Urbex – heath ofee dot com

Simplicity

Heath OFee — Sun, 15 May 2011 14:10:35 +0000

Last week I came home from work one day to find that my wonderful wife had bought me a Holga 135! As I’m sure you can imagine, I was super excited to take it for a test run, so I grabbed a 5-pack of 200 ISO 35mm film from the local drugstore and loaded it up as soon as I got home.

The first test run of this new toy was on my day trip to the mountains this past Wednesday. I snapped most of a roll while on the hike and finished it off at an urbex site that happened to be on the way home. A few of the nature/landscape shots worked out, but I can see this camera producing much more interesting photos in an urban setting. The shot you see below is the last frame of the roll, and is probably my favourite. The simplicity of the composition and the strong contrast between the brown panel and white brick really seemed to work well.

Holga 135, Fujifilm Superia 200

Sit Tight

Heath OFee — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:10:45 +0000

Last week I had the pleasure of providing the brackets for the most recent game of HDR Tennis on Facebook. The game wrapped up last night, so I thought I’d post my version on the blog today.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 13mm, F 11, ISO 100

Goodyear

Heath OFee — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:10:07 +0000

As I become more familiar with the post-processing tools at my disposal, I find myself leaning towards a group of the same effects on a regular basis. I’ve come to know what these tools will do for my images, I enjoy the results, and I feel using similar post-processing techniques on most of my images helps me to develop a unique ‘style’. That being said, I don’t want to get into a rut where I just stick to what I know and don’t explore all of the other great options that are out there.

While the myriad of processing options may seem daunting sometimes, it is important to continue to experiment in order to further our growth as photographers/post-processors. Even if it means trying something new and NOT liking it, at least you can say you gave it a shot. What is there to lose? Storage is cheap, so experiment as much as possible!

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

The Fan

Heath OFee — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:10:01 +0000

Back to a bit of urbex today. After processing my shot for Game 11 of HDR Tennis over on Facebook, I got a serious hankering to process some more gritty urbex. So, I trolled my images from California and found this shot of a fan in a small room in the abandoned diner I found. There wasn’t much room to get in close to it, so I decided on a wide framing that included a large portion of the door as a foreground element. I used FocalPoint in post processing to add the blur which helps draw your eye to the fan.

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

Hose, Anyone?

Heath OFee — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:15:56 +0000

I’ve been sitting on a few images of these fire hoses from the abandoned fire station south of Indio, CA for a couple of months now. When shooting, I was pretty happy with what I captured, but when I got back home and dumped the images onto my computer, I was less impressed. Last night I decided to take a crack at one of the bracket sets to see if I could come away with something I’m happy with…and what you see below is the result.

Sometimes persistence is your best friend

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

I Want My MTV

Heath OFee — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 14:57:25 +0000

I don’t know about you guys, but for some reason I’ve always wanted to smash an old CRT television. I just looks like so much fun when they do it on TV! I didn’t get the chance to live that dream with this old RCA that I found in an abandoned diner, but someone did…and I bet they had a blast doing it.

As for the title of this post…I grew up listening to Dire Straits because my dad was a huge fan. I can remember many a road trip rocking out to those guys, and I specifically remember the long introduction to ‘Money For Nothing’ was one of my favourite parts of any of their songs. And what a riff once it got started!

Dialed In

Heath OFee — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 14:07:15 +0000

This is a detail shot from the large abandoned warehouse I found in Niland, California. I really would have liked to get a shot looking straight at the dial, but it was too high on the wall for it to be feasible. Sometimes you just have to work with what you’re given

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

The Walking Dead

Heath OFee — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:15:53 +0000

My wife and I just finished watching the first season of ‘The Walking Dead’ a couple of days ago, and man, did we love it! Shame it was only a teaser at 6 episodes, but it was still pretty great nonetheless. Fantastic characters, a great post-apocalyptic style storyline, and some of the best looking zombies I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t seen it, make sure you check it out.

Inspired by the imagery in ‘The Walking Dead’, I decided to give today’s shot from Bombay Beach a bit of a post-apocalyptic/comic book/zombie feel. I definitely got a bit of a creepy vibe from the location when I was there, so I’m pretty excited with how this one turned out. As usual, all my stylization of this image was done in onOne PhotoTools. Honestly, since I picked up their full suite of plugins a few months ago, I don’t think I’ve published a single photo that hasn’t been touched in one way or another by an onOne plugin. It really is a great tool to have in the bag.

There’s some good news if you don’t have the suite yet: until March 24th you can purchase the entire Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 + HDR Express for $399. This is a seriously good deal, so make sure you check it out!

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

Feed Truck

Heath OFee — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:37:04 +0000

As cool as epic, expansive shots of entire rooms one may find while on an urbex trip are, it’s the little details that can really show the character and history of a place. This old shelf was clearly used to store keys on all those carefully bent nails. I wonder what the ‘876852’ key used to open…feel free to tell me your idea of what it may have been for

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 18mm, F 11, ISO 100

We’re Watching

Heath OFee — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 12:37:23 +0000

Back to the abandoned warehouse in Niland, California for today’s image. When I walked into this urbex heaven, as soon as I turned and looked to my right, these are the creepy graffiti eyes I was greeted with. I felt safer for the rest of my time there knowing I had a pair of watchful eyes looking out for me

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