St Saveur is a large, straight, dark tunnel that heads straight down into the depths. I knew beforehand that this would be a relatively short dive as within a couple of hundred metres the cave is down well past 60m. Georg also mentioned before we got in the water that the vis can be quite different above and below the 13m mark. The very large entrance pool was relatively clear so I was hoping for much clearer below. Unfortunately it was not to be, and we moved into the dirty water underneath.
After an initial gravel slope there is a “restriction” which you can see in the first photo here. I got some nice shots of each diver passing through the area. This one is unintentionally dark as my on-camera inons were playing up. On the left hand one the pre-flash button normally needs to be pressed in to suppress the pre-flash but apparently the magnet inside has corroded and it now prefers to be left out – most of the time. Minor strobe frustrations aside I was very happy with the dark look of this cave and how it came through in these shots.
The second shot here shows divers emerging from the gloom. The off camera strobes are reflecting off the dirt in the water more than the walls, giving each person a halo around them. We swam down the tunnel to our determined max depth. I wasn’t keen to take the rEvo too deep on air dil, but I was happy to spend a bit of time there and even happier not to be cranking up deco at the same rate as the other guys.
Once we headed up and out we moved into planned photo mode. I was keen to use the dirt in the water to create some backlit photos with the light fanning out around the subjects. We found a nice spot in the room above the gravel slope restriction and I set these guys up. I was aiming to get an “on deco” shot with another diver behind providing the lighting. Tom and Joachim lined up under a roof ledge and Ken backed up behind them. It took a little bit of arranging to get everyone facing the right way and the light coming through, but I love the outcome of this shot. And the nice thing about being on deco is your models don’t have anywhere else to be, so lots of time to play with photos. This one is something a bit different from the (very nice but nevertheless very standard) tunnel shots I had achieved on the first few dives.
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For my other photos of the French caves, check out the articles here.
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