New Brighton – heath ofee dot com

New Blog, New Eyes, and The Eye of a Monster

Heath OFee — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 02:17:29 +0000

As I type this blog post I am still marveling at the miracle that is laser vision correction. I’ve worn glasses or contact lenses since I was 11 years old, and the fact that I can now wake up and go about my daily activities without needing either is really nothing short of a miracle. I’ll publish a full summary of my experiences in a week or so, but for now…on to the more exciting news: I’ve launched my new blog today!! For a long time now I’ve thought about shedding the yycofee.wordpress.com URL and moving on to a more professional photographer’s name here . com style hosting platform, but only made the plunge into getting my own domain name and hosting a couple of months ago. Since then, I’ve been working off and on trying to sift through the infinite customization options offered by my WordPress theme trying to get things looking *mostly* the way I like. The hardest part by far was trying to create a logo/header…so any feedback you have on that would be appreciated. I’m sure over the course of the coming months I’ll notice things that I want to change/add/remove, so bear with me, I just really wanted to get this thing live! On the off chance that you’re a current subscriber to my old RSS feed, you can re-subscribe to the new feed here. And if anyone still uses bookmarks and happened to have my old blog marked, don’t forget to add heathofee.com to your list!

Yesterday, I went for my first short photowalk after my eye surgery, and since my car is still parked across the city, I was limited to wherever my feet could carry me. I’ve said this before, but I live in a relatively new development, so there are still a number of large construction vehicles around almost all the time. I had walked the dog earlier in the day and saw a couple of these construction giants that I wanted to capture when I went back out with the camera…unfortunately, two of the three I wanted to shoot were in use by the time I returned. So…with only one of my locations still available, I tried to make the best of it and ended up with a few usable brackets from the one construction vehicle….the first is below:

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 16, ISO 100, 5 Exposures

The Crusher

Heath OFee — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:00:56 +0000

I’m not sure what it is about big construction equipment and HDR, but I’ve been on the lookout for a cool piece of equipment to bracket since I started with the HDR thing. I’ve mentioned before that I live in a fairly new suburb of Calgary so there is still quite a bit of construction going on…which means plenty of large yellow equipment is lying around not being used on the weekends just begging to be photographed. So, this past weekend I did a quick lap around the neighbourhood on my way home from a downtown photowalk and came across this bruiser of a machine sitting on an empty lot between two finished houses. I like to think it’s main job is to crush whatever happens to be in it’s path with those giant teeth mounted on the front cylinder…it’s a pretty cool machine.

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

Storm Over New Brighton

Heath OFee — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:39:30 +0000

Recently we’ve been getting some pretty dramatic looking clouds and storms over Calgary, but because I have to get up ridiculously early for work I haven’t been staying up late enough to catch these storms during sunset. Inspired by Mike Olbinski, who has some amazing storm photos, I decided it was worth the loss of sleep and ventured out last Thursday night to get me some brackets!

I live in a relatively new suburb so there is still plenty of open space and construction going on and I knew just where I could find a good vantage point to see this storm…it was just luck that there was some tall wavy grass growing on the hill that happened to make for a perfect foreground. I thought about masking in one of the originals to keep the grass looking a bit more stationary, but I kinda like the flowing feel that the windswept grass gives. Hope you enjoy!

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

The details: 3 exposure HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, Lightroom for catalogue, color, contrast, Noiseware for noise control.