Visit to Robber's Cave State Park

I recently started what could be a long running project, visiting and photographing National Parks and State Parks; starting off in Oklahoma, my “home” state. Not the I have visited many yet, in fact, this recent trip to Robber’s Cave was my inaugural trip. For anyone interested in visiting, you can find out a lot of information on the Robber’s Cave page of the TravelOK website here: http://www.travelok.com/listings/view.profile/id.6415

As it turned out, weather affected things somewhat, as there was rain and storms moving through the area as we were traveling to the park. In fact, for a while I was not sure if we would be doing much more than holing up in the cabin we had rented for the entirety of our 2 day stay. Luckily, the morning after our arrival was a lot drier as the weather front had moved away. It was still damp from the previous day’s storms but it was not actively raining anymore.

My plans were not set in stone but I was wanting to take some 180 and 360 panoramic shots as well as some HDR/regular landscape and detail shots; which is pretty much what I did. The climb up to the cave was interesting as the ground was still a little wet and the rocks were slick in spots, plus I was carrying my backpack of camera gear and a large tripod strapped to the side. Once I reached the summit of the climb and neared the cave entrance I was greeted with nice panoramic views of the surrounding area. And one of the biggest things I had noted was how clear the air was here; moss and lichen were everywhere. Trees and rocks were covered, creating fascinating textures and patterns.

Now on to the photographs.

Picture 1 is a 180 panorama of the actual cave. I took this so that I could capture the entirety of the cave entrance without having to use an ultra-wide lens, and subsequent image distortion.

Picture 2 is a simple landscape shot using an 8mm full-frame fish eye lens and is looking out from near the cave, out over the valley.

 
Pictures 3, 4 and 5 are closer detail shots of the patterns and textures the mosses and lichens were making.

 
Picture 6 is from a HDR bracket set of the Devil’s Slide feature below the cave.

 
I also took a HDR bracket set 360 panorama, which due to viewing issues will be posted to my 360cities account. It is not a full 360/180 circular panorama as I didn’t include a zenith and nadir shot but it is still a great view of the cave and surrounding area.

Time and Panoramas

First off, where has the time gone? I can't believe how long it's been since I last wrote anything here; life just seemed to keep getting between me, photography and this blog.

I've kept myself pretty busy though and am delving into the world of panoramic photography. Helped out, along the way, by my purchase of a Nodal Ninja head, rotator and leveling head; then topped off by finding a great deal on a "like new" 8mm fish-eye lens. Not that I won't be experimenting with some longer lenses to produce some "giga-pixel" style partial panoramas. Add in some plans to experiment with some HDR work too and I have enough experimenting to keep me busy for quite some time.

Along the way I did run into some obstacles, not that they weren't fixable, but all they did as slow me a little. The first was the need to learn yet more software - plus, should I keep working with open-source (free) software or find the money for a commercial package. I'm currently still using Hugin on my Mac for stitching the panos together and other than a few issues to overcome (wonky control points, zeniths and/or nadirs not stitching, wonky horizons) it's doing a pretty great job of pulling the shots together.

Of course, one big issue with panoramic shots, especially the circular 360 ones is how best to display them. If you just post them "flat" on a webpage they look weird and distorted. And as not everyone has access to a dedicated viewer; I signed up to try out a couple of dedicated hosting sites. Long story short, due to some issues with sizing and format, all my panoramic work to date is posted to my profile on www.360cities.net and as they offer the option for embed codes, I hopefully will be able to share them here. If not, I do know how to convert them to Google Photospheres which I believe can be self contained.


Path To Linnaeus Teaching Gardens

Here is an embedded version of one of my latest panoramas, which includes a link to my profile on 360cities.

While on the subject of 360cities, it's pretty nice having the ability to geo-tag the photos, and have the ability to have them featured on Google Earth. This did, however, throw a challenge my way. I very soon found the shortcomings of the GPS feature on my cellphone (and all cellphones) - they're not very accurate. A lot of it comes down to the app you use, so after a lot of testing I found one that can locate me to within 10 feet of my actual position; or at least it was doing that in my tests. The real challenge will be accurately tag my position when I'm off in the middle of nowhere, especially when there's no cellphone signal. Did you know that cellphones use their cell tower triangulation signal to boost the GPS accuracy? I didn't until just recently. If push comes to shove I will just look to picking up a full blown, standalone GPS unit as I know there are locations I want to photograph that have little to no cellphone signal (such as parts of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state).

Guess I should sign off for now, get some sleep, then plan my next photo session. Then test out my updated GPS app for geo-tagging the shots and get some more panoramas in my profile.