While out shooting pictures of my fiance refining his skills, naturally I started looking around at my surroundings to see what else might make a good photograph. The breeze was blowing very smoothly across the overgrown grass. It caught my eye and I thought, "This might make an interesting Photoshop texture. I'll take a few pictures and play with them later when I get home."

After my fiance was finished examining his documented training, I hopped on the computer and pulled up the other images that I had shot that afternoon. Several of the images weren't all that great, so I moved them to another folder to play with later. Then I got to the last image, and something caught my eye: The dried grass in the foreground created a high contrast with the green grasses in the background. I opened up the RAW image into Photoshop and adjusted the Luminance Smoothing setting to reduce the noise created by using a high ISO.

Once the Luminance Smoothing was finished with the RAW file, I opened the image into Photoshop for further fine-tuning. I pulled up Curves and placed two dots on the line, dividing the curves line into thirds. I dropped the lower dot down a smidge, and brought the higher dot up just a smidge. Nothing further was needed.
The results? Golden luxury.