Benz World Blog » Fish

Supermoon Sculpture

Jason Benz — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 22:09:33 +0000

This is one of six metal fish in Harley Park, Labrador, Queensland, Australia. I chose this spot to photograph last nights supermoon so I could experiment silhouetting the sculptures. I the event there was enough light to illuminate the fish and bring out the rust colours.

Raja Ampat

Jason Benz — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 10:24:18 +0000

These are the waters around the Raja Ampat Islands in Indonesia. This area has the highest density of marine life in the world. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the largest coral reef system but it is relatively young compared to this one. The diversity of life here is helped by being uniquely placed between the Indian and Pacific oceans and three continental plates.

These images are a result of a collaboration between Panedia, Google, The Ocean Agency and the XL Catlin Seaview Survey. This project takes up most of my working week, although I don’t do the Photography, I have a lot of fun working on these beautiful images in Photoshop.

Shark Christmas

Jason Benz — Fri, 25 Dec 2015 08:25:40 +0000

This shot was taken at Clam Bay on the far side of Keppel Island. We trekked for 2.5hrs to get there and hoped to find at least one boat with some other snorkellers to share the reef with. Alas we found ourselves alone. After exploring the coral for about an hour we walked down the beach only to discover we had been sharing the water with six sharks. We suspect they were one of Jaws’ less bitey cousins judging by their proximity to the shore.

Hopetoun Evening

Jason Benz — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:35:29 +0000

This silhouette was taken at the groyne in Hopetoun yesterday. Fishing is a popular sport in Australia and there are usually around a dozen people fishing at sunset in Hopetoun each night. The time here has flown by and its hard to believe we are half way through our six weeks work here. We have both really enjoyed working at The Deck and will miss it when we go. I’ve been updating The Decks Website this year and have just put the new site online. I have a few more bits to add but most of it is there. Let me know what you think.

Hopetoun Stingray

Jason Benz — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:07:22 +0000

We saw this stingray in the ocean on our walk along Four mile beach on Sunday. I followed it for a while by walking down the beach trying to get a good shot of it. They have the ability to disappear under the sand at a moments notice. This one did not seem to mind me snapping away as it glided along the shallows at a slow walking pace. One problem with shooting through a zoom lens is you have no reference for how close you actually are to the subject. I had to keep peering over my camera to make sure I did not step on it. Although not generally aggressive towards people they are related to sharks and if they feel threatened they can strike out with a venomous barb in their tail. Fatal attacks have been known, most famously on former Aussie crocodile wrangler Steve Irwin, but generally a stingray attack will only result in a severe disinclination to boogie.

Stingray Video

Evening Fishing

Jason Benz — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 07:51:58 +0000

This was taken at Rutland Water in 2010. As with most images these days I used Camera RAW to do the main processing. Camera RAW produces higher quality images than If you did the same adjustments in Photoshop. This is because it uses the RAW data from the camera which contains more information than a processed 8 bit image. Photoshop comes into its own when effecting localized areas of the image like retouching. For global changes its better to use Camera RAW. These are the split toning settings used to change the sky and water colour.

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.