Benz World Blog » Fog

Misty Morning

Jason Benz — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:03:28 +0000

I saw these two swans on the river cam in front of Baits Bite Lock in the UK. You don’t often get fog in Australia (maybe in a Melbourne winter) so I was keen to go for a walk to capture the effect of the light.

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.

Freezing Fog

Jason Benz — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 04:08:00 +0000

This was the result of the freezing fog we had on Wednesday. There is still snow on the ground here in the UK and more is forecast today. To increase the sparkle a Fractalius layers was added to this image using “luminosity” and “soft light” blend modes. Some Split toning was added in Camera RAW.

Tall Trees

Jason Benz — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:50:23 +0000

Since we left Augusta we have travelled East into the heart of Western Australia‘s forests. It’s hard to believe we will soon be crossing the Nullarbor which is named after its lack of trees. The native trees here are all types of eucalyptus but you would not know it looking at them as they vary from tall white barked trees to ones which resemble oak. This shot was taken as we cooked our diner on the free Barbecue in the National Park surrounding The Gloucester Tree which is a 61m tall tree which was regularly climbed to look out for fires. A job which is now done with light aircraft.

This image was accepted for Stock Photography at Shutterstock and is available for download here.

Amateur Advantage

Jason Benz — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 02:37:43 +0000

This lucky shot was taken on the way home from the Ferry Meadows firework display. The only reason the four figures are not blurred in this 1 second exposure was that they stopped for a moment while their friend in the centre took a shot. Anyone in the right place at the right time with the perfect light has the chance to capture a great shot. As you learn more about photography you can increase the frequency of capturing these images. If you are an amateur photographer you could benefit from selling your work online. It is no coincidence the rise of micro stock agencies has coincided with the increase of the photography hobbyist. I can understand why professional photographers would be concerned with current changes to the stock industry. Crowd sourcing images has inherent advantages. Stock photography sites never reject images without a reason and suggestions to improve your photography. If you can take criticism it can be an invaluable learning tool. Professional photographers would probably find rejection far harder to stomach especially if they had been used to selling their work for much more at traditional stock agencies. The image below greets you when you login to shutterstock as a submitter. It shows where your latest sales have come from. Interestingly none of them have sold in the countries they were taken in.

Austrian Clouds

Jason Benz — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 09:18:34 +0000

These are the Austrian Alps. It was taken on a family holiday in 2008. I used Camera RAW to do the heavy lifting then once in Photoshop I used masks to selectively adjust the colours in different areas of the image.

Misty Meadows

Jason Benz — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 07:39:20 +0000

Last night we went to the Ferry Meadows Firework Display. This was taken at the end of the display. It was the second time I have photographed it with two cameras. I set up my prime lens to capture the reflection across the water on a fixed tripod. The second body had my wide angle on a tripod I could quickly point at any point of the sky. Both cameras fire almost continuously throughout the display. This is one of the rare times I do not shot in RAW. By recording jpegs only you stop the cameras slowing down as the backlog of large RAW files fill up the cameras buffer while they wait to write to the card. Firework displays are very much a batch exercise as its hard to predict what you will capture in a 4 second exposure. I took 217 images, I cut theses down to 45, Cropped a few and submitted them to Shutterstock. After a couple of days just these 2 firework shots were accepted.