372 - Skylight Cave
*Note: This adventure also features an in-field vlog.
Whew! One of my favorite shoots in awhile... Mainly because it DIDN'T involve a waterfall. AKA my last (million) adventures. Today we explored the infamous Skylight Cave.
Honestly the biggest adventure of this location is finding the actual cave. It's literally in the middle of nowhere, with basically no signs pointing to it anywhere. You simply follow a GPS coordinate on Google Maps and hope you find it.
Despite negative reviews on Google Maps about the "rough road" to get in, it was actually extremely easy for us to navigate in our massive Sprinter Airstream. We had no problems at all! However, once we got to the parking lot, things got wonky.
We took a wrong turn at first and walked about .1 miles down a dirt road to nowhere. Normally this wouldn't be concerning, but we had a deadline. The special light we were looking for in this cave lights up nice and special around 9:30AM - 10:30AM, and it was quickly approaching 10:00AM.
By some streak of luck, I got enough 4G for about 30 seconds to Google more exact coordinates than the vague Google Maps pinpoint. Turns out we just had to walk up the road we came down a little further. There's a sign right in front of the cave to let you know you're there.
We hustled down a small steel ladder, and looked around. Another unforeseen obstacle- there was two directions one could go. Obviously, we took the wrong one and walked about 900 feet in pure darkness to a dead end. I was actually relived it wasn't down there, because it was starting to get a bit spooky and my phone flashlight wasn't cutting it.
Being lost in a cave is one of my worst nightmares, so we hustled back to the ladder.
The other direction was much much shorter. Literally walked about 100 feet and we hit our destination. Which was this:
One for the gallery, one for Instagram. I love it when a composition works both ways.
When we showed up, only two beams were kicking, and one was barely showing. It looked like we were only going to be working with one light. But about 15 minutes later the second beam kicked down HARD. I threw some dirt in the air to add to the beams, and nailed those shots.
Not much to say about them, other than that I angled them to avoid as much glare as possible. The right side of the cave adds too much glare, and on the opposite side of the beams you can't see them. So the left side made the most sense.
And... Yeah! That was basically it. We went back out to the van and breathed in the fresh, smoky Oregon 2021 air. Which reminds me... I got a dope drone shot of a dead tree amongst millions of light ones! Sound familiar? ;) Check this out:
The funny thing is that's the first full midday lighting drone shot I've ever gotten, thanks to the buckets of fresh smoke in the air. Remember, don't smoke kids. You'll get enough of it if you become an adventure photographer because the world's on fire.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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