Natural Bridge Caverns

This weekend I went to New Braunfels and Austin, Texas. In New Braunfels I visited the Natural Bridge Caverns. I wanted to shoot in available light so I used my Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens and set my Canon 40D to 3,200 ISO. The resulting photos were pretty grainy but I was able to use Tapaz Adjust to deal with the noise in a fairly effective manner during post-processing. This photo was shot was at f/1.4 for 1/60 sec.

Title: "Natural Bridge Cavern Column"


Post-processing: Photoshop CS3 > High Pass Sharpening > Merge Visible to New Layer > Topaz Adjust plugin "Spicify" > Merve Visable to New Layer > Topaz Adjust Plugin "Noise Reduction" > Levels Adjustment Layer to set black point

Ever Watchful Dragon

This photo comes from the Texas Renaissance Festival grounds. I took the photo last weekend when some fellow Bay Area Photo Club members and I were there.

Title: "Ever Watchful Dragon"


Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 100-400mm zoom
Post-processing: Photomatix to convert three handheld exposures (-2,0,+2) to an High Dynamic Range image > Photoshop CS3 > Duplicate Background Layer > Topaz Adjust “Simplify” + "Noise Reduction" using Linear Burn blending mode with a layer mask using a diamond gradiant > Merge Visible to New Layer > Unsharp Mask > Duplicate Layer > Topaz Adjust Noise Reduction with Layer Mask to preserve detail of the dragon > Merge Visible to New Layer to do some minor clean-up work with the cloning tool

Best Hat Ever

Best hat ever ... or at least I hope it's a hat! LOL

Title: "Best Hat Ever"


Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom
Post-processing: Photoshop CS3 > High Pass Sharpening > Merge Visible to New Layer > Topaz Adjust “Spicify” @ 78% Opacity > Merge Visible to New Layer > Texturizer Sandstone > Merge Visible to New Layer > Distort Lens Correction Vignette