This past Saturday, my wife and I reserved a spot in the Laurel Caverns lower caving tour. This set of caverns goes about 45 stories deep and the majority of it is unlighted. There is a good amount of climbing over and down rocks as well as some crawling. The spaces can be very tight. This was my first time doing something like this, and I had no idea what to expect. It was amazing at how pitch black and quiet it is when you’re that far underground. The mind starts to wander and think about what would happen if the flashlights failed. Anyway, here are the pictures (all taken with an OMD E-M5). The first is above the mountain, the next are far below it.
After the caving tour, my wife and I spent the night at the Summit Inn. This hotel was built around 1902 and sits on top of a mountain overlooking the town of Hopwood. In this day and age, finding places with this much character is tough. The woodwork is beautiful and in the lobby sits a large stone fireplace with plenty of old wooden chairs around it.
Great pictures… If I was down there, I imagine I would be worrying more about the walls caving in before my flashlight fails. Looks like at least the third photo was taken with a flash… did you use the provided flash or have a different one mounted? I haven’t used the one provided yet and have been trying to decide whether to invest in one.
Thanks! All of the color cave pictures were with flash. Once we got past the lighted sections of the cave, there were no other light sources besides our LED headlamps. I had the FL-600r on the entire time. The most difficult part was focusing, as the AF illuminator LED on the FL-600r wasn’t strong enough to sometimes reach across the cave to the opposite wall. In those cases, I used a 144 lumen flashlight to light up the opposite wall and then the E-M5 focused on that spot and I turned the flashlight off before I took the picture.