Benz World Blog » Turquoise

Surf’s Up

Jason Benz — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 00:23:40 +0000

This photograph of a surfer and wave was taken at Injidup Beach in Western Australia in 2011.

The weather here on the Gold Coast, Queensland has become unsettled recently. We have had a few thunderstorms. One produced 7000 lightning strikes and hail the size of golf balls. We are both fine and our van survived too.

Lifeguard Hut

Jason Benz — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 01:45:40 +0000

This lifeguard hut was taken at Broadbeach, Queensland, Australia.

This weekend we hosted a flat warming with the few people we know in Southport. It was a lovely day and we were left with a small mountain of food to see us through the spring.

Three Huts

Jason Benz — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 23:20:07 +0000

These three buildings are in Negril, Jamaica. This is some of the earliest photography I had accepted for stock. I don’t know if it would be accepted for today as the agencies seem to be getting more strict or maybe the need for turquoise ocean shots allowed them to overlook the camera and jpeg quality. This image needed work in Photoshop to remove speckle.

I plan to post a few more images of the Caribbean as I copy the best content from the old website to the new blog.

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

Harbour Bridge

Jason Benz — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 18:55:41 +0000

This is the Sydney Harbour Bridge which was opened in 1932 and has been nicknamed The Coathanger. We are in the final stages of packing in order to visit some friend and family in the UK. We plan to be back in Australia at some point next April. I have plenty of images to keep the blog going and plan to get some more up onto stock sites.

London Bridge

Jason Benz — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:36:33 +0000

We have left South Australia and followed the south coast into Victoria. This is London Bridge, or at least it was when a second arch connected it to the mainland. In 1990 it collapsed leaving a couple of tourists stranded on Australia‘s newest island. They were later rescued by helicopter.

We are now camped at the Avalon Rest Area which is a truck stop 50km from Melbourne and 20km from Geelong. It is the first free site we have stayed at with warm showers. Geelong faces Melbourne from the other side of the huge Port Phillip Bay. It is also where we have spent the last couple of days making use of the free internet in it’s libraries to look for work.

Melbourne is Australia‘s second largest city, although maybe not for much longer. It has grown by more than Sydney every year since the 2000 Olympics. It is also second only to London in the number of visitors to this blog so I feel duty bound to get some great shots of the city. If any Melburnians know of a good place we can park the Van while I photograph the city please leave a comment.

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

Great Bight

Jason Benz — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:18:37 +0000

We drove out of Western Australia on the 1st of March. This is the view at the Head of the Great Australian Bight in South Australia. Between June and October large schools of Southern Wright Whales can be seen hear on their annual breeding migration. The ranger told us numbers seem to be on the rise although he was concerned about the effects of BP using explosives to search for oil off the coast this year. Some fisherman had seen changes in behaviour of other marine life since BP started working in the area. We discovered our vans 30 litre tank seems to leak water when we are on the move. It has not been much of a problem yet as we have 46 litres of bottled water on board. Although every roadhouse and campsite has signs up informing you not to even ask for water as it is in such short supply we have managed to fill our tank once on the roadside from conveniently located rain catchers. These are tennis court sized roofs with guttering leading to a storage tank with a tap on. We have made good progress. Often covering 350km a day. We still hope to be in Adelaide before the end of the Fringe Festival on the 18th March.

Fanny Cove

Jason Benz — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 04:16:35 +0000

We have been quite lucky recently as every time we have had a Friday off together it has been the hottest day of the week. This week Chris and Carole from The Deck gave us use of their 4×4 for the day so we could explore some of the more remote areas East of Hopetoun. This is Fanny Cove in the Stokes National Park which can only be reached via a 4×4 track. I’m sure our van would not have got far and given the lack of traffic it could have been a long wait for rescue. The Toyota Landcruiser made light work of the terrain giving us the chance to snorkel this secluded cove.

Bremer Bay

Jason Benz — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:50:56 +0000

This is Native Dog Beach in Bremer Bay which we visited after Christmas. Bremer is the nearest coastal town to Hopetoun if you travel west. It looked close enough on the map but involved a 320 mile round trip around the Fitzgerald National Park. In hindsight, it was a long way to go when Hopetoun is surrounded by miles of white sandy beaches. It was good to give the van a run as its not moved for a fortnight but we will probably stick to more local attractions for the rest of January while we are living here.

Hopetoun Stingray

Jason Benz — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:07:22 +0000

We saw this stingray in the ocean on our walk along Four mile beach on Sunday. I followed it for a while by walking down the beach trying to get a good shot of it. They have the ability to disappear under the sand at a moments notice. This one did not seem to mind me snapping away as it glided along the shallows at a slow walking pace. One problem with shooting through a zoom lens is you have no reference for how close you actually are to the subject. I had to keep peering over my camera to make sure I did not step on it. Although not generally aggressive towards people they are related to sharks and if they feel threatened they can strike out with a venomous barb in their tail. Fatal attacks have been known, most famously on former Aussie crocodile wrangler Steve Irwin, but generally a stingray attack will only result in a severe disinclination to boogie.

Stingray Video

Sealion Sammy

Jason Benz — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:03:22 +0000

This is Sammy the sealion, Local resident of Esperance who comes ashore around midday to look at the tourists on the pier. Other residents include the remnants of Skylab which crashed to earth here in 1979 (The Australians fined the Americans $400 dollars for littering) and Doug and Ettie who were good enough to let us stay in their gorgeous home for a couple of days. Thanks to you both. Since the last post we have both been offered a job at The Deck in Hopetoun for six weeks. It was a hard decision as it meant giving up fireworks in Sydney which we had both been looking forward to. As we are not here for an extended holiday we could not justify turning down the work and it does include a nice little cabin near the beach and free internet. This change of plan also means we can spend more time in Western Australia as the job does not start for 3 weeks. From here we are going to do a big loop inland to Norseman, Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Southern Cross and Merredin before heading back to Hopetoun. We should start crossing the Nullarbor in February next year.

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