Yorkshire Dales Landscape

So often I am in the Yorkshire Dales for caving, but rarely have I actually taken a nice surface landscape photograph. So when driving to a caving club dinner on a Saturday afternoon and the light quality being really nice I stopped the car to snap this view in Swaledale.

Aggy Courtesan

A serious cave photography trip deep into Aggy to photograph the fantastic formations discovered in the Iles Inlet extensions recently. With some route finding difficulties it took us around 5 hours to reach the formations, and a total trip time of over 12 hours. I did not dare taken my Canon EOS 5D on such a long and arduous trip, so these photos were taken on my trusty Olympus C8080 which has been used for all my digital cave photography to date.

These fantastic urchin formations are clustered on the ceiling in the same chamber as the Courtesan

They are packed so tightly together it was difficult to get a photo where they stood out from the background

This is the magnificent Courtesan formation. A stalactite covered in helictites.

A closer back-lit image of the Courtesan

The Cat from his level

A photo of the cat taken from his level. Exposed using the light in the room (which was a combination of the fire and some low energy bulbs reflected off the walls). The camera was resting on the carpet for this long exposure (0.3s).

More Garden Birds - Practising with the new lens

I've been practising with the new camera and telephoto lens again, photographing more garden birds through the kitchen window. I am very pleased with the quality of photos that I can get with this new equipment.

A Bluetit stops to look for a moment

That's a lot of nuts for a small bird!

 

A garden robin

Skiing in France

Spent a week skiing in France, based in a small village near Les Ménuires. The snow was completely absent at resort level at the start of the week, but a big snow fall a couple of days into the holiday gave us excellent skiing conditions and very pretty landscapes. Here are a couple of my pictures from the trip.

Mountain hare tracks in the snow

High altitude ice crystals in the air on a very cold day (-13C)

On the way home, we spent half a day in Annecy, which looked very picturesque in the snow.



We came across this door in a very wonky wall. Caroline is standing up straight, it is the doorway which has a lean on it!

New Camera and Lens

I got my first digital SLR camera for Christmas, and a serious telephoto lens. So I have been trying them out on the garden birds through the kitchen window. Here is one of a gold finch which I was quite pleased with.

Starlings may be common birds, but I always think they can be quite beautiful

Butterflies

I've been trying to get some good pictures of butterflies in the garden for a while, but to get a good close up picture requires getting close to the butterfly, which is not easy. But on a lovely sunny day these red admiral butterflies were feeding on nectar from a buddliea bush and not paying much attention to me at all.

Return to Spain

After having such a great time in Spain at Easter, we planned a return trip in August. The main action on the expedition was the continued exploration of the new cave from Easter 'El Torno'. While on a trip into a new area of this cave to push and survey some passages which nobody had every been in (or so we thought!), another team from the expedition came across a human skull!


This is a climb up in the new area of passages which led to the passage where the skull was found. This section of cave had been named 'Granny's Slippers' after the first team to explore here found the mud built up on their boots like a big pair of Granny slippers.


The human skull, which became affectionately known as Granny. From what I understand from a purely amateur viewpoint is that it is likely to be very old because the teeth appear worn down but with no sign of decay (indicating this person dates from a time before sugar was part of the European diet). The surveying compass was included for scale. The skull will be excavated by an archeologist in due course.


We found some other bones nearby. These do not appear to be all human (but I'm no expert). Certainly an animal jawbone (small mammal) and a skull (dog sized) were also present (but not visible in this photograph). They are partly calcited into the cave formations, indicating they have been here a very long time.


The photo above shows where the bones in the previous picture were found. They are among the formations on the passage floor in front of the caver. Another set of formations hang over the top, so the bones can't have fallen in from above. Either they were moved here by an animal, or were washed in when water flowed in this ancient passage.


This cave features an amazing variety of passage styles in a relatively short amount of cave. This passage is near the entrance of the cave. The new passages were found beyond the chamber discovered on the Easter expedition.


Just in case you thought it was all hard work. Some of the caving was very relaxing!

Fly-Cave Weekend in the Felix Trombe

A trip which was nearly two years in the planning came together this month. A group of nine of us flew over to France for a long weekend to explore the further reaches of the Grotte de Pene Blanque. The plan was to spend 4 days (3 nights) underground, camping a good few hours into the cave so that we could make a trip to the far end of the system and have plenty of time to take photographs. This also solved any accommodation problems, and saved the weight of carrying tents. The trip was a great success, and we were amazed by the cave formations which we found. We had no idea the cave contained such stuff, so it was a real surprise. Here are a few highlights.

The great Blanc de Blanc column. This extends a further 60m or more down a shaft behind the column.

A large crystal pool in a room with a completely crystal floor.

The caver here is standing by the entrance to this amazing room

A wider view of the chamber with the crystal pool in the foreground

On the third day we went exploring in another part of the cave and found these hair raising cable traverses over gaping black chasms. The floor is about 60m down!

Cave Exploration in Spain

Spent a week over Easter on a caving expedition in Cantabria, Northern Spain in the Matienzo valley. This is the first time I have tried to take all my cave photography gear abroad via budget airline, but it proved possible due to the unlimited weight hand luggage policy of Easyjet. We just about managed to fit our caving, camping and photographic gear into our baggage allowance and had a fantastic week hunting for new caves and searching for new passages in known caves.

The Matienzo expeditions have been running for well over 30 years, and details of the discoveries in the area can be found on the Matienzo Expedition Website.

I took a lot of record photographs of cave entrances and surface features, but also managed to get some nice landscape pictures and a few underground pictures of some of the new discoveries during the week. This was the first time I have tried my hand at panoramic pictures, both above and below ground. The views down on the valley lent themselves well to this format, as did one of the major cave discoveries. I took several frames of each of these scenes, and then used Adobe Photoshop to create the composite images from the best matching ones. Each of the images below is made up from three actual photographs.

Early morning cloud in the Matienzo valley

Cave chamber in the newly discovered Cueva del Torno

Underground in Mendip

Invited to Mendip as a guest at the BEC 70th anniversary dinner, we took the chance to take the camera gear underground in Mendip for the first time. We decided on GB Cavern as it is easy and has plenty to photograph. We did not want to go somewhere that presented a risk that we might miss the dinner!

We were guests of my friends and long time BEC members Gary & Steve, who first introduced me to caving back in 1988. Steve had wanted to try and get a good photograph of the rock bridge in the main chamber of GB, so we focused our attention on this. It is a difficult subject because it can look very small when photographed from above, but has the huge black void of main chamber behind it. From below it looks larger, but the passage beyond is hidden by the bridge itself, due to the steep slope of the chamber floor. In both instances, the bridge tends to blend into the background if not lit carefully. Here is one of the better shots I took.


The Bridge, GB Cavern

Hidden Earth Photography Salon Portfolio

Spent the weekend at the annual UK caving conference Hidden Earth where I am usually to be found organising the photography salon and competitions. I had 3 weeks to sort out my pictures from France and just about got a half decent set of 5 prints together to enter. The salon was a great success this year with around 100 prints entered and a very high standard of work. I realised my pictures were not up to the mark when I saw the other competition entries, which was both disappointing but also inspiring. I still need to improve if I am going to win any prizes next year.

Here are the 5 pictures I entered.


Paul Dold on 3rd Pitch in the Trou du Vent

Martin Jahnke Rigging in the Gouffre Raymonde

Paul Dold on the 2nd pitch, Gouffre Raymonde

Martin Jahnke descending a pitch in the Gouffre Raymonde streamway

Formations in the Salle du Bivouac, Grotte de Pène Blanque

Fantastic Trip to the Felix Trombe

Back from the French Pyrenees after a superb couple of weeks. Lots of photos to sort out. Took over 500 underground in various caves that are part of the Felix Trombe system. One of my main objectives was to get a good photograph of the impressive great chamber in the Trou du Vent. In total we took around 45 frames in the chamber which I can use to build up a composite image to show the whole scene. Here is a quick sample frame to give you an impression of the place.


Grand Salle (Big Chamber) of the Trou du Vent

Preparations for Caving Photography Holiday

I've been very busy these past few months preparing for my Summer holiday trip to photograph parts of the Felix Trombe cave system in the French Pyrenees. Most of the work has been in creating laminated maps for underground and entrance location, but I have also been building slave units (using kits from David Gibson: Caving Flashgun Slave) and converting Metz hammerhead flashguns to run off high capacity NiHM batteries. I have 4 flashguns with slaves, plus a couple of smaller guns for smaller places. I hope to have some pictures to post here in September.

Pipikin Pot Extreme Photo Trip

You know how cave photographs nearly always make it look fabulous? Formations hang from every place on the ceiling and floor. The caver stands in a grand cavern admiring the magnificent scene. Well there is another side to caving, which is rarely seen in photographs. My friend 'Beardy' was recently complaining at the lack of 'proper Yorkshire potholing' photographs on the internet, as he was trying to show some cavers from overseas what good sport the caves of Yorkshire offer. So we took him up on this, and invited him to join us for a photo trip down Pipikin Pot, a classic tight Yorkshire Pot.

The trip was a lot of fun (and mild pain in places!) and a good test of the robustness and easy of carrying of my photographic gear. I had to use all the flashguns on auto in order to limit their brightness, and even then I found pictures were burned out if I could not get at least 2 metres (~6ft) away from the subject. I definitely must adapt my slave units so I can fit them to different flashguns. I was able to take the pictures on the slowest film speed equivalent setting and darkest aperture, giving both low noise and excellent depth of field. In some pictures my cows tails (rope safety tethers attached to my harness) sneaked into the frame, and remained in focus despite me aiming at a subject up to 4 metres away.



Caroline (my wife) in a squeeze

Paul Swires 'Beardy' enjoying every moment of it!