This collection of 70 photos was taken in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico, and along the nearby Pecos River in the town of Carlsbad during December 2021. I'm frankly not sure whether it belongs on this blog (since it contains no words), but for the moment this seems as good a place for it as any.
Since Carlsbad Caverns is one of the most photographed caves in the world, I elected to try a novel approach with these photos. Instead of picturing the rock formations inside the cave as static, unchanging objects, I portrayed them as dynamic, moving, living things that move towards or away from the camera, gnash their teeth, swing, bounce, spin, and decay. Many of the photos give the appearance that some swift-moving particles - grains of sand, perhaps - are exuberantly flowing off of the features and blasting through the cave, thus visually transplanting the primary erosive agent from the desert above into the caves below.
This was done by deliberately breaking many of the rules of landscape photography: Setting the camera's light levels incorrectly, taking photos off-the-cuff and out-of-focus, and (especially) moving the camera while holding the shutter down. (All effects were done in-camera; there has been no digital manipulation whatsoever.) To complete the collection, photos of reflections of lights in the Pecos River - and, occasionally, the lights themselves - are interspersed to accentuate and echo the natural patterns of the cave formations. The water that melted through the limestone of Carlsbad Caverns to form its wonderful features is thus brought back into it in volume, while the dimly-lit results of watery erosion are lifted from the depths of the caverns to the world above and flung across the water for all see.
Very much conceived and developed on the fly, this is still my favorite of the several photo series that I've created over the years. Enjoy!
