My good friend Ryan recently told me about a sizable "cave" that was left over from an old rock quarry out in the country, way North of town. Of course, super intrigued by it, when he suggested it as a place to shoot, we headed out one night right before sunset to do just that. A stop along the way brought us to the caves after sundown, adding to the eery ambiance of a place riddled with urban legends of cult worships, sacrifices and other wacked out crazy shit. To make matters worse, a pile of still somewhat intact innards of what we could only hope came from an animal was lying on the ground near the train tracks one has to cross to get to the cave entrance. Nice.

Disregarding the "No Trespassing" signs, (which basically means come on in), we headed into the cave with one flashlight and began exploring. There wasn't much variance to the layout of the caves but being a bit up in the clouds, we made the most of our time, creating insane reflections on the cave walls from standing water with the flashlight, conjuring up notions of finding a body and the good possibility that the train outside was slammed on it's brakes and laying on the horn because some backwoods inbred hicks dragged my truck onto the tracks.

After playing around with some light painting we stumbled upon a small lake near the side of the cave. The moon hadn't risen yet so it was obviously tough to see. Shortly after we arrived, a bright, orange, shapeless light began to appear in the sky and we both wondered what the hell it was as it looked like a distant planet exploding. We quickly realized the moon was rising, partially obscured by clouds, creating the fantastical illusion.

After the moon was clear, we started looking for compositions and taking our spots, began to fire off some shots with the moon being our only light source. The long exposure brought out deep, rich purples and blues that were almost impossible to see with the naked eye. Add to that the complimenting oranges and yellows, a bit of smoothed motion blur in the clouds, contrasting the texture of the rock, and an occasional flicker of a firefly and you have yourself a somewhat surreal nightscape.

I couldn't think of a better way to end my day off than sitting in this spot at a new location and becoming inspired by the natural progression of events.

Manual blend of two exposures.

As always, thank you for any and all comments or critiques!