Down at the bottom of this photo is the entrance of the natural cave. It was so peaceful inside there that I just wanted to stay forever. The water was so cool and would gently roll in and out. The colors were amazing, too, accentuated by the moisture.

This is another one from beautiful Yosemite in California. I took this on the way up to a scenic overlook. Originally I had meant to just pass through Yosemite, but with all the perfect landscapes laid out before me, I couldn’t help but stop at several locations like this one.

I parked the car and got out my tripod and Nikon D700. I also use an external shutter release that I use to help eliminate any camera shake. I squished through the tundra and got right next to this fallen tree. I kept the tripod nice and low and arranged the composition. I then fired off 5 bracketed shots at 1 Exposure Value increments, so I wound up with the base shot, 2 shots over exposed and 2 shots under exposed at different levels. This way I’m guaranteed to capture the full range of light that was there on the scene.

When I got home and ready to process this one. I opened up Bridge and dragged them straight onto the Photomatix icon in my toolbar. I played with the sliders in Photomatix until I achieved the desired result and hit process. Then the image opens up in Photoshop. I adjusted the contrast and colors a little, then decided on a square crop since the left side was kind of boring. After a little dodging and burning, I thought the image could use a some texture since it was still lacking in interest in my opinion. I pulled up a texture from the ones I’ve been collecting and set it to “overlay” with some transparency.

Here’s the texture if you want to try it on your photos!