Neal Grosskopf
Fire Cave – Valley of the Fire State Park
Before & After
The first time I went to Valley of the Fire State Park, I wasn’t aware of the Firecave. When I got back, I was watching a TV show on one of those random HDTV secondary channels where a guy travels to various parks in the US. He happened to visit Valley of the Fire and spent a portion of the episode talking about the Firecave. After that, I really wanted to go back and see some of the things I didn’t see the first time around.
Location
The Firecave has a marker on Google Maps. I think this is the right spot, but it’s been a while since I took the photo and I don’t recall if that was correct. It is deffinetly in that area of the park. I’d say the marker is no more than 100 yards off. There isn’t a good place to park to get to it. The closest thing is the road is a little wider in some parts and most people just park in these areas. They can accommodate 2-3 cars. After that it was maybe 50 feet off of the road. The park is actually full of these little caves, but this particular one has lured many photographers to it after seeing pictures.
Composition
The cave is quite small, I would recommend having a wide angle lens. I used my 16-35mm lens with my Sony A7rii at 16mm. I had to crouch down to fit inside the cave to get a shot. I also used my travel tripod which can get pretty low. I tried to aim the shot so that I could get some of the area outside of the cave in frame as well. As you can see in original shot, this will become overexposed. Because of this I took a +2 and -2 bracketed shot as well. It was also heavy overcast the day I was there which kept a lot of the shadows out of the cave.
EXIF Information
Post Processing
Like all photos, I applied a lens correction profile to it. I then ran my bracketed shots through Photomatix. After that I did all the edits in Lightroom.
Software Used
- Lightroom
- Photomatix
- Photoshop
Techniques Used
- High-Dynamic-Range