TAG, May 2011

[self-deleted_user]

Why not, right? =)
Okay basically this is "Amy's Excuse for Posting Massive Amounts of Photos of Awesome" :P

Thursday morning I flew to Atlanta and met up with David who I often go caving with, his fault I got into this, yada yada. Originally we had planned to do Signal Light on Friday so we had a day, basically, to get stuff together but it ended up that the entire day was spent packing up his grad housing dorm room thingie and doing the cleaning and checking out, and that wiped us both out to power-move and scrub a semester's worth of dirt and grime from the bathroom and kitchen (I didn't touch the bathroom, I did do the kitchen floor though. Seeing how horrible the kitchen floor was...no, not cleaning a bathroom 4 dudes shared all semester :P) anyway! so we opted for sleep instead.

Got to stay at Mudpup's...holyshit love his place I could live there it is so awesome! And he's amazing and nice and a great cook omnom. We did end up throwing a rope into a tree on Friday to do a bit o' practicing anyway. Mudpup liked my changeovers lots so I was happysquee to get complemented on them And I got to see Spot again too! And met other cavers from around there although sorry I dun remember people's names. There was a Maureen. I remember that!

Mudpup ended up coming with David and I to the Huntsville grotto's trip to Snail Shell on Saturday. And I met Marduke from this here forum too! He brought a 2 seater inflatable kayak and I got the second seat. Kayaking in a cave, how freakin' awesome is that?!?! I also swam later on though past where we docked the boats and floats. It was a fun trip but eventually just got to be meh old because nothing new passage wise and it sounded like there wasn't anything further upstream so soaked to the bone and starting to feel chilled (as were most the others) we turned back. Oh, my new 30 ft of purple webbing was put to use! Apparently usually this huge flowstone formation thingie is often ducked under but water levels were too high no airspace so we climbed it instead. Much to my surprise, it wasn't a problem for me to climb. Looked harder from the ground than once you started. Either that or maybe I'm just getting better. I didn't even need the handline just used it in case, basically.

Upstream Entrance

Snail Shell Cave 001 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Docking the kayaks

Snail Shell Cave 006 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

That formation that gets ducked under we had to climb instead

Snail Shell Cave 019 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

It was really cool, when you looked closely at it, looked like a lot of mini rimstone, I guess? Funkily awesome.

Snail Shell Cave 013 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

mmm flowstone

Snail Shell Cave 022 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Kayaking out of the cave...David getting a hand up from another grotto member, sorry I didn't catch many names this trip.

Snail Shell Cave 027 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

On Sunday, David and I met up with Marduke to do Limrock, since he knows where all the cool stuff is, hehe. Totally was not lying, lots of neat stuff in that cave! And we went all the way to the back. I actually really enjoyed that second breakdown that is like a giant 3D maze. It was a lot of fun! Flexibility and agility and being shorter than the dudes comes in handy at times...lol!

I am such a sucker for long exposure of waterfalls...and this was cool too seeing the rings and jazz

Limrock Blowing Cave 012 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Flowstone above the boat pool.

Limrock Blowing Cave 013 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

The room with the large white formations on the floor and large curtains up above...well...this is that whole dome area lit up. Curtains are like...10? 15? ft tall to give some scale. Gracias to Marduke for his lighting help here!

Limrock Panoramic - Formation Room by Sunguramy, on Flickr

And closer up of the curtains

Limrock Blowing Cave 017 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Getting hungry yet?

Limrock Blowing Cave 030 by Sunguramy, on Flickr


Limrock Blowing Cave 023 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Some of the delicate whatchamacallit crystal formations.

Limrock Blowing Cave 038 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Monday then was Pipesides and Stephens Gap.

Pipesides. Pretty little thing it is. =)

Pipesides Pit 005 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

There was a cute little guy there too.

Pipesides Pit 001 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

HOLY MOLASSES is Stephen's Gap incredible. On my first rappel (yeah I did it twice, hehe) the sun was hitting the waterfall jussssssst right to make a double rainbow. I uh...no...didn't get a photo. I was too busy gasping in awe and thought to just lock off my rack and chill there a bit and stare and soak it in. Never dawned on me my camera was right on my gear loop. Ah well, that image is burned in my memory forever :) I took a TON of photos and ended up creating panoramics of most of them. And I'm gonna go over to the UKcave forum and bump and old thread of someone asking where this cool cave was in the UK and some blamed the Dales people for hiding it, haha! Now I can bump it and say "neener neener I've been there!" because I'm cruel like that On the second rappel I did I remembered to take photos, but the sun had moved past. Also I learned taking photos on rope is hard, you tend to have inate moving since you're just hanging there, it's not as steady as being on the ground. I really didn't get good shots while on rope, haha. However, I did get eaten alive by mosquetoes to the point that my right upper arm is way past itchy and to the painful discolored swollen point. Markduke and his friend who came along were tracing constalations in the bites, apparently they were spidering out. It's on the back of my upper arm so I couldn't see it well, and no spidering now, just one mass of swollen. Very much worth it though. Only got 3 ticks, too, so not bad at all! haha.

This is what kept happening to my on rope photos:

Stephen's Gap031 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Not all were that bad though

Stephen's Gap029 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Classic dual entrance shot

Stephen's Gap026 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

I really like this one, Marduke looking back up, I basically laid down on the pedestal to take this shot upwards.

Stephen's Gap020 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Panoramic of keyhole and such

Stephen's Gap Panoramic - Keyhole Entrance by Sunguramy, on Flickr

Another classic shot. With a burst of orange Marduke for flavor.

Stephen's Gap Panoramic - Brian on Pedistal by Sunguramy, on Flickr

I've not seen a photo like this, and it looked so purdy, so I put together this panoramic too!

Stephen's Gap Panoramic - Big Entrance (horz) by Sunguramy, on Flickr



See ya later!
(after photo from Limrock....David being excited, Marduke being chill and cool, me being...oh gosh I look like such a dork here)

Limrock Blowing Cave 039 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

[Herman Miller]

Very nice photos,

Glad to see your trip down to TAG was so succesful.

[batrotter]

Nice pics!

[MUD]

Agreed, nice pics! Caving is kinda fun huh Amy?

...and rolls!

[self-deleted_user]

Kinda fun? KINDA?

[Phil Winkler]

Amy, you take some very nice pics. I'm glad you got to do Stephen's Gap, too. One of my favorites.

What kind of camera and lighting do you use?

[mgmills]

Amy, you got some really nice pictures. I love the 4th on in your post (Snail shell 013). I like cave pictures that show "the scenery" but the close ups of features are often more interesting. Limrock 012 and 013 are also very cool. I think my overall favorite of the group is the salamander in Pipeside.

Good job. Sorry I didn't know you were at Pup's or I would have come by to meet you. I only live about a mile away as the crow flies.

[Crockett]

This is a FUN post. Nice photos. Well done. Thanks.

[self-deleted_user]

Thanks ya'all!

Phil - I refer you to my Nikon P60 thread, that is what I'm using. It really does work quite dang well, for a $50 camera that fits exactly perfect in the 1010 Pelican case, easy and small and basically light to carry around too. Cheap 'cause you get 'em on ebay, they were one of the earlier p&s/slr crossover type things I think, made back in 2001 or 2002 or such, out of production years. I do generally find older cameras work better in caves, oddly enough.

Lighting was either my headlamp (sidlighting things off my head, just looking at what I was taking, or sometimes sweeping around to lightpaint with it), whoever else was around I could get to "hey point your light there!", or on camera flash except for a few which Marduke had along some crazy high powered flashlight (such as in lighting up the dome there in Limrock and pointing at the right angle to get the flowstone reflection above the boat pool). He definitely needs to come along with me all the time so I can just be "hey light up xyz!" bam easy peasy photo lol. Usually people aren't as cool with shining a light somewhere, and really that is what helps me, is if someone is willing to stop walking for 3 seconds and shine their light over somewhere for me to grab the shot. Really, having someone who is okay with pausing for a few seconds to point a light where I ask 'tis all I need.

I take some time with photography but in no way are these photo trips, I'd like to go on a photo trip sometime (someone else photographing, I can just help or sherpa or whatever) but nah, when I cave I like to...you know...cave...and not lug stuff around so I'll just take what I can get with the easycheapfastlightweightnobulktocarry method...and the more I do the more I'm figuring out how to light stuff and focus and frame things so the photos themselves I think are turning out quite well. Not sure how much more to expect with the equipment (aka lack of) that I carry but it keeps surprising me and I guess I'm developing an eye for things underground or something, heh.

mgmills you might like these too then :)

Snail Shell Cave 011 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

There was water actively flowing very thinly down the formation, and all the little ridges were making it glisten and sparkle in waves like this, all the sparkly edges are the front edges of tiny tiny waves created because of the texture and instead of "whitecaps" it was shining:

Snail Shell Cave 014 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

And some other closer-ups of that waterfall where you could see the various patterns

Limrock Blowing Cave 006 by Sunguramy, on Flickr


Limrock Blowing Cave 010 by Sunguramy, on Flickr

[NZcaver]

Nice work, Amy. You should submit some of your favorites to the NSS print and/or photo salons. Especially Pipesides 001, Limrock Blowing 023 (been there!), and possibly Snail Shell 013.

[wyandottecaver]

I liked pipesides 1 too! the salamander in the knothole was awesome.

[self-deleted_user]

Thanks Jansen. I won't be attending convention though. I'll probably enter something at the fall TAG cave-in or something, I guess.

And aww thanks Wyandotte! I was excited to finally get a salamander photo! =) Pretty big dude too, wasn't a tiny one like I've seen before at least.

Also wheeeeeeeeee look at me! ~~~~>

[NZcaver]

Thanks Jansen. I won't be attending convention though. I'll probably enter something at the fall TAG cave-in or something, I guess.

You don't have to attend convention to submit your images. Check out the links to the salons. It's relatively easy to submit photos in the photo salon by sending in a CD or DVD. (Apparently the salon staff haven't figured out a way for people to email them in yet.) But there's lots of entries, and competition is stiff. All entries accepted are shown during the photo salon presentation on Thursday night at convention.

The print salon requires substantially more effort to print and mount (but not frame) each image, and for those not attending convention they also need to be mailed in. Consequently the print salon receives far less entries. This doesn't necessarily mean judging is any less stringent, and all prints accepted for show are displayed in a gallery for convention-goers to browse at their leisure. In today's world of almost entirely digital photography, I enjoy submitting prints because it gives me an excuse to actually work with a few of my images in print form. I've even sold or given away a few of these prints to caver friends. You should do it. I might submit a few again this year, but I haven't decided yet.

[self-deleted_user]

I'd rather do prints myself as well. I'ts one reason I think that I keep my cave journal, it lets me print in physical form my few favourites of the trip. Digital images are awesome, but having them in print form with descriptions and stories right with them just keep the memories alive more, impo.

Can they be sent with someone? I know Aaron is going.

[NZcaver]

Yes, they can be hand delivered. And equally important, they can be picked up and brought back to you by a proxy too!