More fun with PS Brushes!

Wowee!  I am learning so much in this class.  Look at these digital stickers I made from scratch!

Day 2 of Brush*Abilities

The fun continues...here is today's assignment.

Brush*Abilities

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this update!

I started a new class at Jessica Sprague.com today.  It's called Brush*Abilities, and it is SO much fun!  I thought I knew everything there is to know about Photoshop brushes, but I was wrong.  It is only Day 1, and have already learned lots of cool tricks.  Here is my homework for today:

More Carlsbad Caverns

After the tour of the Left Hand Tunnel, we did a self-guided tour of the Big Room, which really is BIG!  The big room is the largest single underground chamber in the world.  It is about 2,000 feet long and an average of 600 feet wide, an average 200 feet high, and covers an area of 12 to 14 acres! 

I thought this would make a great texture shot!

After our self guided tour, we took one last ranger-guided tour of the Kings Palace, which gave us a lot of the history of the cave.

And that wraps up the cave photos.  Next up: Surf Side and Galveston beach.

Vacation Part 4... and a side note

A few days ago I read a blog post about someone who had their photos stolen from their blog.  I wish I could remember where I read it, so I could post a link.  The family's Christmas photo, which she had posted on her blog, had been stolen and used in some eastern European country for a billboard!  The moral of the story:  add a watermark to your photos.

So from now on I am going to watermark all my photos that I post on my blog.  If you would like a copy of a photo without the watermark, just let me know and I will email you one. :)

With that said, let's get on with the vacation photos!

Wednesday was our 6th Anniversary!  And we spent it at Carlsbad Caverns, in Carlsbad, New Mexico.  After our little tour at Natural Bridge Caverns, I wasn't sure what to expect, but to tell you the truth I thought that all caves were the same.  Was I ever wrong!

Carlsbad Caverns are unlike any cave I have ever been to.  They are A.MAZ.ING!  

I went a little photo crazy at Carlsbad, while we only spent 1 day there, I am breaking the photos up into 2 posts.  (That, and resizing and watermarking every photo is labor intensive.)  It's difficult to appreciate from these photos, but Carlsbad is HUGE (you descend 750 ft below ground by elevator and walk out into this gigantic cavern).  You can take self guided tours, or you can take ranger-led tours.  We did a little bit of both.  

First, we took a guided tour of the "Left Hand Cavern."  This turned out to be our very favorite part of the entire trip.  Our guide was awesome!  She took us on this off-path tour and we learned a lot about the cave.  This particular tour only allows up to 15 people per day, but that day there were only 8 of us, plus the 2 guides.  It made for such an enjoyable hike!  We spent about 3 hours wandering around totally dark passages.  The only light was from our candle-lit lanterns (in theory, pretty cool; in practice, not so much.  It was hard to juggle the camera and the lantern, plus not step on anything important or stumble down an opening!).

This part of the cave is purposely kept as close to natural as possible.  That's why they don't let very many people tour it.  So many of my photos came out blurry (because of the dark), but I couldn't help but post a few of my favorites.

Isn't that color just amazing?  

Unlike Natural Bridge Caverns, only about 5% of Carlsbad is actually still alive.  But we did find some little pockets of underground pools, like this one:

Our guides would stop us periodically to point out something particularly interesting.  Here she is showing us the "popcorn" formation. Popcorn are formed by evaporation, as opposed to water actually dripping.

Close-up of popcorn formation, and one of my favorite shots of the day.

And here we are!  Carlsbad Caverns is definitely one of my favorite anniversary trips so far!

That's all for the Left Hand Cavern.  Tomorrow I will post more of the main Cavern. Thanks for looking!

The Fun Continues

Welcome to the next installment of Hollingsworth Vacation 2009. 

After the temple on Monday, we continued north to the Natural Bridge Caverns.  Our plan was to give ourselves a little taste of what was in store for us later in the week.  First of all, let me tell you that the Natural Bridge Caverns are 71 degrees with 99% humidity.  It was HOT and HUMID.  Couple that with climbing up and down and all over the caverns and we were quite the sight to see afterwords.  But we had fun, which was the point. 

Since we are not the best underground photographers, I will only post a few.  

Here we are, all sweaty and gross.  But happy.  

More stalagmites and stalactites.

The great room.  Really big.  With lots of stairs.  

That's all for now, folks!

Vacation, Part 2.

[disclaimer: I am learning how to make images larger here on blogger, and I may have gone a little overboard.]

We have a tradition of visiting local temples when we are on vacation.  On Monday, we made our way to the San Antonio Temple.  It is gorgeous.

I especially loved all the stained glass.

Since it was Monday, the temple was closed, so we didn't get to go inside. We did meet some really friendly people outside the temple, though. They told us all sorts of fun facts, like the shapes in the fence are actually the symbol of the Alamo.