Benz World Blog » Silhouette

Surfer Silhouette

Jason Benz — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 01:08:24 +0000

This beautiful sunset appeared through a misty cloud at Goolwa Beach in South Australia. I had positioned myself so this surfer would walk in front of me to produce a silhouette and make the shot. Unfortunately as she approached she saw my camera and put her hand over her mouth thinking she was about to ruin it. I tried to explain it was OK but the moment was lost. Fortunately I had captured a body surfer earlier so I could Photoshop in his head and shoulders. Split toning was also used to create some extra colour.

Sky Palms

Jason Benz — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:37:33 +0000

These silhouetted palm trees were in Negril, Jamaica. I took this almost 10 years ago when I first started experimenting with Photography. I was using an early digital compact camera Ex-Z3 with a LCD display. This shot would be difficult with a DSLR as framing the shot is normally done with the viewfinder. Focusing the sun onto your retina is not the best way to go about improving your photography.

I plan to put up more images of the Caribbean as I move from the old website to the new blog.

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

Streaky Pier

Jason Benz — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 07:19:12 +0000

This is a silhouette of the Pier at Streaky Bay in South Australia.

I have spent most of last week going over all the old posts in this blog. I have been adding tags and links to make the site easier to navigate. Travel and Stock Photography can encompass just about everything so it has been interesting to discover what the more common subjects have been. Here are a few of the more common tags at the moment. 81 of Australia, 73 of UK, 67 of Water, 56 of Buildings, 45 of Trees, 44 of Transport, 43 of Cities, 42 of Night, 36 of Augmented Reality and 35 for Red, Blue, Sky and Sand.

Sydney Sunset

Jason Benz — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 02:21:23 +0000

This is a sunset behind the Opera House and Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Australia.

Streaky Bay

Jason Benz — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 03:39:43 +0000

This silhouette was taken at Streaky Bay in South Australia. We only stopped there briefly as there were no free campsites nearby. So far Western Australia and New South Wales have had the most free campsites and Victoria and South Australia have had the least.

Fleurieu Peninsula

Jason Benz — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:43:24 +0000

Since leaving Adelaide we have been exploring the Fleurieu Peninsula. This silhouette of two body surfers was taken at Goolwa Beach which is the location of Karen‘s earliest memories. Her parents, Bob and Val, owned a beach house here 40 years ago. We visited Mannum yesterday and took a couple of ferries across the Murry River to reach our campsite at Narrung between Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert. Next we head towards Mount Gambier.

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

Hopetoun Evening

Jason Benz — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:35:29 +0000

This silhouette was taken at the groyne in Hopetoun yesterday. Fishing is a popular sport in Australia and there are usually around a dozen people fishing at sunset in Hopetoun each night. The time here has flown by and its hard to believe we are half way through our six weeks work here. We have both really enjoyed working at The Deck and will miss it when we go. I’ve been updating The Decks Website this year and have just put the new site online. I have a few more bits to add but most of it is there. Let me know what you think.

Amateur Advantage

Jason Benz — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 02:37:43 +0000

This lucky shot was taken on the way home from the Ferry Meadows firework display. The only reason the four figures are not blurred in this 1 second exposure was that they stopped for a moment while their friend in the centre took a shot. Anyone in the right place at the right time with the perfect light has the chance to capture a great shot. As you learn more about photography you can increase the frequency of capturing these images. If you are an amateur photographer you could benefit from selling your work online. It is no coincidence the rise of micro stock agencies has coincided with the increase of the photography hobbyist. I can understand why professional photographers would be concerned with current changes to the stock industry. Crowd sourcing images has inherent advantages. Stock photography sites never reject images without a reason and suggestions to improve your photography. If you can take criticism it can be an invaluable learning tool. Professional photographers would probably find rejection far harder to stomach especially if they had been used to selling their work for much more at traditional stock agencies. The image below greets you when you login to shutterstock as a submitter. It shows where your latest sales have come from. Interestingly none of them have sold in the countries they were taken in.

Montego Sunset

Jason Benz — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 04:09:50 +0000

This sunset was shot in Montego Bay, Jamaica. It was taken in 2004 with an early digital camera EX-Z3. In those days memory cards cost 240 times what they do today. In fact the two 256MB cards I used almost cost as much as the camera I used then. In order to save space I was forced to use significant jpeg compression. The more a jpeg is compressed the more speckling occurs. This can be seen best in the dark areas of the left image below. Unfortunately this type of distortion makes it almost impossible to submit images for stock photography. If you want to sell your images always save them at the highest quality. Fortunately as this blog only needs images 800 pixels wide by the time the resolution is reduced the speckling is effectively eliminated. This can be seen in the right image below. The moral of this story is only compress your jpegs if you plan to put them on the web and nowhere else.

Nile Boats

Jason Benz — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:10:14 +0000

This was shot on the Nile in Egypt. Instead of using Split Toning Actions in Photoshop I used the split toning in Camera RAW. The advantage of this method is it gives you a lot of flexibility over the controls. Not only can you fine tune the Hue of the Highlights and Shadows you can also adjust the Saturation and Balance.