Europe – heath ofee dot com

Hooligans

Heath OFee — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:10:43 +0000

I have a busy day ahead of me, so just a quick one this morning.

I shot this during my very brief visit to Florence a couple of years ago. Nothing terribly exciting, but I had to capture this lone graffiti tag on what was an enormous brick wall.

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L, 88mm, F 7.1, ISO 100, 1/500 sec

Grand Canal

Heath OFee — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:10:27 +0000

Back to the Italy archives for today’s image.

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but Venice is by far one of the coolest cities I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. There are so many streets and alleys to explore, and you never know what you’ll find around the next bend. If you haven’t been, you should put Venice on your must see list.

Although I still love processing HDR photographs (and probably always will), lately I’ve been finding a lot of enjoyment in processing single exposures. There are many times when the limited dynamic range of a camera can make a scene more compelling than if the full range of light were exploited. If you’re an HDR enthusiast, experiment with two versions of an image: one tonemapped from a set of brackets and one single exposure from the set. See if all that dynamic range is really necessary to convey your photographic message. It’s easy to fall into the trap of shooting brackets and processing for HDR all the time…make sure you inspect your bracket sets before tonemapping to really see if you need to expand the dynamic range.

Don’t be afraid to try new (or old) things, it’s good for you, and you may just fall in love with this wonderful hobby all over again.

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L, 24mm, F 7.1, ISO 100, 1/320 sec

Vatican Poste

Heath OFee — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 14:22:02 +0000

I’m cheating a bit today. I was out late having a few beers and playing ping-pong and darts (that’s right, ping-pong), so I didn’t have any time to process a new image. So, I’m posting an old shot from my trip to Italy in May of 2009.

This is probably my favourite shot from my brief time in Rome. The simple composition, the blast of colour, and the rich texture just really grab me. Happy Friday, everyone!

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L, 45mm, F 7.1, ISO 100

Green Beer

Heath OFee — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:18:04 +0000

Last night I decided to take a look through my photo archives to see if I could find anything worth a second look. I’ve said this before, but I think this is a valuable exercise as it not only allows you to see the progression you’ve made behind the camera, but also allows you to showcase some of the new post processing skills you may have developed.

This shot is from my trip to Italy in May of 2009. We spent most of our time in the Tuscan region, but did manage to get to Rome, Venice and Florence for at least a day each. Our time in Venice was probably one of the highlights of the trip. It is such a unique city, and there are almost boundless photo opportunities. The shot below is a very simple composition, but the empty bottle of Heineken on the window sill adds just enough to the frame to make it interesting for me.

Since I wasn’t shooting brackets for HDR during my time in Italy, this is just a single image tonemapped in Photomatix to really bring out the texture. I then brought it into onOne’s Phototools for a few global adjustments and some selective warming and cooling. I finished it off with some selective application of the Midnight filter in Nik Color Efex Pro.

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L, 32mm, F 7.1, ISO 100