Benz World Blog » Pyramid

Mummy Cass

Jason Benz — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 22:42:14 +0000

This is Mummy Cass charging up before the 2024 Byron Bay Bluesfest. The 5000 year old reanimation process harnesses the energy from a perfectly timed bolt of lightning to bring the ancient party spirit back to the future.

There have been 70 mummies in the last 20 years. Mummy Cass is 1 of about 10 roaming mummies. They are a rare wild breed of mummy who have passed through the boarding gate. After thousands of years in a sarcophagus, most mummies are unwilling to be sealed into a jumbo jet.

This was overcome when it was discovered if 10 cats are wandering free for each mummy, they would become relaxed enough to get onboard. Once the simple process of herding 100 cats on a plane was done, the fun-funk band of coffin dodgers could go on tour.

It was suggested, if 1000 mice were released on the plane, cats and mummies would follow willingly. When Australian Boarder Force heard about this plan they deployed a highly trained team of drop bears to meet the plane on the runway.

By then the cats had taken control of the plane and were refusing to negotiate with everyone, except royalty. It was resolved when the drop bears had lunch with the mice, in return “Here Come the Mummies” and “The Cat Empire” will bring the party to 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: Due to the success of Bluesfest 2025, its future has been confirmed. Discounted early bird tickets for the 2026 festival are available here.

Pyramid Wall

Jason Benz — Tue, 20 May 2014 13:30:50 +0000

This is the great Pyramid on the edge of Cairo in Egypt. I was trying to use the wall to lead the eye and give a sense of scale.

It has been a busy week. We have both been working in the day and moving furniture in the evenings. Tomorrow we hope to collect our fridge which should be the last big thing to move in to our new house. I will then give our van a well deserved oil change and service.

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

Cairo Pyramids

Jason Benz — Fri, 18 Oct 2013 04:40:03 +0000

I took this shot 5 years ago in Cairo, Egypt before the arab spring. It was shot at full stretch 150mm on a Olympus E-510 on a misty day so there was barely any contrast. This is a good example of the advantage of setting your camera to shoot in RAW if you can. A great deal of detail can then be recovered with careful processing.

The Pyramids are 10 miles from the centre of Cairo. The view from the far side has none of the city in it.

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

Bangkok Airport

Jason Benz — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 10:18:06 +0000

Thailand is often the stopover between Australia and the UK. The first time I was here I found exploring Bangkok fascinating. I kept calling the airline to put back my next flight. I ended up staying a few weeks. Unfortunately the last time I landed here I did not get further than the airport where I took this shot.

Swimming Pyramids

Jason Benz — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:12:00 +0000

This was created by compositing three separate images. The Pyramids of Egypt, The Seas of Dahab and Rutland Water. Many adjustment layers and masks were needed in an attempt to balance the shot as each component was taken with different lighting conditions at different angles with different cameras in different countries.

Pyramid Panorama

Jason Benz — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:50:05 +0000

These are the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. This image began as five separate shots. Instead of developing each RAW I stitched them together as jpegs. Once stitched and cropped the resultant image had a low dynamic range. To fix this I used levels layers and in some cases individual channel levels to keep the sky blue. Finally I used a Fractalius layer to add some glow to the image.

Pyramid Lightning

Jason Benz — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 15:25:10 +0000

These are the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. Lightning is hard to shot during the day. You need a very long shutter speed to stand a chance of catching a strike. But when you point at the sky it does not take long to overexpose even with the smallest aperture. This shot was taken through the window of a moving bus so I relied on this technique to get my lightning. I discovered this image has sparked a debate on the bitcoin forum between physicists and the alien theorists.

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

It has also been used on page 33 of The Sun Despite me telling the news agency the lightning was photoshopped the daily mail claimed it was real.

Pyramid Sphinx

Jason Benz — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:37:36 +0000

These are the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. This started life as a very flat image with a low dynamic range. To bring it to life I developed it in the cameras own raw developer with a tone curve and in Photomatix to produce an HDR image. I blended the two in Photoshop taking the best bits from each image. Interestingly the HDR image had extra pixels round every edge so it had a higher pixel count than the cameras own software.

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