Skyline Drive and Luray Caverns

esc2476

A few weekends ago, i, my wife, and a few friends went out to Skyline Drive and hit up Luray Caverns. It was not yet peak yet, but the next three weekends we had plans (two weddings two weekends ago, my law school reunion last weekend, and homecoming for Emily's grad school next weekend), so it was then or never (until spring anyway).

We started off hiking up Stony Man which offered nice views of Skyline Drive:





Plenty of panoramas:



The trail itself was relatively easy, which allow time for more photos (much to my wife's dismay):



Cascading water:



We then drive about 30 minutes to Luray Caverns. I was pretty happy how these turned out though noise is evident.





This "lake" is no more than 18 inches deep, but appears much deeper because of the reflections:





Looking up:



Notice the built in organ:



The wishing well:



Thank you for looking. C+C welcome and plenty of more pictures can be found here: http://esc.smugmug.com/Vacations-Travel/Skyline-Drive-and-Luray/14172866_2453a#1046161241_DaTSZ

jackiejay

Ive never been their thanks for sharing it with us beautiful set of pics(now that Ive gotten my Cam thats one of the places I wanna go)

InsuredDisaster

Love the "lake" and the berry shot. By the way, what was the ISO for the cave shots?

telefotoguy

thank you for sharing the nice photos. got a chance to visit Luray Caverns about 15 or so years ago when I was visiting relatives in VA. Still is awesome

esc2476

jackiejay wrote: »

Ive never been their thanks for sharing it with us beautiful set of pics(now that Ive gotten my Cam thats one of the places I wanna go)

Thanks

InsuredDisaster wrote: »

Love the "lake" and the berry shot. By the way, what was the ISO for the cave shots?

Thanks! The cave shots were almost all at 5000. I decided to shoot at a lower aperture to keep more depths in focus.

telefotoguy wrote: »

thank you for sharing the nice photos. got a chance to visit Luray Caverns about 15 or so years ago when I was visiting relatives in VA. Still is awesome

Thanks. Luray is awesome, though there is no supervision during the audio tour, so many tourists take to touching and grabbing the formations which bothered me a bit.

esc2476

Here are a few more cave photos:



This formation fell off the ceiling a long time ago - probably from an earthquake.







The largest formation in Luray:

wpbarr

Never had a chance to get there, thanks for posting!

JimKarczewski

good stuff.

Would love to go there some day. Funny, Luray was just on Modern Marvels... "Coin Operated II" showed how they empty the wishing well, get all the coins out and send them off to be cleaned then counted. Guess they contribute $30-40k each year to charity from the Wishing Well

Awais Yaqub

Looks scary place, nice photos.

captnemo

Nice shots and one of my favorite subjects Did you try longer shutter/ lower iso? that usually helps with the noise. I have a very nice video on dvd they did on Luray caverns I've shown it at one of our caving club meetings.

Pixpop

Shooting technique
Some great images. Thanks for posting.
I noticed that many of the shots are 1/15 or even 1/8 sec. Are you hand holding?

esc2476

wpbarr wrote: »

Never had a chance to get there, thanks for posting!

Sure, thanks for looking.

JimKarczewski wrote: »

good stuff.

Would love to go there some day. Funny, Luray was just on Modern Marvels... "Coin Operated II" showed how they empty the wishing well, get all the coins out and send them off to be cleaned then counted. Guess they contribute $30-40k each year to charity from the Wishing Well

They have a chart listing all the charities they have donated to through the years. On one hand the well is "polluting" the natural environment down there, but on the other, it is a good cause(s).

Awais Yaqub wrote: »

Looks scary place, nice photos.

Thanks!

captnemo wrote: »

Nice shots and one of my favorite subjects Did you try longer shutter/ lower iso? that usually helps with the noise. I have a very nice video on dvd they did on Luray caverns I've shown it at one of our caving club meetings.

Pixpop wrote: »

Some great images. Thanks for posting.
I noticed that many of the shots are 1/15 or even 1/8 sec. Are you hand holding?

I was not sure they allowed tripods, so every shot had to be hand held, so I had to keep the iso up to avoid to much depth blurring with a high f/stop.

And captnemo, I would love to see your photos/video.

chickendrop

Awesome photos!! Your hiking comment made me chuckle. My wife feels the same way when I continually stop on hikes to take photos