Well done Greg, considering the limitations of the lighting you had available. I liked the ribbon shawl and the river the best. I notice considerable barrel distortion in the mosaic of the "large stalagmite" (actually a column
) - is that inherent in your lens or a result of your mosaic procedure? I don't want to sound overly critical, but the detail is lost in the straws of the Gem of the West.
Cave photography is generally a little different to other types, usually because of a combination of subtle colours, extreme depth of field, and usually total absence of light. Usually its a team effort, and a large part of the skill is in flash placement to highlight the features you want without losing detail in the highlights (or shadows). We typically used 3 to 7 flash units, triggered either manually or as optical slaves, sometimes with multiple flash activations in the one exposure. The camera bit of it is nothing unusual, just set for the desired DOF and keep the shutter open for the duration of the exposure sequence
. It works marvelously in big avens and caverns, and in long tunnels
.
Al.