Benz World Blog » Pillar

Abandoned Observatory

Jason Benz — Sun, 05 Feb 2017 22:01:18 +0000

This is the Middle Island Underwater Observatory off the coast of Queensland, Australia. It was refurbished and re-opened in 2007 so visitors could descend six metres below sea level to view coral and fish including honeycomb cod, flowery cod, damsel fish, moon wrasse and gropers. It looked as if it had been abandoned again when this photograph was taken in 2016.

Capitolio Nacional

Jason Benz — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 09:45:54 +0000

This is Karen’s photo of the National Capitol Building in Havana. It was the seat of government in Cuba until after the 1959 revolution. As of 2013 restoration began in preparation for it to be once again used for the national assembly.

Petra Treasury

Jason Benz — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 09:09:32 +0000

This is the Treasury in Petra, Jordan. It was made famous by Indiana Jones when Harrison Ford and Sean Connery “discovered it” while looking for the Holy Grail. It has of course been known to everyone in Jordan for thousands of years.

Dedicated to Rowan who loved this place.

Petra Monastery

Jason Benz — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 14:01:52 +0000

This is the Petra Monastery in Jordan. It is know as the rose city due to the colour of the rock. In 2008 it needed to be processed using HDR to get accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography. It is available for download here. This time I used standard tone adjustments in Camera RAW and a little split-toning to match the texture to this jungle temple. The RAW file developer in Photoshop has improved so much since this shot was taken it has made using HDR to extract detail redundant.

Esperance Stonehenge

Jason Benz — Sat, 17 Oct 2015 13:04:54 +0000

This is a full size granite replica of Stonehenge in Western Australia. Although it is not as old as the original Stonehenge in the UK, it is complete, and access is better. When we visited the owners let us stay in our van overnight so I could easily photograph it at sunset and sunrise. I experienced an unexpected sense of awe as the sun light filled the stones.

The Apostles

Jason Benz — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 11:28:19 +0000

These limestone stacks on the coast of Victoria, Australia are know as The Twelve Apostles, despite only ever having nine of them. On 3rd July 2005 a 50 metre tall stack collapsed into the sea leaving eight. Then in 2016 five under water stack were discovered by sonar mapping.

We are planning a road trip from Southport to Sydney to drop off Karen for her flight back to the UK in a few weeks. There will also be a chance to add to mining stock photography and visit an observatory.

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

Victorian Parliament

Jason Benz — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 09:34:50 +0000

This building is Melbourne Parliament House in Victoria, Australia. From 1901 to 1927 it was used by the National Government before it moved to Canberra. In that time the Victorian Parliament met at the Royal Exhibition Building.

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

Reprocessing Petra

Jason Benz — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 13:17:30 +0000

I took this shot in 2007 with an Olympus E-330. At that time the Adobe Camera RAW and Lightroom software were still in the early stages of development and we would not see highlight and shadow recovery tools for another 5 years.

Back then the best way to get detail across a high dynamic range image was to take several different exposures, and blend them using HDR software, which I did using Photomatix. I then altered the colour in Photoshop to produce this Stock Photo.

As an experiment I developed this image with a single exposure using a later version of Adobe Camera RAW. The advances in software since 2007 have made the recovery of detail across a high dynamic range far easier.

Parliament House

Jason Benz — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 05:59:10 +0000

This is the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, which was the World’s most expensive building when it was completed in 1988. It is open to the public and you are free to wander around on your own. It is also covered with grass so you can have your lunch above the politicians. The mosaic in front of the building is made up of approximately 90,000 hand-guillotined granite pieces.

I was surprised to see this photo used on the ABC news to illustrate the Australian Government’s twitter response to Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory. It was not a Stock Photo at the time. It has only appeared on this blog, however, I did put a link to it on Twitter. I suspect this is how the ABC got hold of it.

Since then it has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here.

Carlton Mitre

Jason Benz — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 01:41:15 +0000

This was the venue of my cousin Nikki and Paul’s Wedding reception. This shot of the Carlton Mitre was taken from the bridge. I tried a few settings and found a 1/6sec produced the best results getting sharp reflections and enough light. A small tripod was also used to get this shot.