Benz World Blog » Statue

History War

Jason Benz — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 11:46:42 +0000

History has been written by the victors. This is changing with widespread access to information and the ability to become a publisher online.

One benefit of the Black Lives Matter movement has been to shine a light on parts of history not taught in school. The toppling of statues has done more to teach history in 2020 than anyone gained by staring at them.

My English education never mentioned the crimes of the Empire. Even fictional narratives reinforced a certain view of the world. As a child, I did not question a story which was designed to make me feel lucky to be a white male.

When I moved to Australia I got a different perspective. Churchill was not held up as a hero by all. Dig a little deeper and you will find his words and actions are uncomfortably close to the evil he so famously fought.

Confucius Statue

Jason Benz — Sun, 03 May 2015 09:49:08 +0000

This statue of the Chinese philosopher Confucius was gifted to Southport, Australia in 2014. It overlooks the Chinatown precinct of the Gold Coast. The area is an exercise in urban regeneration not cultural recognition. Although a quarter of the population is born overseas there was no history of asian culture or business in the precinct. This makes it unique among the world’s Chinatowns. The statue is in front of an aesthetically challenged car park so needed an extreme angle to get a clean blue sky background.

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.

Desert Sculptures

Jason Benz — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 01:39:13 +0000

This is one of the sandstone sculptures in the Living Desert Reserve north of Broken Hill.

There is so much to see here we have decided to stay an extra day before heading to Cobar to get some mining photography for stock.

Stone Heads

Jason Benz — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 21:41:46 +0000

This was taken on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. It is one of the tourist drives you can take along the coast. The road was punctuated with bits of artwork like this.

Hathor Fractal

Jason Benz — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:58:21 +0000

This is a statue of Hathor in Egypt. To process this image I used a new technique I discovered last night. I saw it used with great effect on this image of an Amur Leopard taken by Thomas A. Statas. Like all photographers I have met online he was happy to share the technique. He used a Photoshop Plug-in called Fractalius. The effects are based on extraction of hidden fractal textures. For the artistic types it adds cool lights to your pictures.

Pharaoh Skirt

Jason Benz — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:50:44 +0000

Ever wondered what a Pharaoh keeps under his skirt?

This is the Temple of Hathor in Egypt. It was dedicated to the Nubian Queen Nefertari. The image was made with layers of As Shot and HDR blended in various modes.

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.