Project: Sunrays in Prohodna Cave
Prohodna Cave (The God's Eyes), Bulgaria
A couple of weeks back, I was on a road trip exploring some places in Bulgaria I have never been to but were for a long time on my bucket list. One such place is the Prohodna Cave, a really interesting karst cave located in the north central part of Bulgaria, in the Iskar Gorge. The place was beautiful and gigantic.
I took some photos, of course, as one does. I wanted to take some more interesting photos in the cave so I took a photo of a girl standing under the two big whole in the cave, shaped like eyes. When I got back home and took a look on the photos, I knew I had to use them and experiment a bit with Photoshop to create something cool. So here are the details on how I edited the photo - from the RAW through the basics and all the way to the Photoshop part.
We are starting from the very beginning - the RAW file.
RAW file taken directly from my camera - a Nikon D750.
Basic editing
The RAW was uploaded to Lightroom where I did the basic editing:
- Raised the exposure to brighten up the image
- Raised the shadows for more details
- Brought down the highlights
- Lowered the clarity of the photo
Color Grading
After the basics, it was time for the color grading of the photo. Usually, I use a preset which I then customize. This time, however, I did all the work by myself without any presets.
- Added more contrast to the image so it doesn't look flat
- Added Dehaze and raised the Textures
- Lowered the Vibrance and the Saturation a bit
- After that I color graded using the tone curve, the HSL and color calibration
After all this work was done, I decided that I wanted to experiment with Photoshop to add some sunrays coming from the "eyes" of the cave to add some more depth to the shot. So I went to Photoshop and I used a customized Brush for the sunrays.
I had lots of fun doing this little project of mine. I'm certainly not that good when it comes to Photoshop but I do like to play with it from time to time.
Shout out to the model that just happened to be there. I took this photo unexpectedly and didn't even know I had taken it.
