040310 Mammoth Cave and Diamond Caverns!

In honor of our births, the dynamic duo were whisked away to adventure this weekend! After a brief stay in the "Fabulous Jacuzzi room" at the Country Hearth Inn in Horse Cave Kentucky, we made it to...


Here you see our almost personal tour guide Jennifer pointing out hard to spot points of interest on the historic tour, like exposed fossils and sleeping bats.

You'll see pretty quickly that my favorite thing in Mammoth Cave was Terri. If you want to see some cave pictures check out Terri's photo streams in the next few weeks.

The coolest part of these portraits is that I used David Ziser's on-camera bounce flash concept in Mammoth Cave! Just my 40D one 580EXII and the cheap wireless triggers I got online!
(I say concept for the reason that I have used wall bounce with a hand held off camera strobe.)


For the most part the setup was one 580EXII pointed at the cave wall 1/2 or 1/1 power. Camera: iso800, F3.5 (10-22mm), 1/3 sec hand held!

This was the nest of a cave pack rat.

In cave waterfall.

Behind Frozen Niagara...


This is the front of frozen Niagara.

After the first tour (which we were surprising early for as it seems mammoth cave is in the central time zone) we found this really beautiful rocky outcrop along the roadside and decided to take a cool couples portrait. It kind of represents how vast the caves really are.

All the photos of caves after this point are from Diamond Caverns (which I thought was was cooler than Mammoth cave).

I think this pretty much confirms that even a caveman can use David's on-camera directional light techniques!

This is for Jon Compton and all of Plank's Pi... This is "cave bacon!"

I think these portraits are the coolest!!

This is an alter that was used when people got married in Diamond Caverns up until the 80s. The alter itself was built entirely of cave bacon and cement in the 1920s. They quit holding weddings there when too many people began breaking off stalactites as keepsakes. Still, if I think this goes along with the lighting techniques pretty well. I wonder if I could find any photos from old Diamond Caverns weddings...

I always like pointing the camera out the car window.




The end.

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