Great Saltpeter Cavern

[Amocholes]

I had the opportunity to spend some time in the Great Saltpeter Cavern, a former show cave in Kentucky. Since I had my tripod, I decided to try some HDR. Interesting challenges shooting in a cave. Lots of moisture in the air, poor lighting, etc. C&C would be appreciated.

This was 5 exposures +1.7 to -2


Here is is the 0 exposure

 

[Bynx]

Either shot on their own would be thought of as pretty good, but together we see differences in each that we like and dont like such as the colors on the right and the clarity on the left. Can you tell us about the number of exposures of each and the processing you did to get such a difference in the looks of each?

 

[Amocholes]

The 1st one is the HDR. The second is just the unprocessed, 0 biased photo to give an idea of the starting point. I'm not sure if I can tell you much about how I processed it. I tend to tweak the controls until I get a look that I like.The chamber is 200 ft long and the ceiling is 80 ft up. The red area is caused by a red light behind the corner.

 

[Bynx]

Its funny, when I first saw this earlier both pics were side by side with no exposure info. Your 0 shot is pretty good considering the dynamic range. There are so many incredible places, such as this, that I will never ever get to visit other than through the window of my computer. Thanks for letting me see this.