Benz World Blog » Mine

Monthly Fossil

Jason Benz — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 22:26:09 +0000

The new solar roof has reduced my carbon footprint and solved my power shortage. As well as eliminating all reliance on coal powered electricity it has enabled me to change the way I travel. When I began #vanlife in 2018, I would need to squeeze into a town caravan park every couple of weeks to recharge, restock and upload a few photos. Now I produce enough solar juice to power my laptop and fridge everyday. This allows me to stay in the bush and therefore only need to use fossil fuel on one day each month, to do the shopping run. By returning from the shops to a different camp my seasonal migration is also included.

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

Re Stock

Jason Benz — Sat, 01 Dec 2018 11:19:17 +0000

This is the Superpit in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. My brother once showed me google reverse image search. It is a useful tool for the stock photographer who wants to find out where their images get used. I did it for my top stock image a few years ago and one of the results had been cropped, flipped and spot coloured but google still recognised it as mine. These are all basic Photoshop techniques and I liked the result from this fellow photoshopper. So I dug out my original image and processed it in a similar way and re-submitted it to Shutterstock. The new version has not diminished sales of the original and now both images get downloaded every day. My previous best seller was an orange firework. It did so well I created red, green and blue versions which all did well too. This is something I like about digital photography. The digital negative is only the starting point. There is no limit to the number of pieces of art you can quickly make by experimenting with Photoshop. When I get too old for tramping around the bush I hope to have enough of an archive of digital negatives to keep me creating new images from old content during retirement.

I am in the Blue Mountains for a few weeks while I upload stock photos from the last 8 months of travel and plan the next stage of Australian exploration.

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

Walking Dragline

Jason Benz — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 09:54:53 +0000

This Walking Dragline is one of the largest things I have photographed. I was focused at infinity and still used a wide angle lens to get it all in. The boom that supports the bucket is as long as a football field and the whole thing weighs 6,500 tonnes. This one is working at the BMA mine I visited today. It is one of many open cut mines surrounding the town of Blackwater. The town calls itself the Coal Capital of Queensland but it could claim this title for Australia as the state has more coal than the rest of the continent combined. Australia exports about 70% of its production making it the worlds largest coal exporter. The abundance of black stuff goes some way to explaining why a region known as the sunshine state gets 98% of its electricity from fossil fuels.

I have booked a week at the Blackdown Tableland National Park before I resume shooting the mines.

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

Gold Mine

Jason Benz — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 05:12:46 +0000

This morning we visited the Barrick Cowal Gold Mine in New South Wales, Australia. Thanks to Amy for arranging it and Tony for showing us around. It was very interesting and we hope to add some of the pictures into my mining stock photography collection, but first I need to Photoshop out any logos.

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

Old Mine

Jason Benz — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 11:01:49 +0000

Earlier this year we were exploring the gold towns of New South Wales. This “Old Mine” was part of a museum in the back of the tourist information centre in Cobar.

Photoshop and Fractalius were used to process the image.

Broken Hill

Jason Benz — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 23:10:03 +0000

This is one of the many frame heads which are scattered around Broken Hill in New South Wales. The wealth of minerals under this isolated city made Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP Billiton) the world’s largest mining company. We have been here for a couple of days and will be heading for Sydney once we visit neighbouring Silverton which has been used in many films including Mad Max II.

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

Barbaras Festival

Jason Benz — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:58:10 +0000

This is the St. Barbara’s Festival in Kalgoorlie in the Goldfields of Western Australia. This is what miners call the Baby Truck. I think it safely qualifies as Mechanography.

Super Pit

Jason Benz — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:37:16 +0000

I took this shot of Karen at the Super Pit open cast mine in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.

Do you think we should include this image in the Machanography category?

Top Stock

Jason Benz — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 08:51:34 +0000

This is a shot of the Super Pit in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. I remember the viewing area over the pit had one of the highest concentration of flies we experienced anywhere in Australia. This image has just become my all time best selling stock image at Shutterstock. It has only been online for 10 months but it has sold more then the old number one which has been online for 6 years.

Old number one

The Superpit image is available for high resolution download here.

The Firework is available for high resolution download here.

Galaxy Lithium

Jason Benz — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 06:23:33 +0000

This is part of the first stage processing for the Galaxy Lithium mine in Ravensthorpe. Chris, Robert and Jugal were kind enough to give us a guided tour on Thursday. This rig uses a variety of mechanical processes to separate the spodumene concentrate which contains the Lithium you find in your mobile phone battery. Like most mining in Australia this product is bound for China. Galaxy also owns the processing plant there. I thought this was quite clever of them as I believe most mines sell raw ore to China without adding any value.

After removing the Galaxy logo for copyright reasons this image was accepted for Stock Photography at Shutterstock and is available for download here. I also blended the image with a slightly less high contrast Photoshopped RAW development to adhere to strict stock image quality standards.