New Nat Geo video!

Video on one of the discoveries that was made in the Yucatan expedition i was on:


http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/latest-news/maya-zenith-passage-vin/

Keith Cave

Got to help with a small group of photographers from North Alabama Photographers Guild this past Saturday. Had a great time with everyone. Its fun to help folks who want to dabble in cave photography... they get to experience the underground - and then try and take photos there... which is where Nathan's lighting arsenal came into play. On Saturday we were using flash bulbs, a Compact Fluorescent, a Lumedyne, and an LED Scout. Dennis and his buddy Nathan also did a bit of light painting and gel/flash work too.

Left to right: Nathan, Dennis, Ben, Cecil and Nathan.

Here are a couple of the shots that they took away from the trip:

the decent
Originally uploaded by EchoBoomer

Brina Bat
Originally uploaded by Dennis Calvert

Keith Cave multiple exposure
Originally uploaded by Ben_D

Outdoor Alabama

So this is pretty cool - Jeff Rease, a friend and amazing photographer who's a fellow member of the NAPG (North Alabama Photographers Guild), entered a photo taken at Stephen's Gap on an NAPG cave photo trip that I got to help with last year. The photo won first place in Outdoor Alabama's "Nature-based Recreation" category and is now on the cover of this months magazine. I'm the silhouette at the top of the pit. Nathan Williams is the second silhouette with the pack dangling below him. Big congrats to Jeff on winning!!

Fish Eye Style Friday Night

So these are the kind of photos you get when you combine a fisheye lense with a Friday night and friends and some Chinese takeout and way too much hot tea and purple rice crispy treats with sprinkles and 3 different board games...


Danielle and Casey enjoying the first bite of my crazy purple rice crispy treat experiment.


The first board game - Settlers of Catan - and yes that is a giant camel - he's hanging out in the desert. After a bit of a crash course in the game given by a very patient Danielle and Casey - Paul and I both decided it was pretty fun.


This would be Danielle and Casey making faces at a blooming tea - white tea that blooms when you add hot water - its super fun - and from Teaposy. I think this was pot #3 (we had 5 pots of tea by the way... One just regular jasmine green tea, one falling water, one butterfly, one lady fairy and one heart of love).


My hand and the items I had to trade - lumber wheat and 4 sheep at some point in the game. The goal of Settlers of Catan is to be the first to collect 10 points by building roads and settlements and cities.


Casey Paul and Danielle checking out pot of blooming tea #4...

A round of Chinese Checkers... hadn't played it in forever!


This would be somewhere around 2:30 AM or so... a quick game of Apples to Apples just to show Casey and Danielle how to play...

W&S in 3D!

No it isn't your eyes... Go grab your nearest pair of red-cyan glasses 3D glass and check out Jay Clark in the Totem Gallery of Tumbling Rock Cave! You can check out some more of our 3D works on flickr HERE!

photo by Nathan Williams and Sabrina Simón

So I've been doing a lot of photo super fun 3D photography lately with a good caving buddy of mine - Nathan Williams (of Realms of Reality). We decided we needed a logo for our joint efforts - since the 3D photos are taken with both our Pentax cameras side by side. So it was discussed... sketched... looked over...talked about some more... resketched and then finally drawn up over the past couple days time by me in Adobe Illustrator....and Voila! Here's the logo!

Ashes and Snow

Came across this photographers site as a post on FB from a friend. And I have to say - this exhibit is absolutely beautiful. I'm utterly stunned at the idea and beauty and impact you can feel from these photos. Ashes and Snow is an exhibit by Gregory Colbert - and I'm SO going to have to look into more of his work. Go to the "Explore" section on the link - its flipping amazing - combines short video clips, tons of photos an hauntingly beautiful soundtrack and selections from the book. I just played around with it for two hours and I still don't think I saw all the photos! At first I thought that some of these had been photoshopped... but apparently not. I highly recommend watching the short little video clips on the website - shot while the photos were taken - they're amazing!!

Driving Home

Tried something a little odd on the way back from the NAPG (North Alabama Photographers Guild) meeting this evening.... a bit of driving photography - straight from the dash board. Had kinda mixed results but at least I can say I've tried it! I know some of you are probably cringing at the thought of driving and photography - but I set a timer - my camera just rested on the dash board - punched the button and left the shutter open for about 15 to 20 seconds. So don't panic - it was probably even less distracting then say changing the radio station on my stereo.

I took several more... but I really liked this one the best of the straight driving.

This one was a double exposure of my speedometer and me sitting at a red light and then finally turning.

The Soft Glow of the Past

The Soft Glow of the Past
Originally uploaded by Realms(Nathan Williams)

Through rain and storms and tornadoes we came.... hauling tons of gear and ropes and bulbs and lights and dresses and rigged and checked and double checked and sorted and set up and tested.....and then all was dark and still. A countdown began, and at the last word - the light came on from above and the soft glow of some forgotten dreamed of past was captured - ever so beautifully.

A Caving We Will Go!

So I think I just set my personal record for caving in a one month time span - measured from grotto meeting to grotto meeting. Been so busy printing and caving haven't had time to tell you all about it until now. So when the question is asked tomorrow night at out grotto meeting - "Who's been caving?" I'm going to have to bust out a flippin list to remember all of them!!

1. Crossings with Stephanie and Nathan on 4.2.09

photo by Nathan Williams

We went during a serious storm - while we were there - water stared pouring from all sorts of wild places... this shot is cool because you can see all the little water streams...CF-SIT.

photo by Nathan Williams

Another great shot by Nathan - Steph and the haystack were lie with 3 firings of a Lumedyne strobe as an in-camera mutli-exposure

2. Buggy Top with the Huntsville grotto on 4.4.09 (first time trying out my new Pentax in cave!)


3. Blevin's Gap with Nathan on 4.8.09

This is Nathan looking through the squeeze to get down to the lower level. Yeah - that'd be an 8-1/2 inch gap there.

photo by Nathan Williams

And I don't normally post photos of me - but I actually really like this one - and anyway this is part of the gorgeous pool of water on the lower level.

4. Jess Elliot with Angela, Andy, Al, and a bunch of other nice folks from the Dogwood City Grotto 4.11.09

Angela hanging out in a cool portion of Jess. I used two CF-SIT lights for this shot - one on the side and then the other next to me.

5. Hooper's Well with Nathan and Stephanie on 4.14.09 (Steph's 1st pit)

So this is most definitely the wackiest shot I've taken so far, I climbed up the rope about 20 feet, Nathan set up a slaved flash to sidelight Stephanie and himself and then got on the opposite rope. I had my camera set to bulb in one hand, a manual flash in the other, lens cap dangling out of my mouth.... and then I started spinning and twirling...bleaugh. Steph even sat on the rope to keep me from spinning but I still did..ended up attaching my QAS to the other rope and standing in my foot loops to stop spinning for a few moments... finally got one with enough light and without my boots or kneepads in the frame... really like the angle down the rope on this one.

6. Limrock Blowing with Danielle, Stephanie and Nathan on 4.16.09

A bit of Dynamic CF-SIT on the downstream side.

7. Limrock Blowing with Peri, Michelle and Tommy on 4.18.09

Multiple photo composition of Michelle here - because I was working with only flashes - but I like the way it ended up.

Someone made the comment on Flickr that this looked like the caving mafia.... I'm going to go with it - the caving mafia -Don Michelle, Don Tommy and Don Peri

8. Blevin's Gap with Stephanie and Nathan on 4.23.09

Nathan and Steph after 30 different alignments of flashes and "a little to the lefts"... "no, an inch to your rights"

9. Iron Hoop with Michelle, Tommy, Nathan, Angela, Andy, Stephanie, Josh, Colin and Randy on 4.26.09 (topped out at 11-1/2 hours on this one!)

A very happy Stephanie in Iron Hoop. (And by the way instant mashed potatoes are incredibly yummy as a hot in-cave food..... mmmmm....taters! But do watch out - they can be rather hot.)

Check out Colin's photos of the trip.


And then go to the Realms Flickr for all the cool 3-D photos that Nathan took with both of our cameras - bring your red/cyan glasses with ya!! And be seriously prepared to be AMAZED!!!

10. Neversink with Nathan and Stephanie on 4.28.09

This would be the dead rat we found at the bottom of the pit... ewww.

11. Blevin's Gap (yes, again) with Buddy, Joe (their first pit), Don and Nathan for the premiere of SIT 2.0 in-cave (which was very cool and a great success!) on 4.30.09

Here's Joe - man he was so cool - had no problems at all!

12. Stephen's Gap with Stephanie, Danielle, Casey and Nathan (and Fred + 1 later on) on 5.2.09 for Paul and I's first anniversary. (Paul was sick which totally sucked - so he didn't get to go - he let me go anyway) He is feeling MUCH better now and on the road to recovery - albeit a bit spacey from the codine laced cough syrup.

Nathan, Steph, Danielle and Casey ready to hike up to SG.

Man oh man was there a lot of water - and it was simply gorgeous. Here's a little behind the scenes shot I took per Nathan's request. I think this was a 6 second exposure using all natural light.
And then here's a 3 photo panorama of the main waterfalls.

I took some other photos on some hikes and out and about and such - be sure and check them out on my flickr.

Go to Flickr!

Hello hello - long time, no post. I've been pressed for time what with the paid letterpress jobs I've gotten and the massive amounts of after-work caving I've been doing. But I've got lots of pretty photos over on my flickr site. Go check them out: TAKE ME TO THE PHOTOS!

Pentax Play

I decided to shoot Preston (my 1924 Chandler and Price Letterpress) Tuesday night in the garage with Nathan's SIT method. A bunch of trial and error with f-stops and speed and such ensued and a bit of frustrated consultation with the manual for a certain setting until I finally got it just right. And then I was tempted to make a 1am run to Wal-Mart for some cool-toned compact florescent bulbs (instead of the warmer-toned ones I had)...but I didn't think Paul would really want me making a late night run to the store for bulbs and all. So I used a flash unit in combination with the fluorescent. And then stole my fluorescent lamp off of my desk as a last resort. As it was my head didn't hit the pillow till 3am anyway. I was WAY too excited and had to post the photos to Flickr.



And then this afternoon I played around with some daytime photography and a setting or two.

The tulips in the front yard are up and showing off their colors

Some of the settings on the Pentax are way crazy as I found out - crazy - but kinda cool!

The cheapest model there is - paid in treats!

Pentax K20D

Well folks had to introduce my new camera in a spiffy sort of way!!
Have a laugh on me.

Spring Hike

So yesterday Paul, Jennifer, Steve and Roger and I all went for a hike at the Walls of Jericho. It had been a rainy week and Jennifer thought we'd see some good water there - and man was she right!!! We also saw the very beginning of the spring wild flowers. Had a bit of a cold front so the hike out wasn't too bad either - just had to loose the hat and a few layers with the 1000 foot elevation gain.

These little beauties are Blue Bells. They were just on the other side of the first footbridge.

Steve on the trail... I think he's almost smiling here.

Some chrinoinds on a rock that had a geocache under it. Paul played with the super macro mode on his new little Olympus camera for this one.

Some interesting flowers we still can't identify that were by the campground near the second footbridge crossing the river.



Jennifer setting up to shoot some of the great little rapids on the river. The wild thing is this is the first time I've ever even seen water in the riverbed.

A bit of the river before the first splash pool with Paul starting to cross.




The first splash pool.



Up past the first splash pool - Paul and I by the water that exists a short cave - man was this beautiful!



Me with last waterfall with the sump - where the water eventually spills out of the cave below.

Paul shot this one of me and the water spill in between the last fall and the cave as we were carefully making our way back down. The water was just incredible!!

Tried to find it in the Audubon book - but no luck - so I guess this is one of the other unidentifiable wild flowers. At least being unidentified - takes nothing away from its beauty.