457 - Hoyo El Cimarrón
Hands down, today was one of the most exciting landscapes I’ve shot in a long time. It was a straight up pit into Hell, and I was all for it. Our adventure today was at Hoyo El Cimarrón.
Funny enough, this place wasn’t even on our itinerary. It’s barely got any coverage online. Quite literally the definition of a hidden gem. The only reason we found it was because of a warn out billboard on the side of the road.
I Googled the place immediately, and only found a few Spanish forums about it. The Google Maps pinpoint had maybe 200 reviews on it, 4.5 stars- which is solid. Most importantly, no reported robberies in the area.
Fun fact, Guatemala has a reputation for bandits on trailheads, so it’s something we were researching before going out. The fact that we’re white as hell and carrying $10k worth of camera gear on us puts a solid target on our backs. Over the past couple weeks, we’ve had several warnings about it this.
Hired guides will lead you to their friends to rob you. People will follow you onto trails and hold you at gunpoint when you’re out of sight of the parking lot. Or the classic- they’ll just break into your car while you’re gone.
Intimidating, eh? Honestly it didn’t sound too bad to me until I was standing at my first trailhead in Guatemala. Reality was here.
Fortunately for us, we’d made some friends back at Cenote de Candelaria who happened to show up to the trail at the same time as nice. No joke. The locations were 1.5 hours from each other, and we didn’t plan it. It was a family of three, and we’d spent a great deal of time conversing with them. They’d grown up in Guatemala, and were on a four day road trip seeing the country.
Now I KNEW we were probably in a good place. I relaxed a bit.
We took off on the hike about 3 hours before sunset. Since I knew the landscape was a massive sinkhole, I wasn’t sure what the ideal light would be. I figured it’d be like shooting a mix between a cenote and canyon. I was excited too- an entirely new landscape puzzle to figure out.
The hike in was about 40 minutes, and fairly boring. It was all rolling farmlands… I had trouble envisioning a massive hole nearby. It just didn’t seem physically possible.
And then we arrived, and I understood. Imagine the largest hole you’ve ever seen, just jutting right into the ground. For hundreds of feet deep. In order to even see the bottom, you had to actively lean you head over the edge- that’s how deep it was.
I’m not going to lie, my stomach dropped when I realized this is what I was going to be shooting. Even from 5 feet away I didn’t want to get anywhere near that edge- but I knew that’s where the money shots lay.
Phew. Alright let’s fucking do this.
First shot was of a tree branch just dangling over the edge:
“Hanging Out”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Zeiss 24-70mm f/4
[ISO 160 ~ 24mm ~ f/7.1 ~ 1/500s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
I was able to stand about two feet away from the edge to get that shot. My favorite part about that shot is how the bright green leaves contrasted the dark abyss below. Since I couldn’t fit the bottom of the hole in frame without literally hanging over the edge, I blacked it out to add to the mystery of the shot.
One thing I’ve learned is that in order to add uncomfortability (is that a word?) to a shot, you break the rules of composition. In this case, I left a lot of negative space below to leave the shot unbalanced, and thus make the viewer feel the dizziness of the abyss.
Next up, I wanted a shot of the edges within the sinkhole. It had all sorts of plants growing on it, which I found fascinating. How could a plant grow straight off the side of a cliff? The physics blew my mind:
“Orange Smear”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM
[ISO 1250 ~ 70mm ~ f/6.3 ~ 1/320s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
To top it all off, that photo literally featured stalactites, which I found incredible cool. The best way to add dimension to a flat surface image is luminosity masks. Notice how it makes the wall almost look 3D.
At this point, I’d extinguished most of abstract macros warm up shots, and was ready for something bigger. I realized I needed to get to a different vantage point . I wanted my back to the sun- so I could get the light hitting the side of the walls as the sun dipped.
The only problem was I’d have to walk off trail for about ¼ of the way around the sinkhole to get to this lighting, and Haley didn’t want to come. She was tired from the hike, and decided to hang back.
Well, it was time for a solo mission. I stormed off into the brush, walking through knee high grass and hopping across old volcanic rocks. I tried to jump from one to the next, because the grass literally looked like a snake haven. God knows what kinds of venomous snakes exist in Guatemala, and we were hours from the nearest city. I kept close to the edge of the sinkhole, scanning the horizon for subjects of interest.
Eventually I landed on this bad boy:
“Ruler of the Hole”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Tamon 17-28mm f/2.8
[ISO 160 ~ 17mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/125s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
A tree just throwing itself off the edge. It took me a decent amount of courage to work up to shoot that thing. I had to stand on the edge of a rock, which I wasn’t sure would support me. Sure, it held the massive tree, but I wasn’t a fucking tree.
See, that’s the cool thing about Central America and Mexico. No one holds your hand through this shit, so you can get awesome shots. If this was the US, there would be a fence 5 feet from the edge and park rangers everywhere. Out here, no one cares. Your safety is your responsibility.
Truth be told, I’m not sure if the lighting could have gotten better for that situation, or worse. By general photography principle, the last lick of light hitting your subject is generally it’s best moment. The only thing that wasn’t perfect was the sky- it would have been nice to have a color sky, but I think it might have been too dark to see the context of the hole and the tree…
The world may never know. It was time for me to go. We wanted to get back to the van by dark, and I was halfway across the damn thing off-trail.
I carefully made my way back to Haley, as the light was getting really juicy. Fuck… We should have left to go back, but I couldn’t pass up a drone opportunity. Not in this light, with this subject.
I let her rip. And check this out:
Absolute insanity. Standing at the edge is one thing, but seeing this thing in context of the land was another. I was in pure drone heaven.
That high got me through the rest of the night. I slept like a goddamn baby, knowing I’d snagged some absolute classics in this foreign landscape. I had completely forgot about my fear of robbers, because it was time to fucking LIVE. This place had sufficiently blown my mind…
I had a feeling I was going to like Guatemala. But our luck was about to turn.
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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