Cosmic Cavern-3

I call this "the dragon's mouth" it is a shot of the far end of this cavern in

North West Arkansas. The soda straws in the middle are up to 9 feet tall,

which is rare to see.

caves are tricky because you (I, me and all others) can never quite capture what is there as it all just seems unnatural below. taking this into photoshop might bring out the natural beauty of the cave.

William,

Your are right, this is tricky, especially having to use flash, and this particular cave no tripods were allowed on the tour, and no handbags either, so I was stuck with one lens on top of that.

I adjusted for exposure, white balance,  sharness, and other "normal" adjustments that I do in Lightroom (started with a raw file of course).

Any particular adjustments your were thinking off? I'm always willing to try different things.

Thanks for your input!

Yeah I had the same issues when i tried to shoot caves. No tripod and only a flash. Which is awesome because they take the time to put in great lighting for the caves.

 

 Have you tried it has an HDR.? I threw your image into photoshop and played around with some simple tweaks and got some nice effects. Then adding some burning would help as well. Working from your raw file would obtain more desirable effects then a reworded j-peg. If you get it just right you will have a very rich and dynamic shot.

me again- to be a little more specific try this:

In photoshop

1. open image

2. Duplicate it

3. invert and desaturate duplicate, then change layer to overlay, then apply a gaussian blur to your liking.

4. add a gradient set gradient layer to soft light

5. From the original image go to image/adjustments/shadows and highlights and play around with those setting and see what you get.

 

I hope this helps

 

Squire

Fraai werk, Hans!

Bedankt Ruud voor het positieve commentaar.

 

William, I started working along the line of your suggestions last night and did get some interesting results. I am in no way a Photoshop guru however so the going is slow but for sure I am learning some interesting things. Thanks for your suggestions!