Model Caving

[Antwan]

Those who know me, know I am dead keen on cave photography but since upgrading my kit I had only been out 3 times in 8 month's on short trips so I decided to take the bull by the horns and book model to take on a caving trip. Someone who would stand where I wanted them for as long as it took me to figure out what I was doing and not disappear down some obscure oxbow or run off to the pub as soon as the first flash fires. So I put an advert on a well known (to photographers at least) collaboration site and had a response from a you lady in Keighley an hatched a plan for half a days shooting in Skirwith, followed by half a day around Runscar and thistle.

I met my young model in settle, and while getting her kitted out it became apparent that her driver (Her Mum) had to be home by 1 o'clock so it became a slightly rushed affair. We had a steady walk up the hill to the old quarry, Went to the top of the steps and by some miracle walked straight to the entrance in stead of the usual 15 minute search!

I've seen it written on here many times that when shooting using flash you can shoot hand held so I resisted my urge to set-up a tripod and forced myself to shoot hand held. I had formulated a basic action plan or check list from my previous three trips on how to set up for a better shot

• Camera- out and de-misting
• set-up back lights
• set-up foreground light
• Focus and shoot!

Now shooting hand held and a bit rushed for time my slave flash for the backlight ended up falling over and nearly drowning in the stream, I forgot to acclimatise the camera and because to camera wasnt on a tripod I forgot to get one out for the foreground flash and ended up juggling an SLR and a flash gun while trying to focus on my model, adjust the lighting, give artistic direction and not drop anything! It was anything but ordered!

the first dozen shots using this juggling technique were not exactly pin sharp, but my model now understood what was going on and stopped following me up and down the passage and my nerves had also settles so I though I would try out a shot with a very small aperture to get some 'Stars' , and try to introduce some movement into my models pose but all I achieved was to make it look like she was wearing a nappy  :-[

now the big shot I had planned was to set up on the other side of the squeeze and shoot my model as she came through, unfortunately due to a lack of caving she actually found it quite a terrifying squeeze and been a gentleman I just helped her through  8)

we were now at the major feature of Skirwith cave, the gour pools and big flow stones. Time was pressing so I decided to go for reflections in the pools but in my rush got the positions the wrong way around.
Instead of Low angled lighting accros the pools and a higher camera to get the reflections bouncing off the water I went to opposite way and proceeded very well in lighting up the contents of the pools! I was shooting free hand holding the camera over the formations at this point so I'm quite impressed with the sharpness

After this we packed up and headed out, Meeting the CREG on our way I might have got peli case envy! How much stuff do these guys take on a field trip! 

Taking a model caving (a young 17 year old model at that!) seemed like a good idea, In reality I did get some practice but you can tell she does not belong in the pictures. So how then would I get a good shot of a caver in its natural environment? well my club just so happened to be doing a try caving weekend so I set of to intercept at Calf hole's, arriving as they were just kitting up to abseil in the top for a through-trip I set of down to brow gill with a small contingent of yss who were going the opposite way and set up an ambush!

I wasn't far inside the cave before I had found my composition, the area where the wide bedding starts to develop into the deep entrance stream way and because I had no one waiting (except a curios caver from my club) I went about my checklist, Set-up the camera on the tripod in a dry place, Crawled into the bedding as far as my body size would allow to place two slaves on opposite sides for back lighting. Took a few test shots to make sure these were pointing the right way and then set-up a single flash right of camera and about 3 yard forward. Placed my helmet on the 'Target' to focus and then got comfy. Using my friend as an usher further in the cave the try cavers and club members came through one-by-one and I managed about 3 shots as each one came through and managed to produce my best images to date

Without the earlier practice, would I have been able to place my gear so confidently and get a good result for the fleeting moment a caver occupies that small amount of space know as the focal plane? Probably not so although I dont think taking a model caving will give you competition winning shots (unless he/shes a caver too) but having some who doesnt mid getting blinded by flash guns in the same position 20 time definitely helps!

Large versions can be viewed on my flickr feed at www.flickr.com/3peaksuk

 

[martinm]

good effort, you can only get better with practice! 

 

[Maj]

Not a cave photographer, in fact I don't wield a camera that often. Just returned from a drink with some old friends, so I hope that sets the scene and excuses me of any spelling/grammar mistakes or just waffling.
The pics look good to me, but I do see your point that the subject looks out of her comfort zone. For the model to be part of the environment rather than just there in the picture, they do need to be comfortable. When someone is specifically posing for photos, they need to be aware that they might be in that position for some time, so patience is a virtue. Also an awareness to pick a pose that looks both natural and can be sustained is important, for example resting a hand on something for support that still looks like a natural position. There is no point in the photographer thinking that with just another change to the lighting, the shot is just right, only to then find the subject has moved to a more comfortable position and the composition is lost. If the photographer is not using flash guns, but sustained lighting and longer exposure it is even more important that the model's position can be maintained.  In addition, some cavers, no matter how many years they have been caving for still make for contrived photos. Whereas at the other end of the scale a less experienced caver can look very natural in photos. 
What the model is wearing will have a bearing on the overall picture. If a slim caver is wearing an oversize suit it may well appear that they are wearing a nappy. But also if a caver that has spent a few too many hours in the Hunter's, is wearing a too snugly fitting oversuit the eye may be distracted from what the photographer is intending the viewer to see.
Communication to the team is important. Some cave photographers are very good at letting their team know what is required and when to hold a position, whether that is a flash gun "slave" or a pose. At the other end of the scale, some photographers forget to communicate because they are so wrapped up in the equipment and the others in the team are left wondering whether they need to hold the pose or flash gun in that awkward position for a little bit longer (they haven't got themselves into a comfortable, sustainable position), or whether they can relax.

You don't need to be a photographer to appreciate there is a lot more to it than meets the eye 

Time for another cup of coffee me thinks. 

Maj.

 

[ah147]

My girlfriends a model, and the newest member of our caving club shame I'm not so into photography....


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[blackholesun]

A few boring technical points (that you may already know. Forgive me if they seem patronizing);

I'd set the shutter speed to 1/200 as you might as well put it on the fastest speed the camera can do flash sync on.

I'd also open the aperture a bit and lower the ISO on the Brow Gill shots. The lens should be sharp enough at wider apertures (particularly with a little help from unsharp mask), but the colour quality and dynamic range could improve noticeably between ISO 400 and 100 on an 1100d. The sharpness may also increase if the camera applies less noise reduction. Others may disagree on this.

What do you use for the white balance? The Brow Gill shot looks good, but the others appear inconsistent and the third shot is quite cold. That may well be what the cave looks like under LED lighting, but flashes give off a much warmer light across the whole spectrum, if only for a millisecond. The importance of colour in photography is obvious and I find that getting the right white balance is one of the most important things you can do in the post-processing of underground shots.

Some people would prefer to see a bedding plane exactly horizontal in the shot. Some don't care.

As for taking the shots:

You don't always need to reacclimatize your camera (unless the humidity changes throughout the cave) before a shot. It can usually be done just once near the start of the cave. Also, hold your breath when checking the lens otherwise that will mist up it every time.

It's hard to get oversuits to not flap around. Belts, harnesses and large bellies help, but if none of those are feasible, suits are usually malleable and can be flattened for a shot.

The set up in advance and ambush people is a reliable technique. If you can get quick at it, and are happy to run ahead, then you can usually avoid slowing the group down. However, if you want people looking completely natural, I'd not ask them to turn their lights off, but turn your own off. A fully lit Scurion will be distracting in the shot (even at 1/200) and may give blurring, but a dimmed one or a Duo etc is fine.

If you have everyone's lights off, there is no possibility of blurring, but people look a bit wary and have giant pupils.
If you have yours on and theirs off then, there probably still won't be blurring, but there may be steam in the image if you're too close to the camera and it'll annoy the subject.
If yours is off and theirs is on, the caver can carry on doing what they're doing. They may be surprised when the room lights up and hidden caver in a corner emerges, but it'll be too late to ruin the shot.

Don't worry too much about the subject being in the exact focal point. At small apertures on wide lenses, the depth of field will be pretty large. The accuracy of the camera in low light will also be iffy. Get the shot where you think the subject is in focus, then if they move and it is more interesting, take another. Perhaps even move backwards slightly if they come to you.

 

[Antwan]

Thanks for the reply, I am aware of most of this but I posted the thread to open a bit of discussion and i'm sure there are many readers who will hopefully pick up tips. I'll elaborate on a few points briefly

The shutter speed was as fast as my slowest flash (140), before getting an SLR I had a bridge camera and shot everything using a 4 second exposure, light painting and an old flash gun so when I took my shiny new camera and wireless slaves underground for the first time I had high hopes of producing some stunning photography! but in reality nothing worked the way I though it was going to and most of my images were under exposed and way out of focus (Even CSI would struggle sharpening them up). So to concentrate on the three things I was struggling on I decided to stick with ISO400, as an average, middle of the road value so I could concentrate firstly on how the hell to focus an SLR underground and secondly get the whole 'lighting' as a more intuitive activity in itself. (I've only managed 5 caving trips in 10 months!)

For the Brow Gill setup, I was zoomed in a fair bit so Depth of Field would have been reduced from shooting wide (suitable dry location) so an aperture of f7 seemed a good option as this would give me a bit of lee-way as the cavers came through.

White balance is always set to auto and unfortunately my laptop isn't very fast for editing purposes so I don't really do much with sorting this out, although I should. The shots on Skirwith were a mixture of flash and LED headlamps, so the colours do look a bit mismatched, in the last one its very washed out as quite simply the flash was set too high (or the ISO too high!)

And I didn't ask anyone to turn off there lights, Its just a bit of an automatic response from the many 'point and shoot' photographers in my caving club (personally I would have liked a low flood to have been on in the Brow Gill picture)

I would love to read any tips/techniques you have for post processing, Maybe you could post a thread in the technical section and maybe even win some rope ;-)

Oh and as for the noise reduction I do plan on testing the difference one I deem my shots competent enough to use for comparison

 

[Hoff]

Hi Antwan,

Thanks  for sharing your experience, wish I could get as good pics but due to the nature of my sea caving and tunnelling exploits being partially submerged and some tight squeezes I have to do with a small compact ultra tough Olympus Stylus TG-3 with it's built in flash.

Not sure if I would be able to get a neoprene clad model to pose in some of the dark tight aquatic squeezes I go in but I have shared a few tense moments with conger eels and the odd inquisitive seal but that's another story lol! 

Keep sharing your pics please.

Cheers
Hoff 

 

[kay]

Taking a model caving (a young 17 year old model at that!) seemed like a good idea, In reality I did get some practice but you can tell she does not belong in the pictures.

I think the reason she doesn't "belong" (apart from her cleanliness) is that she's looking at the camera, as if you are taking a picture of her. Whereas a caver would know that he/she is only there to provide a bit of scale, and would try to stave off boredom and discomfort by looking at a bit of cave.

 

[bograt]

I tend to agree with Kay, the bits of the cave are well shot, but there is distraction by the model looking straight into the lens, flashing off her bit of blue hair, far better if the hair had a bit of mud in it and she was looking interested in the cave rather than the camera, next time use a model who is also interested in the cave.

But, there again, we don't know the market you are aiming these shots at? I note you have stamped the '3Peaks' signature on them (copyright?) :-\

 

[Antwan]

I did think the blue flash would be a nice contrast against all the red... Definitely provides a bit of contrast and 'interest'  :-[

I stamped them with my URL mainly so people have a source if they end up getting re-posted/shared around social media sites etc... Although it is very easy to remove if someone wanted to.

I'm not sure where I sit on watermarking images, wether it is too distracting or not.

 

[TheBitterEnd]

It's really good that you tried and that you got some good shots out of it. Nothing wrong with the model looking at the camera IMO, I guess people just get used to a particular style of caving photo and each to their own but I think it's good o see someone doing something other than the back lit caver in a tube. Some of my favorite photos are the one that "feel" like caving, although it is is also interesting to see large chambers well illuminated.

 

[kay]

It's really good that you tried and that you got some good shots out of it. Nothing wrong with the model looking at the camera IMO, I guess people just get used to a particular style of caving photo and each to their own but I think it's good o see someone doing something other than the back lit caver in a tube. Some of my favorite photos are the one that "feel" like caving, although it is is also interesting to see large chambers well illuminated.

Depends whether you're photographing the cave or the model. I really like the first one, where she is looking good, and it's a lovely photograph of her in an interesting background. But the attention is definitely on her!

The other two don't do so much for her, but my attention is drawn by her eyes, so I don't look at the cave.

 

[blackholesun]

That's interesting. I didn't know any flashes were limited in that way. Can I ask what wireless triggers you are using?

With the focus, I find it really can be a lot more problematic underground. Asking someone to hold still while you try to get the focus right is a really effective way to lose any spontaneity in the photo and make it look forced. I've tried a variety of things to solve this:

Ask someone to look at you, try to AF on their headlamp
Bring a laser pointer, preferably green, and try to focus on the dot
Before the trip, manually set the lens to the hyperfocal distance of the widest aperture, tape it in place and close the aperture to deal with nearer subjects
Manually focus (in live view, using the zoom in feature on the top right button), then recompose

There are also more drastic options:
Buy an old manual focus lens (I use a 28mm, F2.8, m42 mount that cost ~?20). Use MF but check the distance scale on the side to see if it's plausible. Alternatively just guess the distance and set that on the scale. This is surprisingly effective with practise, particularly when you have time to set up the shot. Means that the camera never hunts for its focus and misses the shot as well.
But
You lose a lot of wide angle flexibility that your current lens has.

Ah, yes, I now see what focal length you had it on for Brow Gill. Yeah, that sounds like a good choice . I thought it was at 18mm, where F7 would give a perhaps unnecessary depth of field compared to lowering the ISO. Ignore my comment on that then.

I'm assuming you use the JPEGs out the camera then instead of RAW? If that's the case, then without going in to it too much here. I'd recommend three things.
Set the white balance to Flash. This makes a huge, and positive difference to the colours compared to Auto (IMO).
Set the saturation to +1. Personal preference.
Save in RAW as well. Even if you're not familiar with processing RAW, you may be later and it gives you way more control over editing photos already taken. For the first few trips I took my SLR on, all shots were in Auto white balance and just JPEG and I wish that I could edit the good ones properly now.

Personally, I'd avoid using LED lighting at the same time as flashes, as flashes give better colours (though I may be slated for this). However with anything under 1/160s headlamps will contribute very little to the photo unless they are really powerful.

Naturally all this stuff is far less important than the composition, framing, colours etc, but getting competent with the tech side is easier and means you're more likely to be able to get the shots you want. Also, you probably know most of this as well, but hopefully some is useful to you or others!

 

[Antwan]

I have a pair of RF603 triggers, one attached to a YN 460 flash (which  is slow to sync most of the time) and a pair of 520iii's that seem fantastic.

Good tip regarding the laser pointer, I'll try that next time out.

I only shoot In RAW, but to give you an idea of my IT it takes about 2 mins to save a hi res jpg from raw.... New pc in the next week though 

 

[damo8604]

Hi Antwan,

Apologies for the thread revival, I'm heading up to the Dales next month 20th-22nd Feb on a CSCA meet staying in YSS.

Like you I have been bitten by the photography bug and want to take quality action shots underground but it's hard to encourage cavers to hang around in the cold whilst I have a major faff and ultimately not get the shot I want  I mean, how do I sell that? I asked my club members if they were interested this weekend but they were only interested in doing something gnarly!

Anyway, if you're free that weekend do you fancy doing a 'Tog trip' somewhere? I'd quite like to get some Dave Elliot-esque shots, between us we might be able to muddle through and pull off some good shots, even if it's just hanging into some of the caves along the top of Kingsdale, if we are lucky we could make quite a day of it!

Kind regards
Damian

 

[Antwan]

I'm not free that weekend (missuses birthday) and wont be able to get much caving done in the next month or two.

Thanks for the Invite, love the term 'tog trip'! I'll pm you when I get chance to sit for more than a minute and try and sort something out.

 

[ah147]

Hi Damo,

Could well be interested. Girlfriends a proper model and loves caving, though isn't too SRT competent yet.

I don't mind dragging some gear in a easy-ish cave to keep us warm whilst you set up shots! 


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[damo8604]

That's fantastic 

Where are you located?

 

[ah147]

Down near sheffield. I know extremely little about the Dales (only caved there once) so anywhere you'd like to go Im game.

Ash


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[damo8604]

Cool, I'll send you a PM closer to the time with my mobile no and we can sort something out.