Historical – heath ofee dot com

Fort Calgary

Heath OFee — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:06:12 +0000

Fort Calgary was built in 1875 by the North West Mounted Police and eventually became the foundation for the city that would become Calgary. Originally set up to bring law to the west, stop the whiskey trade, and befriend the local First Nations peoples, it now stands as an important piece of our history. These days, Fort Calgary is a common tourist stop and also hosts weddings and other events throughout the year. I made a stop there during my photowalk through the east side of Calgary a few weeks ago, and snapped a few brackets of the old wooden barracks. I knew immediately that these shots would have to be black and white and I’m quite pleased with how this one turned out.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 16mm, F 11, ISO 100, 3 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

Simmons Heritage Building

Heath OFee — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:02:59 +0000

Although Calgary is a relatively young city, there are a few pretty cool historic landmarks still kicking around, and any of these landmarks that are deemed worth preserving are given Heritage status and are typically restored and sometimes used as retail or office space. The old Simmons building in the East Village was constructed in 1912 for an estimated cost of $20,000 and was used by Simmons to make quality bedding products until 1966 when flooding from the Bow River necessitated a move. It is currently occupied by the Calgary Municipal and Land Corporation. They have a much more detailed history of the building on their site if you’re interested.

I took the below shot with my Sigma 10-20mm and purposely got nice and close to the building and shot at 10mm to get the interesting distorted perspective. I also don’t usually place a subject right in the middle of the frame but sometimes the symmetry of a shot can be much more powerful than a traditional “rule of thirds” composition.

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

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.