Benz World Blog » Jason

Half Century

Jason Benz — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 13:01:16 +0000

Thanks to Eileen, Mandy and Karen for the 10,20,30 pics. 40 and 50 were taken with a long delay to catch myself off guard.

For 50 years, I lived in a wide range of places around the world before finding my corner of paradise in Australia. I spent decades in the UK saving up for travel. I worked every holiday and weekend except one. No matter how broke I got, I could always hitchhike. Every year, like a dodgy pilgrim, I would jump the fence at the Glastonbury festival and escape into the biggest city of music on earth. I saw amazing things while simultaneously getting a first-hand experience of trench foot.

For 30 years, my hobbies turned into full-time jobs, first music, then poker, then photography. For the last 10 years, Bluesfest has allowed me to combine music and photography. When I am backstage, it feels like home, because I have walked in the shoes of everyone who makes the festival happen. If not in the crowd, I have been the sound engineer, promoter, roadie and booking agent. I have even been the poser on stage!

There is something inherently human about gathering around music at special times to celebrate life, but it goes deeper than us, Australia is where music began, songbirds evolved here and have been singing to the morning light long before humans existed anywhere on this planet… it sounds like I am coming out as a hippy for my 50th!.. why not? my pronouns are “hayman” and “dude”

Peace and Love.

Global Citizen

Jason Benz — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 13:15:58 +0000

I am a dual citizen who was not born in either country. I was born in Holland with a foreign father so I could not be Dutch at birth. This perspective made me consider citizenship as arbitrary. This makes nationalism and patriotism pointless from my point of view. Why feel pride for the achievements of historical figures who only share a similar birthplace to you? This may be why I travel, in search of my tribe. Anyone who has travelled independently knows the global travelling community was a culture unlike any other. One which essentially disappeared in 2020.

Walkabout Creek

Jason Benz — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 04:18:56 +0000

This is the Walkabout Creek Hotel in McKinlay, Queensland. It was made famous by the iconic Australian film Crocodile Dundee in 1986. The pub is decorated with props and photos of the cast and crew. If you are lucky the friendly bar staff will hand you a 16″ Bowie Knife to pose with. It shows a remarkable level of trust to give a lethal weapon to people who have had a few drinks. The atmosphere is warm and welcoming. Like many outback pubs, the population of the bar often exceeds that of the town. Since recently acquiring phone coverage the landlady has introduced a no mobiles at the bar policy which guarantees you get a good old fashioned chin-wag with everyone.

The day and night temperatures have been increasing over spring and inside my van it exceeds 50°C when on the road. I plan to leave the tropics in a few days and look forward to some cool mountain air once I reach the Great Dividing Range.

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.

Four Decades

Jason Benz — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 00:44:42 +0000

Today I turn 40. Being Gen X not Gen Y, selfies are rare. As it is my birthday an exception was made. The photo on the left was taken while studying engineering at Nottingham. I had no plan to be an engineer or anything at that point. I had no talent for essay writing but my folks would give me some support if I studied some science. Over the next 10 years I had some interesting jobs but did not settle on a photography career until I was 30. The last 10 years have been a wonderful adventure. The Photoshop experience I gained working in a studio in the UK enabled me to get photography work in Western Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. My sideline in travel stock photography was given a significant boost after buying this old van in 2011 as was my knowledge of practical engineering.

Mount Panorama

Jason Benz — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 04:22:33 +0000

This is the Mount Panorama circuit in Bathurst. This race track is also a public road, and Karen found herself driving on it by accident the first time we drove to New South Wales from Victoria. This time it was my turn to do a lap in our van.

We have arrived in Sydney now and we have started making preparations for our flight to the UK at the end of the week.

Edible Asteroid

Jason Benz — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 01:39:06 +0000

This image shows what you can do by compositing images in photoshop. I started with a shot of me biting into a ball. This shot of the moon was added on a layer above and a mask was applied to reveal it where necessary. A quick google search for “star field” found the background. Another mask was applied and the composition was complete.

Self Portrait

Jason Benz — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:02:55 +0000

If you look closely I’m the one in the white T shirt. I took this shot of the Oakham Parade in Rutland. To process this image I did my normal trick of selective desaturation to draw the eye to the coloured area. I then did a similar thing with focus. I created an extra blurred layer and added a mask to it. By painting on the mask you effectively paint the focus back into the image in the areas you want it. The Reflection needed a different exposure from the rest of the image so I applied inverse masks to two curves and adjusted them to look how I wanted.

Benz Avatar

Jason Benz — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 09:55:04 +0000

This was an interesting Photoshop challenge. You don’t need to be a Photoshop wizard to do this as long as you can get your head round Photoshop masks. I started by taking a self portrait while trying to imagine the camera had just burnt down my favourite tree. I turned my skin blue by setting the cameras white balance to 2000K. After a quick google image search for “Avatar” I had two more images ready to be composited in Photoshop. One avatar poster which I can use for the skin and one close up of an avatar eye. The images only had one side so I needed to copy and flip them to cover my whole face. By having the eyes on separate layers I could move them to sit directly in line with my own pupils. The position of your main features is how your friends brains identify you. I used Photoshops liquify to change the shape of my nose and mouth. I applied a mask to each layer to blend them together. Finally I darkened one side of the face so to make the lighting appear more realistic.

Hadrians Wall

Jason Benz — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:50:43 +0000

Karen took this is a shot of me on Hadrians wall. The sky was almost completely blown out in order to capture as much detail as possible in the stones. I managed to squeeze out some more detail by using an extreme tone curve. You can see from the gray bar chart the original image had almost no mid-tones.