Benz World Blog » Aircraft

Powered Paragliding

Jason Benz — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 10:28:38 +0000

There seems to be no end of ways you can get around the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia.

This form of ultralight aviation is called powered paragliding or paramotoring.

The aircraft can be used to herd reindeer, transport soldiers or hire to adrenaline junkies.

This image has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here.

Hydro Jetpack

Jason Benz — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 00:17:17 +0000

We saw this Hydro Jetpack practicing near the bridge between Southport and Surfers Paradise in Queensland, Australia. The jetpack is powered by a jet ski via a long hose. This is the stable version of the water sport. Some ingenious lunatic managed to double the danger by attaching a jet ski to a board only in a similar way.

Puss Moth

Jason Benz — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 13:27:34 +0000

This is one of many aircraft we saw at the Bert Hinkler Museum in Bundaberg, Queensland. This de Havilland Puss Moth was modified by the pioneer aviator to break records. Bert was the first to fly from England to Australia in 1928. Today is the anniversary of his final flight in 1933 in which he attempted to retake the record. He crashed on an Italian mountain and was buried with full military honours on Mussolini’s orders.

Single Balloon

Jason Benz — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 11:36:20 +0000

This photograph was taken before sunrise in Luxor, Egypt using my old Olympus E-330. To process this image I used Photoshop masks to independently adjust the exposure of the sky and balloon.

Today I fitted my steam punk solar controller to our van and wired it up to the solar panel and batteries. I will find out if it works when the sun comes up tomorrow.

Stunt Planes

Jason Benz — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 12:00:13 +0000

I have posted a lot of animals recently so it is time for some Mechanography. These stunt planes were the warm up display before the Sydney New Year Fireworks. The show included dive bombing Circular Quay and doing a flypast of the Opera House. It was so low we could barley see the aircraft behind the ships in the harbour.

Jet Surfer

Jason Benz — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 12:07:54 +0000

This jet surfer is a composite of four images. The desert dunes of western Egypt, A kite surfer from Dahab, The moon from an earlier post and a methane engine I found on this site. Unlike the last composite these images did not need as much adjustment as the lighting conditions were similar. The dunes did need their tonal range increasing. This was done by increasing the contrast to 100 and moving up the black point in Camera RAW. To compensate for the black point shift the Exposure also needed to be increased.

Wicker Spitfire

Jason Benz — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:35:21 +0000

These aircraft appeared on the A606 in Rutland to commemorate the Battle of Britain. I used the healing brush set to content-aware fill to remove the supporting strut and ground. It did the heavy lifting but left a faint outline. I then used the Clone Stamp Tool set to a soft brush to clean up the outlines. Fortunately clouds are very easy to heal as you don’t have to worry about blurring your shot.