The Bat Cave

Taken at the Old Tunnel Wildlife Management Area two weekends ago. Open nightly from May–Oct. for a spectacular emergence of up to 3 million Mexican free-tailed bats from the abandoned tunnel on the old San Antonio Road, originally part of the Fredericksburg and Northern Railway Co. that operated from 1913 to 1941. I left the people in the shot (see them?) to add a sense of scale to the scene.

Title: "The Bat Cave"


Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom
Post-processing: Used Photomatix Pro to create an HDR image from three handheld exposures (-2,0,+2) > Photoshop CS3 > combined the HDR image with the original underexposed image to keep the inside of the tunnel completely black (Photomatix desperately wanted to bring out some detail of the tunnel's interior but it just wasn't there)