Lights – heath ofee dot com

Pinwheel

Heath OFee — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:10:41 +0000

It’s that time of year here in Calgary. The self-proclaimed ‘Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth’, The Calgary Stampede, is tearing up the city this week. For some, it’s a week of actual stampeding…bull riding, chuckwagon racing, steer wrestling, etc. But for most of the city it’s an excuse to dress like a cowboy for 10 days and drink your face off as often as possible. I try to stay away from either extreme, and if I could, I’d be away on vacation every year during this time. I’ve been in this city for over 25 years and I enjoyed the Stampede for a good number of them…but now I’m just sick of it all. So, since I’m still in the city for it this year, I figured I’d do Stampede my way: with a camera and a tripod

I made my way down to the grounds two nights ago, did a bit of candid shooting before the sun went down and then pulled out the tripod for a few long exposures of the midway. I was battling rain after sunset, so I didn’t get as many shots as I’d have liked, but I’m satisfied with the few I did get.

emergENCy

Heath OFee — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 15:50:59 +0000

I know I had mentioned sharing another texture experiment with you today, but I think I’m going to save that for tomorrow. Today, just a quick one from the same parkade you saw yesterday, only this time in black and white with some nice little bokeh highlights.

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 50mm f/1.4, 50mm, F 1.4, ISO 100

Pure Random Experimentation

Heath OFee — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 23:56:48 +0000

Here’s some total abstract randomness for a fine Sunday evening.

This photo is the result of leaving the shutter open for a full 30 seconds while walking downtown with the camera on my tripod slung over my shoulder. I’m sure this has been done many times before, but I thought I’d share this random image since I think it’s kinda cool. That is all.

Canon EOS 50D, Canon TS-E 17mm f/4.0L, 17mm, F 8.0, ISO 100, 30 Seconds

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

Centenary Park Bridge

Heath OFee — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:39:28 +0000

A couple nights ago I ventured down to Centenary park to attempt some sunset/blue hour shots of the Calgary skyline. I knew the exact spot I wanted to shoot from because I had been there a few years ago with my dad’s old Canon FT-b and his trusty old 50mm f/1.8 manual focus lens. This was the first SLR camera I ever used and I had a ton of fun with it for about 6 months until I bought my first DSLR.

While the photos of the skyline still need a bit more tweaking, I did take one other set of brackets of the bridge leading into Centenary Park. This shot is a bit of a re-creation of an old photo I shot on film from years past. I’ve always known I wanted to try the shot again because the colors came out completely wrong on film. I’ve put both images in this post…the top one was shot the other night and the greeny looking bottom one was shot on film all those years ago. Hopefully the new one is an improvement!

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 16, ISO 100, 4 Exposures

Building Blocks

Heath OFee — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:11:34 +0000

On the way back into town from our company golf tournament this past Thursday, I saw what is probably the coolest and largest piece of construction equipment I have ever seen. This giant contraption is currently being used to build the elevated track structure for the west LRT extension that will see our public train system make it’s way out to 69th St West.

I knew as soon as I saw this monster that I would have to come back to capture it, so on Friday night Brei and I made our way downtown to get a few brackets. Although I don’t think there’s anything outta-this-world about the shot, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Mostly I just wanted to get a shot of this thing while it was right over 9th Ave!

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 12mm, F 7.1, ISO 100, 5 Exposures

Vegas City Centre

Heath OFee — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:55:59 +0000

This is another one of my favorites from our trip to Las Vegas last month. The new Vegas City Centre complex is very cool and I didn’t spend nearly as much time there as I would have liked to (although I have a feeling I would have been given a hard time trying to take photos there with my tripod without permission). This shot was taken from across the street on the busy corner just outside Planet Hollywood. As usual, it was a pretty busy night on the streets of Vegas and there were dozens of people on the corner waiting to cross the street while I was patiently setting up and taking this shot. Before I got there with my tripod nobody was taking the time to snap any photos of this scene…but after I got my gear all set up there were at least 3 or 4 others taking photos with their point-and-shoots of the same scene! Funny how people assume that if some random guy is taking a photo of something with a big tripod setup it must be a good photo opportunity…for all they know I could be the worst photographer in the world! Anyway…let me know what you think of this one:

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 15mm, F 7.1, ISO 100, 3 Exposures

The details: 3 exposure HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, Lightroom for color, contrast, clarity, spot removal, Photoshop for layer masking and a bit of smudging, Noiseware for noise control.

My Mazdaspeed 3

Heath OFee — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:38:36 +0000

A couple of posts ago I briefly mentioned that I had taken some photos of my Mazdaspeed 3 in the parkade of the Suncor Energy Centre but I wasn’t too pleased with them because of the crummy car wash I got before taking the shots. Well, after a lot of work in post-processing I finally have one ready to show…and I’m relatively pleased with how it turned out. Let me know what you think because I’ve been staring at it for too long and in too much detail to really tell if it actually looks good

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 12mm, F 16, ISO 100, 3 Exposures

The details: 3 exposure HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, color correction, contrast and clarity in Lightroom, a bit of burning and cloning in Photoshop, and noise reduction using Noiseware (yup, way too much processing…but it was fun and a good learning experience).