Sometimes get ourselves into very unusual situations. We begin the day thinking it'll go one way and prepare ourselves for the events heading our way. Without knowing it, the world conspires against us by perfectly placing little bumps in our road of daily progress. Unconsciously, we make little adjustments dealing with the bumps. Adjustments, new paths are prepared without thinking, subtle changes to where we're going. Without knowing it--really when you become aware of the world--you might find yourself somewhere you never thought you'd ever go, not ever. This ice cave is just that kind of situation.

I was leading a photo workshop with another Charles "Chas" Glatzer in Jasper NP. As had been our practice, we' planned on sitting out the mid-day sun--bad light time--to rest and recreate. This day, for no reason really, we elected to abbreviate our siesta and head out to Mt Edith Cavell. This mountain is the highest in Jasper NP and is an obvious icon throughout the park. Most of the participants were wildlife photographers, lacking anything to shoot immediately, I lead the troop to shoot landscapes up at Mt Edith Cavell. There's a fantastic trail at the mountains base that leads you from the parking lot to a small glacier lake. Adjoining the lake are the remains of the toe of a huge glacier that drapped the side of the mountain like a leg from its peak to the base below during cooler years. Sometime in the last century the leg of glacier collapsed leaving the toe at the lake and its knee at the mountains summit with tendrils of water falling between.

As is pretty normal for a landscape workshop, everyone split to the winds working their own vision of the subject. On my own I worked myself to the toe to find a opening--about 3 feet tall--leading to a small cave in the middle of the glacier. To my surprised, I found Chas already working inside the cave. The subtle hues of green, blue, brown, and ice all made fascinating material. The challenge was the technical problems.

The middle of the cave was essentially unlit and almost pitch black. Only 20 feet away were openings with shafts of light beaming down. This was a huge dynamic range problem. There was simply no way with one capture or push of the shutter button to record shadow and highlight simultaneously. The light and dark sections were just too far from each other. How, to capture this... How to capture this... Easy, record several captures at various exposure settings then combine them all during post processing. Piece of cake... Honestly, the concept is pretty easy but the actually application of the concept can be quite difficult.

What did I do? Since the interior space was so tight--at most 4 feet tall and 20 to 30 feet wide--I used my 14mm f/2.8 to capture as wide of view with each exposure as possible. I wanted to get the entire opening with the ice chuck slightly offset from the middle to maintain a bit of drama. Altogether, I needed pan 4 exposures to make this 180 deg field of regard image.

I calculated the exposure and the brackets honestly by trial and error--the ultimate benefit of digital imaging. I did this mostly by checking the histogram and "blinkies". I knew I had the right values when the highlight capture exposure wasn't blinking, and the shadow exposure placed the majority of the histogram in the middle of the scale. From previous experience I knew bracketing 2/3rd increments was a nice compromise with ease of post processing and the huge number of captures needed to make an image like this. The end result was I made 8 different exposures at 4 different pans locations resulting in 32 different captures to make this image. Exposures ran from 3 seconds all the way to 1/25sec at f/16.

Okay, the technical challenges of this image were immense but why did I start this article talking about being in unexpected situations and wondering how I got there? Ice caves are obviously things that aren't in every ones backyards. They have an attraction for anyone that's trying to shoot something different. Shooting an ice cave from the inside is definitely different. Like a moth to light, Chas and I were destined to explore the inside of that cave without thinking twice about it. In the middle of capturing this image I did think twice, right after hearing the huge boom resonate throughout the caved boom caused by a large falling object impacting the top of the glacier. Chas and I looked at each other wondering whether this was a good idea or not. Not wanting to test the "luck gods" we finished our work--well before squeezing out all the caves potential--and beat feet out of there.

• The news article would say something like this "...two previously considered intelligent photographers were found smooshed as flat as pancakes when a ice cave they were photographing in collapsed..." Not a pretty sight.

What's the point of this? As I always preach and try to practice daily, always leave yourself an out. Always have a backup plan and make sure your backup plan will work. Someday, maybe not tomorrow but someday, you'll be glad you did.

Cheers

Tom Hill