Rust – heath ofee dot com

Salton Sea – Leaning

Heath OFee — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:51:50 +0000

I’m not entirely sure what this old, rusted barrel would have been used for back in the day, so if you have any ideas, feel free to let me know. This structure is one of the only things still standing on the waterfront at Bombay Beach. Most of the other old houses and trailers have completely caved in and decayed over the years…I should have a couple shots of those coming in the near future.

The one thing that made it difficult to shoot at this location was the nasty ground conditions. From the photo below, it may appear as though the ground is just a firm, salty crust, but what you don’t see is the one or two inches of soft mud that lies just below the surface. The day I went to Bombay Beach, I did not have the appropriate footwear for tramping around in the mud, so I was unable to get some of the shots I would have liked. I’ll be making my way back there better prepared on my next trip to California.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 11mm, F 16, ISO 100, 1/50 sec

Rusted Growth

Heath OFee — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 16:40:31 +0000

This is a detail shot from the same building seen in my previous post. If you look hard enough at yesterday’s photo, you can probably spot this on the left wall. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what this boxes are, although it seems like they probably have something to do with the electricity that must have run to this place when it was still intact. If any of you can shed some light on what these might be, I’m all ears.

What really struck me about these boxes was the crusted growth encasing the inner structure. The textures were amazing and almost coral-like, so I had to get a close up.

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

Peeling

Heath OFee — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 21:02:41 +0000

I love all the detail in this door. The peeling paint, the rusted door handle, the nasty old temperature gauge…it’s all good stuff. To keep this shot from being texture overload, I decided to take a few steps back and frame the very busy door against the simple corrugated siding of the building. I like the contrast in colour and texture this framing produces.

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

In Your Face

Heath OFee — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:57:39 +0000

Interesting foreground elements and leading lines can turn a ho-hum scene into something more compelling. Although there were a number of great individual elements in this abandoned warehouse to shoot, creating an interesting composition that included a large chunk of them required a bit of thinking. Nobody wants to look at a pile of discarded junk without any sort of focal point or direction, so finding that key element that leads the viewer through the frame is key.

When I saw this overturned table and rusted piping, I knew how I wanted to frame this shot. Getting close to the end of the pipe with my wide angle lens allowed me to make the opening of the pipe the focal point, and the distortion provided by this same lens really leads the eye through the frame.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 12mm, F 11, ISO 100

Gold Boxes

Heath OFee — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 13:50:02 +0000

When I was in Mexico, all I could think about was how many great urbex opportunities there were down there and how I wasn’t going to be exploring any of them. Between the bus rides to and from the airport and the cab ride to the second resort we stayed at, I saw more great urbex locations than I can count on two hands. I would have absolutely loved to be able to pull over and explore all of them, but firstly, that wasn’t the reason for our trip, and secondly, I think it would have been pretty dangerous. Even if it wasn’t, I would have been too scared to wander around abandoned buildings in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language. So, since I’ve been home I’ve been chomping at the bit to get out and shoot a little urbex. Over the Christmas holiday we had a nice Chinook here in Calgary, so the temperatures were back in positive territory for a few days, and I took advantage by going out for a quick shoot on Sunday afternoon.

This is one of those shots that I visualized before I even knew how to get to the location. While driving home through the industrial part of Calgary, I saw these stacks of shipping containers and knew exactly how I wanted to shoot them…the only trick was finding how to get to them! Turns out it wasn’t too difficult to find, and I was able to get almost the exact shot I wanted. As usual, after running my brackets through Photomatix Pro, I exported the tonemapped image to Photoshop and applied a few of my favourite onOne Phototools filters (Grunge, Orton Hears a Who, Just Enough Darkness, Fall Out, and Enter the Dragon A4 applied selectively). Then I took it into FocalPoint to add the tilt effect I had envisioned. This was my first time using FocalPoint, and I couldn’t be happier with how that plug-in works. Very simple and intuitive, and the blur quality is fantastic. Hope you like it!

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

Shall We Bake?

Heath OFee — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 13:06:15 +0000

Well, I think this is the first image that I’ve really noticed a difference between what it looked like on my monitor at home when editing and other monitors. The image I worked on had much more warmth and vibrance than what you’re probably seeing below…I guess it’s really time to invest in a monitor calibration device.

This is another shot from the abandoned baseball diamond in Seebe. You may recognize the bowl sitting on top of this old oven from a previous image. Cake, anyone?

Canon EOS 50D, Canon TS-E 17mm f/4.0L, 17mm, F 4.0, ISO 100, 5 Exposures

Wheelset 046

Heath OFee — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 21:51:16 +0000

Have you ever felt completely uninspired by the shots you were able to get after a day out shooting? That’s mostly how I felt after the afternoon I spent hunting brackets in Invermere, BC this past weekend. The light was kinda flat all afternoon and there didn’t seem to be very much drama in the grey, overcast sky…so I had some trouble finding inspiration. I find in these situations it helps to distance yourself from the photos for a day or two before you go back to process them all. This way you can attack the photos with a fresh attitude that isn’t tainted with the crummy feeling you had while you were out shooting.

One of the places I knew I wanted to hit was the train tracks on the west side of Windermere Lake. There’s always at least one train just hanging out there and I’ve always found trains a little bit fascinating even though I know next to nothing about them. I shoot most of my HDR with a wide angle lens and try to take in as much of a scene as possible so this detail shot of a train is a bit of a departure from the norm for me. I have no idea if the wheels on a train are actually called a ‘wheelset’ or if the number painted on these wheels has any kind of significance, but I thought it would make a cool title anyway.

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