Benz World Blog » Nottingham

Last Pedestrians

Jason Benz — Sun, 21 Jan 2018 03:38:53 +0000

This is Nottingham pub band The Last Pedestrians playing at the Lincolnshire Poacher on Sunday night. Their music is a potent mix of junkyard grooves and gruff vocals supplied by the legendary Harry Stephenson.

The gig was packed so I ditched the usual DSLR in favour of a LG G4 camera phone.

This shot was taken on a busy 6 week trip to the UK. It was great to catch up with friends and family all over the country. Thanks for the hospitality from everyone.

Purple Rain

Jason Benz — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 01:13:25 +0000

RIP Prince, Thank you for the music.

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.

Nottingham Contemporary

Jason Benz — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 08:43:05 +0000

This is the avant-garde jazz band Polar Bear. We saw them play last night, in a subterranean venue called The Space, which is inside the Nottingham Contemporary Art Centre in the lace market area of Nottingham, UK.

Like most gigs, there was barely any light. I used a 5D Mark II at its highest sensitivity – ISO 25,600. This results in a very noisy image, fortunately the noise reduction in Camera RAW these days is remarkably good at removing noise without blurring the image.

Camera RAW is the RAW development module of Photoshop. For the last few years most of these blog images have been edited using only Camera RAW. I consider them to be honest images which could be used in editorial, as the nature of the global adjustments are no different to what can be achieved in an analogue way with the assistance of the worlds best lighting engineer and the most talented film developer.

When I first started this blog I did a lot more editing in Photoshop. Although this does not make an image dishonest, Photoshop does have the tools to add, copy, remove and generally change a composition in a selective and localized manner. Although this is OK for stock photography, you could get in trouble if the image appears misleading in the editorial press.

Left Lion

Jason Benz — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 18:17:32 +0000

This is the Left Lion in front of the Council House in Nottingham. Anyone who has lived in this city for more than a few years will have met someone at this historic rendezvous point. I have spent the last four days in Nottingham catching up with friends by meeting at various bars, cafes and this stone animal. We are back in Grantham now but we will be back to see the jazz band Polar Bear on Friday.

I used some Split-Toning to add a little colour to the grey image.

Arboretum World

Jason Benz — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 07:47:31 +0000

This is the Arboretum in Nottingham, UK. To create a planet like this you need to capture a 360 degree panorama. For the best results use a wide angle lens and a tripod. To create the planet you will need a little help from Photoshop.

Enhanced Firework

Jason Benz — Mon, 31 May 2010 09:33:58 +0000

All stock agencies offer some form of extended or enhanced license, in which buyers are given unlimited rights to reproduce photographs, typically over 250,000 times. In the case of Shutterstock the contributing photographer receives $28 instead of 0.25c/0.33c. Its always a nice surprise when you sell one. This is only the sixth enhanced licenses image I have sold compared with over 3000 regular sales.

Download high resolution image.

See other five Enhanced sales

Valentine Rose

Jason Benz — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 02:46:40 +0000

This is a rose from our old garden in Nottingham. I used a time saving trick to desaturate the greenery. Normally you would add a Hue/Sat layer and cut out a mask to get this effect. Instead I added a Black and White layer above the base layer and set the layer above that to lighter colour blend mode. The Black and White layer lets you adjust the brightness of individual colour channels. This setup lets you adjust which colours you want to desaturate. It gives you a lot of control and creates more natural effect than applying a mask to one area. I applied another layer to give a subtle Orton Effect. Finally I added a colour balance layer to achieve the velvet red colour of the original rose and give the leaves a slight tint.

Orange Burst

Jason Benz — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:20:31 +0000

This is my most popular stock photo. It has been accepted at five agencies. Putting the same image at different agencies is a common practice as the photographer keeps the copyright to an image whoever sells it. Since taking it in 2006 is has sold 263 times and made $82(£50) so far. In an attempt to replicate its success I have been to a further five firework displays but not yet taken a shot which has matched its popularity. In the end I took the original image turned it blue and resubmitted it to Shutterstock. The blue version has now sold 42 times.

For this blog post I used the Orton Effect on the images to see what would happen.

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

Nottingham World

Jason Benz — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:59:50 +0000

This world was made from a 360 degree panorama. Read this to find out how to make your own planet. The biggest problem with making planets out of city panoramas is you need to be far enough away from the buildings to get them all in, and at the same time you need do get enough of the ground in to avoid getting heavy distortion in the centre of the image when you convert it into a planet. Fortunately this spot in Nottingham market square was just right. The clouds at the edge of this image had some distortion so I used the dodge tool set to highlights to isolate the image on pure white.