’em, right? Whether it be in our personal lives, at work or while doing something we love, mistakes are an unfortunate but necessary part of life. So, since these mistakes are inevitably going to happen, the best thing to do is try our best to learn from them and try not to make the same mistake again. Why am I talking about mistakes today? Well, recently I was given the opportunity to shoot the interior of St. Paul’s Anglican Church (you can find some photos of the exterior here and here). When I got home and dumped my images into Lightroom, I was disappointed to see that for a number of series of brackets I neglected to shoot a frame that was suitably exposed for the stained glass windows on the east side of the church. When shooting my brackets I always check my histogram to make sure I’ve covered the whole spectrum of light, but on this occasion I didn’t think to double check the images themselves to make sure the windows were okay. Thankfully, there is a ton of information stored in those magical RAW files and I was able to retrieve enough light information to make the windows passable in a few images…this is the case in the photo you see below. Moral of the story? Check your histogram AND the images themselves…or get yourself a darn Promote Control and bracket from -4 to +4 ALL THE TIME

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 11, ISO 100, 5 Exposures

Details, Details, Details

Heath OFee — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:09:50 +0000

I just finished reading Brian Matiash’s great post from this morning and I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit. It turns out that both of us were working on photos from our Italy archive last night! Mine are from a trip I took with my whole family last May which was absolutely fantastic. We had a great time and I came home with a ridiculous amount of photos (and at that point I wasn’t even shooting brackets for HDR!).

Although I already processed the keepers from that trip last year, I’ve been having some fun going back through them and running a few of the single RAW files through Photomatix to see what kind of results I can get. I’m hoping that this exercise is fruitful enough for me to keep posting some of my re-processed Italy shots over the coming months. Last night I worked on a couple and I’m quite happy with the details I was able to pull out in this shot of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L, 24mm, F 7.1, ISO 100, 1/640 sec

Another View of St. Paul’s Anglican Church

Heath OFee — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 21:53:55 +0000

A little while back I posted a photo of St. Paul’s Anglican Church here in Calgary (old post here) and it was a very successful photo for me. Not only did I receive a bunch of positive feedback from photogs and non-photogs alike, the photo was also purchased by the Anglican Journal for their 2011 calendar! So I thought I’d share another photo from what was a pretty cool day for snapping some brackets…perfect clouds and a very cool church/cemetery for a subject. Hope you all like this one too!

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 13mm, F 11, ISO 100, 3 Exposures

Device to Root Out Evil – Dennis Oppenheim

Heath OFee — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:18:30 +0000

I took the day off work yesterday and went for a decent photowalk downtown early in the morning. I got a few really cool shots of the new Palliser South building which I’ll share next week, but today I want to show you all an awesome outdoor art installation in Ramsey. This piece is called “Device to Root Out Evil” by Dennis Oppenheim. Until a couple of years ago the piece was in Vancouver, but it was brought out to Calgary by the Glenbow Museum and placed in a small grassy area in Ramsey (just off Spiller Road on 24th Ave). The clouds were just awesome when I showed up there yesterday morning so I had a ton of fun shooting this amazing piece of art. I hope you like the finished product below…I’ll probably share a couple more shots in the future.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 11, ISO 100, 3 Exposures

The details: 3 exposure HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, Lightroom for contrast and clarity, Noiseware for noise reduction.

Oh, I have to throw out a hat tip to Chelsey over at Wishing Star Photography who brought this cool piece of art to my attention. Thanks Chelsey!

St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Midnapore

Heath OFee — Mon, 31 May 2010 14:55:48 +0000

We’ve been having some pretty depressing weather here in Calgary for the past couple of weeks…lots of rain, a bit of snow and plenty of cold. Not the kind of weather you’d like to see at the end of May. However, this kind of weather produces some really cool looking cloud formations that make for absolutely great photos. I had been telling myself that I should go take advantage of the opportunity all week, but never mustered up the motivation until yesterday afternoon (thanks for the extra push sweetie!). I knew exactly where I wanted to go…St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Midnapore. This historical church was built in 1885 and is in fantastic shape thanks to the Midnapore Church of England Society who have worked hard to maintain the church since the 1990’s. I was inspired to photograph this church by Steph over at MzDeitz who posted a really cool photo of the dilapidated St. Patrick’s Catholic Church which is just a stones throw north of St. Paul’s.

The clouds couldn’t have been more perfect when I arrived…this was the first shot I took when I got to the scene and the only one I’ve processed so far. I think I should have a few more good ones to make a neat little series of the church and cemetary. Let me know what you think:

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 13mm, F 11, ISO 100, 3 Exposures

The details: 3 exposure HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, white balance, contrast, clarity, sharpening in Lightroom, noise reduction in Noiseware.