Photo of the Day by Jason Matias

Today’s Photo of the Day, titled ‘A Cave With A View’, was shot and submitted to the Your Favorite Places Gallery by Jason Matias.

“I spent about an hour in the ice cave with my friend and my dog. At the back of the cave is a waterfall with a skylight that had me befuddled as to how to capture it. As I was leaving I saw the sky softening and the pink hues on lips of the clouds. I had that feeling that this was going to be special. So, I waited and counted the cave kisses dropping on me and my camera. The next day there was a collapse in this cave and I am thankful for moments granted to me here,” says Matias about his trip to the Big Four Ice Caves in Washington State.

“While I photographed a series of exposures, this is a single image. I triple processed it in Camera Raw: once for the cave and the blues, once for mountain and the warm light (both of these are capture sharpened before exporting), and a third time for the sky. I softened the sky and drew all the noise out of it. I blended the three images manually in Photoshop and added a little more ‘me’ to the image.”

Matias used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II with a 24-70mm Tamron lens. You can find more about him and his work at www.jasonmatias.com.

Photo of the Day is chosen from various OP galleries, including Assignments, Your Favorite Places and the OP Contests. Assignments have weekly winners that are featured on the OP website homepage and several images from the Assignment Gallery are featured in The Best Of Assignments section in print. To get your photos in the running, all you have to do is submit them.