Italy – 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

Espresso

Heath OFee — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:10:10 +0000

I have such great memories from my time in Venice, and one of the best was the morning of our arrival. We took an overnight train from Rome to Venice and arrived in the city just before sunrise. That morning, we basically had the place to ourselves. Nothing was open yet and the streets and alleys were silent and deserted…it was such a peaceful few hours.

When the cafes finally started to open, we stopped at the first one we could find for a quick breakfast and an espresso. This shot of my (at the time) girlfriend (now my wife) really captures the feeling we had both had that morning. Beautiful light and empty streets in one of the most unique cities in the world.

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L, 45mm, F 5.6, ISO 100, 1/50 sec

Textured Villa

Heath OFee — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 15:05:29 +0000

Since I’m on a bit of an Italy kick, I thought I’d share another from my time there a couple years ago. This shot is of Villa Poderaccio, the Tuscan Villa we stayed in for the week. I love the contrast in colour and shape of the red brick surrounding the door and the round stone throughout the rest of the frame.

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L, 47mm, F 7.1, ISO 100, 1/60 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

Busted

Heath OFee — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 15:40:01 +0000

I’ve been having a bit of fun for the past couple of days going back through the photos from the trip I took to Italy in 2009. A lot of the shots are not up to my current standards, so it’s been a bit of a challenge to find some that are worth re-processing to share. It’s a challenge, but fun nonetheless, if only to see the progression I’ve made as a photographer over the last year and a half.

This is a close-up of one of the many busts on display in the Coliseum in Rome. I probably should have written down whose likeness this is when taking the photo, but I didn’t…so we’ll just say it’s a famous Roman emperor I decided to send this single RAW image through Photomatix Pro to see what kind of extra detail I could bring out. Even with only one exposure it did a great job of accentuating the textures and age in the stone. I then used onOne Phototools to help define the shadows and highlights to add a bit more punch. Hope you like this ‘in-your-face’ image

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L, 97mm, F 4.0, ISO 800, Single Tonemapped RAW

Angelic Sunset

Heath OFee — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:26:52 +0000

I was sifting through my Italy photos last night and stumbled across this little gem from Rome that I’d forgotten about. Sometimes HDR is not necessary for an image to have impact, and I feel like this is a good example of that. HDR would have brought out all the detail in the buildings instead of letting them fall into complete silhouette.

Now, I’m not entirely sure what buildings these are in Rome. I do remember shooting this just down the street from the Coliseum, so if any of you know what we’re looking at here, feel free to drop a comment to let me know!

Canon EOS 50D, Canon 24-105mm f/4.0L, 105mm, F 7.1, 1/1250 sec

Secret Passage

Heath OFee — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:09:16 +0000

I’m not sure if it’s the best idea to label a secret passage as such, but that’s what the fine people of Montepulciano, Italy decided to do. Not like it would have been difficult to find anyhow…it was right beside the main gates into town! That being said, my visit to Montepulciano was one of the highlights of my trip to Italy last year. It is one of the many amazing walled, hilltop towns in and around the Tuscan region, and it was most definitely one of the coolest we visited. Walking into these ancient stone cities you can practically feel the history oozing out of every rock. On my way up the hill to the church square at the highest point in the city, I could picture men on horseback coming back from battle to celebrate with the whole city. It really was quite magical.

St. Mark’s Square by Night

Heath OFee — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:07:49 +0000

When I first stumbled upon HDR early this year, I didn’t jump straight on the Photomatix train, I actually tried out a Lightroom plugin called Enblend/Enfuse. I spent quite a bit of time going through some of my old RAW files, splitting them into 3 pseudo-brackets and running them through this plugin. Some of the results I achieved were actually quite good considering I was working with single RAW files. I rarely use this plugin anymore as Photomatix is my go-to HDR creation/tonemapping software, but today I’m going to share one of the images I processed using this plugin.

This is a shot from the brief time I spent in Venice during my visit to Italy last year. I was in absolute wonderment the entire time I was there…I couldn’t even believe a city like Venice could exist and there were unbelievable photo opportunities around every corner and along every tiny, cobbled street. Getting lost in Venice was probably the most fun I had on my Italy trip. Weaving through the shaded streets and then stumbling out into one of the countless squares was a joy. I’d love to go back one day.

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L, 24mm, F 11, ISO 100, 10sec