Post by L Roebuck on Aug 8, 2006 7:23:41 GMT -5
Cave photographer lights the way
By Alexa Hinton, ahinton@nashvillecitypaper.com
August 08, 2006
Bob Biddix has spent nearly every weekend for the past 19 years exploring the caves of the South. There are nearly 8,400 in Tennessee alone. What are spooky, dark caverns to most, he sees as underground jewels of beauty.
“When I started caving years ago, I’d try to explain to friends what I was seeing, what I was doing. And people wouldn’t get it. I could try to explain a typical trip, and you won’t fathom what I am talking about,” Biddix said. “So I decided to start showing people.”
Biddix, a Nissan automotive technician, pioneered cave photography. His pictures illustrate and document the secret world of spelunking: scale, dimension, crevices, rooms, rock formations, pools, colors, equipment and cave creatures.
But first he spent years of trial and error — mostly error — and thousands of dollars burned on wasted film and weak flashes. His largest hurdle was finding a light source bright and strong enough to illuminate the total darkness. The solution came in the form of flash bulbs, the one-time use bursts of light invented in the 1930s and discontinued in the 1980s.
“Once I had that all powerful source of light I could start toning it down a bit. Go from trying to make things bigger and bigger, and instead focus on lighting the whole room, not just part of it, moving lights around, moving people around. Working the set. The cave is like a set,” Biddix said. “Now I can get the [picture] in less than three shots. Then it’s just me being picky.”
Full Article: www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section_id=12&screen=news&news_id=51397
By Alexa Hinton, ahinton@nashvillecitypaper.com
August 08, 2006
Bob Biddix has spent nearly every weekend for the past 19 years exploring the caves of the South. There are nearly 8,400 in Tennessee alone. What are spooky, dark caverns to most, he sees as underground jewels of beauty.
“When I started caving years ago, I’d try to explain to friends what I was seeing, what I was doing. And people wouldn’t get it. I could try to explain a typical trip, and you won’t fathom what I am talking about,” Biddix said. “So I decided to start showing people.”
Biddix, a Nissan automotive technician, pioneered cave photography. His pictures illustrate and document the secret world of spelunking: scale, dimension, crevices, rooms, rock formations, pools, colors, equipment and cave creatures.
But first he spent years of trial and error — mostly error — and thousands of dollars burned on wasted film and weak flashes. His largest hurdle was finding a light source bright and strong enough to illuminate the total darkness. The solution came in the form of flash bulbs, the one-time use bursts of light invented in the 1930s and discontinued in the 1980s.
“Once I had that all powerful source of light I could start toning it down a bit. Go from trying to make things bigger and bigger, and instead focus on lighting the whole room, not just part of it, moving lights around, moving people around. Working the set. The cave is like a set,” Biddix said. “Now I can get the [picture] in less than three shots. Then it’s just me being picky.”
Full Article: www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section_id=12&screen=news&news_id=51397