Benz World Blog » Jamaica

Jamaican Ska

Jason Benz — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 02:55:37 +0000

Legendary Pat Powell (Patou) with the awesome Melbourne Ska Orchestra at the 2014 Blues on Broadbeach Festival. Patou is a British-born Jamaican who moved to Australia. We have likely spent a similar amount of time in all 3 countries. That is all I can claim to have in common, as no matter how much roots music I listen to, I’m still a short skinny white guy. His globe-trotting did not end there. He has sung on the biggest stages and recorded all over the world. Only a legend can get paid to watch Kylie Minogue dance. His voice is as deep, warm and smooth as he looks. You have probably heard him without realising. He is like the James Earl Jones of singing.

This photo is from the early stage of the Melbourne Ska Orchestra when they had just released their first album. Since then they have released six more studio albums, including in 2018 when they released one song a week for a whole year. Impressive for a 34-piece band. That 1 year produced 4 albums which are a homage to the original Ska movement which grew from sound system culture in Jamaica.

The speed of music production is phenomenal.

This website started 20 years ago with reggae festivals in Jamaica. Every week before we knew the No.1 US song, a local band would have arranged and recorded a reggae/ska version and had it in the shops before anyone heard the original. New tunes were just as quick. When Hurricane Ivan passed by. The song telling the story of that hurricane was on the radio before the hurricane made landfall. Since MSO mastered the ska skill of rapid recording, they created a large body of work in a short time. Now they are out of the studio and ready to party.

I highly recommend you see them live if you get the chance.

The Melbourne Ska Orchestra have been confirmed for the final Byron Bay Bluesfest at Easter 2025, tickets are available via the Bluesfest Website.

UPDATE: In 2026 Bluesfest will be the last in a line of major festivals closed from increasing headwinds. This began before covid, with the previous state government’s legislative “war on festivals“. The new government risks letting this trend continue through inaction. However, you can change this. If 20,000 signatures are received, the NSW Parliament must debate Bluesfest’s future. #savebluesfest if you live in the state Sign up here. For everyone else, there is an international petition on change.org Sign up here.

UPDATE: I had a chat with Pat. He told me he met the Melbourne Ska Orchestra at Bluesfest as he was hired by Bluesfest to drive the artists bus. Proof it is more than a festival, it does change lives. One more reason to #savebluesfest

UPDATE: Due to the success of Bluesfest 2025, its future has been confirmed. Discounted early bird tickets for the 2026 festival are available here.

Rasta House

Jason Benz — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 13:40:45 +0000

This building near Port Antonio in Jamaica is painted with the pan-African colours Red, Gold and Green which are based on the Ethiopian flag. It has been a stock photo at Shutterstock for 10 years and still gets downloaded every week. It was shot on an early digital compact camera EX-Z3 less powerful than the average mobile phone camera theses days.

Three Huts

Jason Benz — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 23:20:07 +0000

These three buildings are in Negril, Jamaica. This is some of the earliest photography I had accepted for stock. I don’t know if it would be accepted for today as the agencies seem to be getting more strict or maybe the need for turquoise ocean shots allowed them to overlook the camera and jpeg quality. This image needed work in Photoshop to remove speckle.

I plan to post a few more images of the Caribbean as I copy the best content from the old website to the new blog.

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

Sky Palms

Jason Benz — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:37:33 +0000

These silhouetted palm trees were in Negril, Jamaica. I took this almost 10 years ago when I first started experimenting with Photography. I was using an early digital compact camera Ex-Z3 with a LCD display. This shot would be difficult with a DSLR as framing the shot is normally done with the viewfinder. Focusing the sun onto your retina is not the best way to go about improving your photography.

I plan to put up more images of the Caribbean as I move from the old website to the new blog.

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

Montego Sunset

Jason Benz — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 04:09:50 +0000

This sunset was shot in Montego Bay, Jamaica. It was taken in 2004 with an early digital camera EX-Z3. In those days memory cards cost 240 times what they do today. In fact the two 256MB cards I used almost cost as much as the camera I used then. In order to save space I was forced to use significant jpeg compression. The more a jpeg is compressed the more speckling occurs. This can be seen best in the dark areas of the left image below. Unfortunately this type of distortion makes it almost impossible to submit images for stock photography. If you want to sell your images always save them at the highest quality. Fortunately as this blog only needs images 800 pixels wide by the time the resolution is reduced the speckling is effectively eliminated. This can be seen in the right image below. The moral of this story is only compress your jpegs if you plan to put them on the web and nowhere else.

Fractal Lizard

Jason Benz — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:59:02 +0000

This is an old cropped photo of a lizard in Jamaica. It was taken with my first digital camera, a Casio EX-Z3. I do not know if this type of lizard is a herbivore, carnivore or omnivore. Please leave a comment if you know. The original image had a low resolution and was heavily compressed. Not much good for anything except it did have good outline of the lizard on a plain background. I started by doubling the resolution of the image. Normally this would not get you anywhere but then I used Fractalius which effectively redraws the image with new detail. I ran it several times to get the different parts of the lizard to look right. I then used masks on each layer to build up the final image.

Ocean Rocks

Jason Benz — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 02:36:14 +0000

This image from Jamaica is one of my very first stock photos. I received an automated email from dreamstime agency saying “image has been online for more than 4 years with no downloads up to the present” and giving me the option of giving it away for free which I did. I still like the shot so I decided to give it the once over in Photoshop to see what would happen. I applied vignette to darken the edges and centre the focus. Then shamelessly went about boosting hues and generally adding interest. Original Free Image.

Caribbean Coast

Jason Benz — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:30:22 +0000

This was taken on the west coast of Jamaica in a place called Negril. The Photoshop layers I used to build up the image are below.

Jamaica Sunset

Jason Benz — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:58:58 +0000

This silhouette was taken in Negril in Jamaica. The sunset was not that interesting so I decided to try out a technique called split toning I saw on this blog. Split toning works by making the shadows one colour and the highlights another. This used to be done by developing with different combinations of chemicals. In the digital age its a lot simpler. Andrew Briggs used Lightrooms split toning tools for his image. I downloaded some photoshop actions instead. Actions are a way of automating tasks to save time. The split toning actions had several different options so I could not resist building up several layers with different split toning colours then mixing them together with different (blending modes) to create some really strong colours.

Rasta Hut

Jason Benz — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:15:43 +0000

This shot was taken on the west coast of Jamaica. The image did not need much doing to it due to the type of camera it was taken on. I shot it with a compact camera EX-Z3 bought in 2004. It is very similar to the type of camera you would find in a mobile phone today. These types of cameras produce images which are ready to use. Contrast, Sharpening and Colour Saturation are all added to the image before the camera saves the jpeg. A DSLR has different aims for an image it produces. It is designed to reduce noise and preserve detail in highlights and shadows. The resulting image will look flatter but it is far more of a workable when it gets into Photoshop. This image therefore only needed a subtle tone curve to bring out the colours. The relationship between tone curve and colour saturation will have to wait for another post.