Skyline – heath ofee dot com

Empty Shadows

Heath OFee — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:40:39 +0000

This scene may be somewhat familiar to those of you who check this blog on a regular basis, as I posted a similar photo at the start of 2011. The company I work for recently moved into a new set of offices in a brand new building here in Calgary, and most of the floors are still unoccupied. So, this past weekend I took my second trip up the stairs to the 45th floor (5 from the top) to capture a few more shots of the (almost) completely empty space. I can’t get enough of the long shadows the floor to ceiling windows create on the concrete…it just makes me smile.

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

Room With a View

Heath OFee — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 16:09:46 +0000

Happy New Year, everyone! Thanks for a great 2010, and here’s to an even better 2011!

My company recently moved into a brand new building here in Calgary. Currently we’re the only tenants, and since we only occupy three floors of the 50 storey tower, there are a whole ton of empty floors just begging to be photographed. So, yesterday afternoon I made the hike from my location on the 10th floor all the way up to the top of the building (the elevators don’t go further than 12 right now), hoping to get a cool shot of the empty space with a nice view out of the floor to ceiling windows. The top floors had a bunch of construction equipment strewn about, so I had to go down a few floors to find a blank slate…this photo was taken somewhere between the 40th and 50th floors.

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

Caribbean Sunrise

Heath OFee — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 13:27:04 +0000

I’m back! As most of you know, I was away in Mexico for the past two weeks getting married and celebrating my honeymoon. We had an amazing time hanging out with family and friends for the first week, and were able to enjoy some time to ourselves at a different resort for our honeymoon in the second week. As soon as we get our wedding photos back I’ll be sure to post a few of the highlights here, but in the meantime I’ll be sharing some of the shots I was able to take while away.

This first photo is actually the very first frame I took on the beach. It’s part of a bracket series that I had intended to process as an HDR, but the silhouette of those palm trees against the first morning light was just too good to pass up! I made a few adjustments in Phototools, but nothing too dramatic…this is very close to what the shot looked like in-camera.

Despite being on vacation and really wanting to make use of the time to get some quality sleep, I did manage to haul myself out of bed for 4 sunrises over the course of the two weeks. It was definitely worth it, and I should have a few more decent sunrise shots to share in the coming weeks!

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 7.1, ISO 100, 30.0 sec

Tiny Skyline

Heath OFee — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:40:56 +0000

I’m back after a two day absence! Life is a little hectic right now…moved into a new building at work on Monday and I’m leaving this Saturday for my wedding in Mexico! As a result, I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting for the remainder of this week.

This is a shot from back in August. Initially, I wasn’t entirely happy with the brackets I collected from this location. But I went back to a few of them last night and, with the help of onOne’s Phototools, was able to get something I’m quite happy with.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 16, 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.

Calgary Skyline from Prince’s Island Park

Heath OFee — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:08:31 +0000

While on my downtown photowalk a couple weekends ago I made my way over to Prince’s Island Park and took a few shots there. It was a relatively cold morning at about -8 celsius and I wasn’t wearing the ideal footwear for tromping though the snow (slip on loafers were not a good choice) but I couldn’t resist this frost covered bench with the city skyline punctuated by a sunburst. The original crop of this image included a tree in the background on the far right of the frame but I was forced to crop it out when masking in the sky from one of the original images. I’m still working on the whole Photoshop masking process, and this one didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted…but I gotta keep trying if I’m gonna learn, right?

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

This is a 3 exposure HDR image (-2,0,+2) tonemapped in Photomatix, original sky masked in from the -2 exposure with some final tweaks in Lightroom. Any critiques are more than welcome!