Morrison in cavern pic experiment 10/13/09

[SeaYoda]

Quick set of pics - more to come with explanation to follow:

 

[JP11283]

Very cool!

 

[msuman]

Wow! Those turned out great.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Looks awesome, and the pro's said it couldn't be done HA!

 

[Cave Diver]

Looks awesome, and the pro's said it couldn't be done HA!

 

[GLENFWB]

I know Bill is tied up tonight, so I will leave some commentary. SeaYoda and I headed out to Morrison today, knowing the river was up and conditions would not be great in the basin. But the basin was not where we would be spending our time, so we decided to give our Morrison cavern picture project a shot. I took some surface shots I will post in a few minutes.

Our plan was as follows:

• I was diving sidemount with LP108's so I was carrying plenty of gas
• Bill was diving an AL80 and dropping his pony bottle in the cavern by the entrance.
• Bill was carrying his LARGE camera rig which was attached to a tripod that had 6 pounds of weight secured to it. Needless to say, this is a monster to carry in the water, and swim against the flow in the cavern.
• I brought my G10 with two DS51 strobes.
• I also brought another DS50 strobe, that was attached to a slave sensor. This was really so I could test it for some cave shots at a later date. (It worked Bugman...get ready for some back-lit cave shots!)
• We made several plans for communicating what we need to do underwater based upon the feedback Bill got from each shot
• Basically what we did was, I got behind Bills tripod, when his flash fired, I took off with my camera and began to make my flashes fire as quickly as possible, while trying to evenly paint the walls.
• We also made several tests painting the walls and ceilings with my Dive Rite LED and Intova LED, as well as the flash

Let me just say, Bill and I ran our butts off doing this project. We had to exert a great deal of energy swimming quickly to paint the walls. We had one minute to put as much light in the cavern as possible.

Since we were working in 60-80 feet of water, we had to watch our NDL limits. Our first dive was 44 minutes, with a max depth of 85 feet. We had a long surface interval so we could spend more time during our second dive.

More information to come.....

 

[GLENFWB]

After the first dive, we left all our cameras in the cavern along with Bill's pony during our surface interval. We were the only divers on site all day. We arrived at Morrison at 10 am after stopping at Vortex for Bill to get a tank filled. We didn't leave till 2:30 PM.

On our second dive we planned some different strategies and tried to take as many shots as our NDL limits would allow. I should say, we were really maxing ourselves with task loading. The basin looked very dark, so we decided I would run a reel from open water in to the cavern. I also pulled the dive flag and tied it off to the log. I also carried my camera with two strobes...I was huffing and puffing to get it all done without getting myself tangled. The worst part was getting it all retrieved on the second dive. Bill was running low on air, and NDL limits, so he signaled me and exited the cavern. I had to carry my camera, run my reel back out of the cavern, then stop at the log, collect the flag and rope, and continue to reel. The basin wasn't as bad as it looked from the surface. Once we got over the boil it cleared up with the tanic layer on top.

The most important signal for the day was taking the palm of your hand, and rubbing it in a circular motion over the stomach. This was our signal for, "ENOUGH PICTURES, LET'S GET OUR BUTTS TO SALLY'S!" After the second dive, Bill and I went and did our post dive debrief at Sallys where we had some good food and talked about our picture project, and what we will do different next time.

I took MANY pictures...but most were just to fire my flashes for Bills camera. So, i only have a few underwater shots...not very much worth posting. I got more pictures of rocks today then I thought I would take in a lifetime! I will post the surface shots next.

 

[cmufieldhockey8]

Fantastic!!!! Those shots look incredible! Looks like you got some good training too handling all that gear and battling the flow. Well done! Glen that's very exciting that your slave thing worked. Think of the possibilities!

Cave Diver... love it! lol

 

[wjefferis]

Nice shots!!! Now that you guys are on the right track, I bet with a little tweaking you could even produce even better pictures.

 

[crd_kats]

Amazing shots... ! Thank you very much for sharing.