Sunday, May 22, 2011

Luray Caverns Portfolio


This is a short note to announce the availability of my self-published portfolio of 66 black and white images from a photo-shoot at Luray Caverns (in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley). I have written about my adventure there in posts a couple of weeks ago: here are links to part 1, part 2, and part 3. A mini on-line portfolio of 16 select images is also available here.

I will always remember my experience in Luray as (the title of my first blog entry about it suggests was) a joyous meditation in a subterranean cosmos. Luray is truly an otherwordly place, particularly so when (as I was privileged to be, by the generosity of the Luray staff, to whom the book is dedicated) one is an almost lone observer, displaced and cocooned in time and space. Motion and sound are nonexistent, except for the eerie echoes of the "plip-plops" of water droplets slowly, ever so slowly, adding to Luray's vast storehouse of stalactite / stalagmite forms); one's own breathing is the only reminder of "life on the outside." Alone, wandering around Luray's preternaturally beautiful underground vistas of rock and space, it is easy to forget one's normal bearings in space and time. It is, in the end, a timeless void of mystery and wonder.

Thank you, Luray, for your kind hospitality in welcoming this awed photographer (and amateur philosopher of life)!

5 comments:

SJCT said...

Amazing shots Andy. Wish my life allowed me to take photos like this right now. Alas, I have two really small kids, so right now I'm trying my hand at petting zoo photography!

Andy Ilachinski said...

SJCT: the great Wynne Bullock took most of his extraordinary shots (that most fine-art photographers would give an arm and half a leg for ;-) while on family trips to parks and the like. Nothing wrong with petting zoos! Thanks for stopping by and your kind words.

SJCT said...

I'd never heard of Wynne Bullock before. Thanks for the tip, I looked him up and his work is outstanding.

Andy Ilachinski said...

Glad to be of help...here's another: Josef Sudek (the "poet" of Prague). He took most his extraordinary images in his *house*, and did so with one arm (that he lost in WWI)! Another lesson to all of us that magical images do not need "magical" places for their magic ;-)

Lucas Kain said...

You and Wynne Bullock are my new heroes! <3 Thank you so much for sharing those amazing captures!

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