Sun – heath ofee dot com

Vermilion Sunrise

Heath OFee — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:10:01 +0000

It had been a long time since I last shot a sunrise, so when Rick and his gang suggested we hit the Vermilion Lakes just outside the Banff townsite, I was pretty excited. We awoke about an hour before the sun was to rise and made the longer-than-expected drive from Lake Louise back to the Vermilion Lakes. Unfortunately, the lack of clouds in the sky made the pre-dawn light a bit less than ideal, but as soon as the sun rose above the mountains the lakes were bathed in delicious golden light.

There were probably 8 or 10 photographers in this area when the sun came up all jostling for a few great compositions that were to be had with some rocks and tree stumps in the water. In an effort to avoid the crowd and find something unique, I ventured just a little ways away and found this little dock which I instantly loved. I spent a good amount of time framing a bunch of shots in this location and couldn’t be happier with what I came home with.

Equipment:
– Canon EOS 5D Mark II
– Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L
– LEE Filters Foundation Kit
– Lee 4×4 3-stop ND Filter

The Lounge

Heath OFee — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:51:49 +0000

Last night I thought I would try something a little different. Inspired by a few people (Viveca Koh, Chris Nitz, and Doug Landreth), I decided to do some experimentation with textures and frames. The shot below is a mashup of a number of layered effects from PhotoTools, three textures at varying opacities (also from PhotoTools or PhotoFrame), and a border frame from PhotoFrame. This is a bit of an experiment, so I’d love to hear some feedback. I had a lot of fun playing around with textures and frames, so I can see myself processing photos in a similar fashion in the future.

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

The Warmth

Heath OFee — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 14:06:47 +0000

Do you ever get to a location to take some shots, and find one element in the landscape that you just can’t get enough of? For me, that element was this broken down pier. Conveniently enough, this pier was located right smack dab in the middle of the beach where we were honeymooning in Mexico, and I spent a good chunk of my sunrise time trying to capture it from a few different angles. This will be the first of a few images you may see of this pier.

As always, I took this image into Phototools after tonemapping. I applied a few of my favourite presets, the most important of which was the Golden Hour Enhancer. This is an awesome preset, and it’s really great for adding some warmth back into any image.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 13mm, F 7.1, ISO 400, 5 Exposures

Racing the Sunset

Heath OFee — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:15:01 +0000

Recently my friend Brian Matiash touched on the subject of photographers always racing against the sunset/blue hour, trying to make sure we get all the shots we want before that magical light runs out for the day. I’m definitely no stranger to that feeling, and found myself in exactly that situation last week when trying to get a few shots of the setting sun before I turned my attention to the harvest moon. For me it was a bit of a double race since I was also trying to catch the gaps between cars so I could set up smack dab in the middle of the road for this shot…thankfully, I found a relatively vacant stretch of secondary highway just south of the city and had plenty of opportunity.

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

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

Grain Elevator in Brant, Alberta

Heath OFee — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:07:33 +0000

This past Saturday, Brei and I took a quick road trip about an hour south of Calgary to the extremely small town of Brant, Alberta so that I could take some photos. You might be wondering why on earth I would choose to travel to this tiny town…according to www.ghosttowns.com, Brant is home to a large number of abandoned old buildings and I thought it would be cool to check them out. However, upon arriving in Brant, we found it to be mostly occupied. There are probably about 100 people still living there but it was far from abandoned and there didn’t appear to be a large amount of abandoned buildings as the ghost towns website advertised. So…I made the most of what was there. The most prominent structure was the old grain elevator situated right along the train tracks so I snapped a few shots of the elevator and the few train cars that were lying around. Below is the first photo I’ve processed. It’s a pretty simple image…big ‘ol grain elevator with a sunburst along one edge…but I like it. Sometimes simplicity is nice.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 14mm, F 20, ISO 100, 3 Exposures

The details: 3 exposure HDR (-2,0,+2) tonemapped in Photomatix, color correction, contrast, clarity, sharpening in Lightroom, original sky masked in using Photoshop, noise reduction using Noiseware. Let me know what you think!

An Aging Semi and Layer Masks

Heath OFee — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:00:20 +0000

I live in the far southeast quadrant of Calgary in a relatively new community called New Brighton. One of the major arteries that runs through the southeast is 52nd Avenue and I find myself on this stretch of road at least a couple times a week. Two weeks ago on my way to play a round of disc golf I spotted this really cool looking wrecked and abandoned semi-truck/trailer and thought it would make a fantastic HDR photo. I took a day off work this past Tuesday and took this photo:

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

It’s nice being a little further north during the winter because the sun stays relatively low in the sky for most of the day. This photo was taken around 11am and the sun was still low enough for me to get it well into the frame. I’ve always been a fan of sunbursts, so I made sure to stop the aperture down (this is f/16) to make sure I got that effect.

This photo is my first attempt at using a layer mask in Photoshop…I should probably have already known how to do that, but I try to do most of my post-processing in Lightroom exclusively. Anyway…after running my three exposures (-2,0,+2) through Photomatix, I found that the sky looked a little dirty and was a bit noisier than I would have liked, so I masked in the sky from the original 0ev RAW file. Turned out pretty well I think, and I learned a valuable new skill! As always, critique and comments are more than welcome.