West Australia Caves

Many caves are located in the Cape K=Leeuin Naturaliste National Park.  While three of these caves are electrically lit, two with guided tours and one self-guided, there are othes which are explored wearing a hard hat and headlamp.  I did not explore these, but I did venture into Mammouth Cave and Lake Cave. 

Mammouth is self guided, so there is as much time as you need for photography; however, tripods are not allowed.  This made photography difficult but possible using the railing in corners where the camera could be suppported. This limited the selection of subjects to those near the corners of platforms.  In Lake Cave it was more difficult, as I was part of a large group.  The only useable images were made with the camera placed on teh edge of the platform.

The caves are quite beautiful, lit as they are with yellow and redish lights.  Using flash revealed the true color to be more whitish or grey, what would be expected for limestone.  Thin tubes are formed as mineral laden water drips through a tube, adding material to the end of the tube.  In Lake Cave, the main feature is actually suspended above the surface of the water.  The base was originally attached to the bottom of the  cave lake, which was disolved over time and lowered.

The Pinnacles

Nambung National Park is a three hour drive along the coast 245 km north of Perth.  Within the park is the Pinnacles Desert, an area of yellow sands and limestone outcroppings.  Thousands of stone pillars stud the area, some up to 12 feet high. Starting as a area of sand dunes blown inland from the beach, rain water leached lime from the sand near the surface and concentrated in lower levels of the dune, cementing the sand together into limestone.  The pillars were a result of a hard crust of calcrete that formed over the top of the limestone.  Water seeped through cracks in the crust and further dissolved the limestone leaving columns of harder limestone under calcrete caps.  Winds blowing the sand away exposed the columns we see today.

I arrived at the Pinnacles at mid-day, making photography difficult, although the day was clear, with little breeze.

On the Road to Homer, AK

For many years, Jean Keane fed fish to eagles in Homer, Alaska during the winter months.  The town established an ordinance prohibiting the feeding under the belief that doing so was detrimental to the well being of the eagles.  While there is much controversy over this decision, 2009 is to be the last year that the Bald Eagles will be fed during the winter months in Homer Alaska.  I decided to make the trip and try my luck at photographing eagles in flight.

 

The road from Anchorage to Homer passes along Turnagain Arm, a large expanse of water which is very shallow due to the silt build up from glacial waters.  The huge tidal difference is evident in the chunks of ice that form when high tide brings in a lot of water, and then flows out at low tide leaving the ice sitting on the bottom.

 

Further along the road to Homer are several rivers. The rivers keep flowing, with the amount of ice on the surface varying with the flow of water.