Benz World Blog » E-510

Jason Bournee

Jason Benz — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 08:31:49 +0000

On Thursday I picked up my first Australian Passport. I did not have to give up my UK passport so now I can pretend to be Jason Bourne with his choice of passports. To make this image I started by finding a reference image from the movie. I was going to take a new photo to match the pose then I saw it was the Hollywood standard “look up with menace” which I did in 2010 for the Avatar post. I dug out the old RAW file and Re-processed it in Camera RAW as a Black&White with extra shading. Finally, some texture from the reference image was added in Photoshop. All together the process was quicker than taking a new photo.

Ferry Meadows

Jason Benz — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 08:21:59 +0000

This was taken at the 2010 Ferry Meadows firework display in the UK.

The photograph was re-processed using only Camera RAW.

The stock photos from the event are available here.

Pyramid Wall

Jason Benz — Tue, 20 May 2014 13:30:50 +0000

This is the great Pyramid on the edge of Cairo in Egypt. I was trying to use the wall to lead the eye and give a sense of scale.

It has been a busy week. We have both been working in the day and moving furniture in the evenings. Tomorrow we hope to collect our fridge which should be the last big thing to move in to our new house. I will then give our van a well deserved oil change and service.

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

Three Camels

Jason Benz — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 01:23:06 +0000

It has been a couple of years since I posted anything from Jordan so I processed this old shot of three camels in Petra. Jordan is a gold mine for the photographer. It is no wonder films like Lawrence of Arabia, Kingdom of Heaven and Indiana Jones The Last Crusade were shot here. I was only there a week but it produced 20 stock photos at the time and 7 blog posts years later.

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

Cairo Pyramids

Jason Benz — Fri, 18 Oct 2013 04:40:03 +0000

I took this shot 5 years ago in Cairo, Egypt before the arab spring. It was shot at full stretch 150mm on a Olympus E-510 on a misty day so there was barely any contrast. This is a good example of the advantage of setting your camera to shoot in RAW if you can. A great deal of detail can then be recovered with careful processing.

The Pyramids are 10 miles from the centre of Cairo. The view from the far side has none of the city in it.

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

Rose City

Jason Benz — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:17:15 +0000

This is the Rose City in Petra, Jordan. To process this image the Recovery slider was set to 100. Normally this adjustment is used to recover detail lost in the highlights. In this image the highlights were not blown out however the Recovery adjustment was used to tone down the harsh brightness of the sun. The other main adjustment was to add some subtle split toning to give the rock its rose colour.

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.

Camel Smile

Jason Benz — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:11:53 +0000

This was taken in the Bahariya Desert in Western Egypt. Although I have spent the last three years using Photoshop to flatter the subjects of studio images some shots are beyond even my ability to make look pretty. The main problem with this image was where the sun had caught the white fur and blown the highlights. Fortunately I had a RAW copy of this image so I could get back most of the detail using the recovery slider in Camera RAW. This would not be possible if you shot in jpegs as you cannot change the exposure after you shot.

Five Pups

Jason Benz — Sat, 28 May 2011 05:26:37 +0000

These puppies were photographed on a family holiday to Wales in 2010. They are either Border Collie Sheep Dogs or Jack Russell Terriers. If you know please leave a comment. The main task for this image was to manually remove all the dirt. Like juveniles worldwide their ability to attract debris seems to defy the laws of physics. Fortunately Photoshop has a variety of tools for removing dirt. Some of them are legacy tools for people who have grown up on earlier versions of Photoshop. If you have the latest version of Photoshop CS5 you cannot beat the speed and accuracy of the Spot Healing Brush Tool set to Content-Aware. Although it is much improved the auto sampling does sometimes get it wrong. In these situations use the Clone Stamp Tool and define your own sampling area by holding down the alt key.

The full resolution version of this image was accepted at Shutterstock 8hrs after submitting.

Nile Fishing

Jason Benz — Sun, 08 May 2011 11:32:45 +0000

This was taken near Luxor in Egypt. The image was processed using Photoshops Camera RAW developer. The effect was created using the inbuilt split toning feature in Camera RAW. You access the panel by clicking on the icon which looks like an = sign after you open your RAW file. It’s useful to know when adjusting the saturation slider it acts just like an opacity slider. You can blend it between original image colour and the hues you have set for the highlights and shadows. The balance slider is really a midpoint. It defines the crossover between highlight and shadow. In this case a warm hue was added to the highlights to give the effect of sunset. A subtle blue was added to the shadows. Finally a vignette was added.