B&W – heath ofee dot com

developing at home | film

Heath OFee — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 14:55:11 +0000

I’ve embarked on a new adventure: I’m now developing my own black and white film at home. Neat!

I ruined about half of the first roll I attempted, but the second roll was pretty close to flawless. The frames below are nothing special, but make me happy because I made them all on my own.

Ilford HP5+ | D-76

Pylon

Heath OFee — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:10:22 +0000

I’ve been loving the minimal black and white images my friend Brian Matiash has been posting lately, and my shot today is definitely inspired by his work.

Despite how calm this water was, I couldn’t resist putting the 10-stop filter on and trying a few long exposures. I’m very glad I did, because it allowed me to make the water look like a piece of highly reflective glass…and I love the result.

Mossy Flow

Heath OFee — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:10:52 +0000

I took the day off work on Wednesday and used my time to drive out to the mountains for a bit of a photo excursion. On the recommendation from a co-worker, I made my way to Grassi Lakes which is just around the corner from the Canmore Nordic Centre where all the cross-country skiing events were held during the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. After a short hike, I reached the two small lakes, and the colour was just amazing. Both mountain lakes shone with a rich blue/green hue…it really was beautiful. However, what I really wanted to shoot was the waterfall just slightly downstream from these lakes…so I made my way down to where I could hear running water found exactly what I was looking for. Water tumbled down a steep cliff face and cascaded around old fallen logs and mossy rocks. Jackpot.

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 10mm, F 4.5, ISO 100

Tug o’ War

Heath OFee — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:15:35 +0000

I’m sure some of you may be getting bored with seeing photos of my dog, but without any kids of my own running around, this little dude is one the most interesting things to shoot around the house. It’s not easy to capture Dexter in action since he’s a pretty energetic guy, but I figured if I could get him locked into a game of tug o’ war I might be able to capture something interesting. This is probably the best frame of the day.

Oh, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all! With a name like O’Fee, you can rest assured that I’ll be enjoying a few pints after work

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 50mm f/1.4, 50mm, F 1.4, ISO 400, 1/200 sec

Panoramic

Heath OFee — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 13:52:38 +0000

Okay, so this image isn’t a true panorama, it’s just cropped that way…sorry to get your hopes up. The image title actually comes from one of the songs on the Book of Eli soundtrack which I was listening to while editing this shot. It’s an epic soundtrack and I find myself listening to it at least a couple times a week while editing photos. Oh, and make sure you check out Mike Olbinski’s movie title Wednesday photo from this week inspired by the very same movie.

So, after seeing all the hullabaloo on Twitter today about the release of Nik Silver Efex Pro 2, I decided I should probably give it the old college try. I downloaded the 15-day trial last night, and produced the image you see below. I was very happy with how the software worked and I can definitely see myself shelling out some cash once my trial version has expired.

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L, 24mm, F 11, ISO 100, 300 sec

Toboggan Ride

Heath OFee — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:06:18 +0000

Yesterday morning I was recruited by my sister and bro-in-law to take some family shots. Their two sons are growing up quickly, so they wanted to make sure they had some documentation of this stage in their lives. It was a gorgeous winter day (around 5 degrees celsius) so we made the most of it by taking the boys out for a walk/toboggan ride in the snow. Despite a couple of spills and some cold extremities, I was able to get some really great shots.

Turns out what I wanted to say about shooting portraits was mostly already said this morning by my friend James Brandon over on his blog. He posted a great shot of his nephew from last Easter, and just like me, shot it with a fast 50mm…my go-to lens for any portraiture. The great thing about shooting with such a wide aperture is the ability to let the background just melt away into delicious bokeh. The drawback is that you need to make sure your focus is spot-on. If you miss focus by even just a few millimetres, you can end up with an out of focus subject and a ruined shot. My strategy is to use a single autofocus point on my Canon 50D. I almost exclusively use the centre point, partly out of habit and partly because it’s the most accurate AF point on the camera. I typically grab focus on my subject (almost always the eyes) and then recompose the shot to taste. I’m sure there are things I could do differently, but for now, this technique is what works best for me.

Oh, and in case you missed it yesterday, I had the honour of writing a post for Brian Matiash’s ‘Alt Perspective’ series. You can check it out here.

Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF 50mm f/1.4, 50mm, F 2.0, ISO 100, 1/8000 sec

Prairie Winter

Heath OFee — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 18:42:11 +0000

Today is another shot from the archives…this one from a very cold February day last year. This was the very first time I went out shooting with the intention of capturing brackets for HDR processing. Is it ironic that I decided to process this as a single black and white frame with a bunch of extra film grain added for a retro feel? You be the judge

Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5, 15mm, F 11, ISO 100, 1/40 sec