Too Orangey For Crows
August 19, 2011 | Posted in Crows, Ironstone, Kia-Ora, mines, Orange, Underground, vent shaft | By sYnc
This one has been on the To-Do list for ages, so long in fact that someone else beat us too it, c’est la vie!, you win some, lose some…
The truth is we were elsewhere frying bigger fish and were beaten by worthy opponents I know only thru the Interweb. Sloppy Seconds is never ideal but it had to be done as it was still a neat trip to make. The 4Gas had a spazz before we had broken a sweat and had to be shut down as it was blatantly lying about the 02 content and making a hell of a racket. This was far from ideal as there was a bunch of noxious primordial ooze right down there amongst that “Just for me and my dog” orange gloop and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was enough to get the h2s sensor squawking.
The trip involved walking through just over a mile of heavily flooded galleries and crosscuts, gingerly picking our way through a couple of truly unstable & massive roof collapses before we got to the payoff. Water was on average four feet deep with submerged roof collapses, random lumps of twisted, underwater, narrow gauge rail to negotiate and hidden sumps in the mine floor. Two of us had hilarious over wader moments, one resulting in blood loss and my waders sprang a leak within seconds of leaving the dry part of the mine. Other random weirdness was an anemic looking lizard 150ft from the surface amongst corn growing underground and being able to send SMS messages from the base of the shaft.
“Venimus, Vidimus, Vicimus”
Next…!!!
Usual rules apply…No names, no locations, just pictures of somewhere very orange. Please don’t ask for locations as refusal often offends 🙂
Mines #40
June 3, 2011 | Posted in flooded, Ironstone, mines, roof collapse, roof fall, Underground | By sYnc
More water filled fun this week which ended up in a near ‘over (chest) wader’ moment in which my tripod disappeared and I nearly played submarines with my Canon. From here its likely to be Inflatable Tenders all the way on another trip to this area to get any deeper though…
(Once the tripod was drained though it seemed happy enough so its passed the test in my book.)
Mines #39
May 24, 2011 | Posted in flooded, Ironstone, mines, roof collapse, roof fall, Underground, waders, water | By sYnc
This blog has gone a bit off-topic recently with a distinct lack of Cold War items, this hasn’t gone unnoticed but I’m having such a blast with the underground lark I’m afraid I’m still showing the love for the underground 🙂
I wish I could show the whole set of these shots as they would truly blow your mind but sadly it would also compromise things so for the top drawer stuff just use your imagination…
Water is a big deal here and boats make sense for much of it, there’s also plenty of Death From Above action going on to keep you on your toes.
Mines #35
March 16, 2011 | Posted in grip, Ironstone, LED, mines, roof fall, Underground | By sYnc
Plan A was wet and we really needed a boat, nobody had the balls to see how deep it was so I waded on in anyway just to find out. It was thigh deep, cold and I wasn’t wearing waders, seeing as I was now wet I pushed on for a while to see if things dried up….they didn’t.
We aborted and switched locations to Roof Fall City and I tried out a new toy recommended to me by a well known drainer (thanks for the tip in the unlikely event you are reading this…), a portable LED array that uses 64 LED’s on full power or 36 LED’s on reduced power, it has a ‘daylight’ colour temperature of 5,500K and outputs 480 lumens. I got it wrong really and placed it too near the shots so the backlit shots are a bit overcooked, next time I’ll try diffusing it or placing it further away…
Usual rules apply…No names, no locations, just pictures of somewhere. Don’t ask for locations because I won’t tell you, just enjoy the shots.
More Big Grips
Mines #27
January 31, 2011 | Posted in adit, ammonal, British Rail Property Board, Ironstone, mines, roof fall, sump, tracks, Underground | By sYnc
Shot at the back end of last year on the DMC-TZ6 and also in rushed circumstances so I’m not overly happy with many of these, will go back and re-shoot these with the 40D at some point in the future (and make a much better job!!)
Mines #18
October 4, 2010 | Posted in ammonal, bracket fungus, British Rail Property Board, carbide, flooded, Ironstone, Lenser, mines, Underground | By sYnc
Some pix from a recent visit to a Mine, all taken on a 15 second exposure and lit with a single Lenser P7.
No mine names, no location, no history!!….sorry but these places need protecting.
