TriTrogs General Meeting Minutes from July 22, 2014

The meeting began with introductions. We discovered that Emily makes interesting sounds, Sue is visiting her daughters, Steve was around when the local grotto was the UNC outing club, Anuj transferred to UNC-Chapel Hill, Ken knew Sue when he started caving, Mike is wearing a salamander, Pete was sitting there, Martin has been here since 2011, and Carlin was born in a cave.  Rob was born in an IHOP, but Rachel denied it. Mark D. has caved seven years.

The member dues are $8 for the rest of 2014, and half that for family members at the same address. Rob shared the T-shirts, but the blue was too dark and didn’t contrast the black enough for the cave to be visible. The company has agreed to reprint the shirts, so Rob accepted new orders at $14 apiece.

Brick buying campaign for the new NSS Headquarters. Mark heard the speech 1800 times at Convention. Each brick will be cut with three lines of twenty characters each, and the TriTrogs could get together to sponsor a block containing individual bricks. The campaign does not seem to have an end date. Someone suggested TriTrogs bricks carry the phrase “Caving ‘til extinction.”

How to Cave meeting: Mark D. hasn’t thought about it much or the meetup group advertising he’d use. Matthew Weiss is going to help, but Mark would appreciate help from anyone else who may want to join them.

Pete is looking for volunteers for BugFest at the museum on September 20. It’s organized into two-hour shifts (reward of a nice T-shirt), and working two shifts or more gets volunteers free food. Pete organizes the Orthoptera display and will teach volunteers what they need to know at the event.

In terms of trip reports, Mark D. mentioned that Sue, Emily, Lee Olsen, Tanya, and Pete went to the NSS Convention. Convention was good, and Pete set records on rope climbing. He won 300 feet of rope, and Mark further awarded Pete the dead flower centerpiece from the banquet. One seat had the carabiner under it.  Mark detailed his 137-foot entrance pit trip to War Eagle Cave—the cry of Auburn University— near the small Crimson Tide Cave. A lower entrance had frogs and fish in it.  One spot on the map is labeled 40-foot domes but Mark found some new passage that was off the map if you climbed up.

Cathedral Caverns: Pete H. went on commercial cave tour with an ill-behaved mass of school children. Pete’s camera was shaken by the kids who were jumping on the railing. He related a good cave tour with reasonable lighting, although he questioned its ability for a civil defense shelter with 10,000 people inside. The tour guides can tell the weather in advance by a cloud near the entrance. The $5 fee for NSS members was money well spent. Mark had a tenth-grade tour guide who asked him questions about the cave, but Emily couldn’t understand her guide’s speech.

The CaveSim broke when Emily went through.

Pete went to Neversink Cave with double drops to see the glow worms. He had to wait 15-20 minutes to see the modest, continuous glow.  He even saw them on the cave floor but mostly those close to him. Mark took the vertical workshop and learned something at every station.

Hungarians, Australians, Slovenians, and other countries were represented at the NSS Convention. Pete mentioned next year’s convention in Missouri.  The 2016 Convention is in Nevada.

Carlin went with Dave and Andrea to Perkins Cave.  Buford, Bill Grosse, and Carlin surveyed 500 feet.  Jason’s team surveyed almost 900 feet.  The weekend total was 1900 feet.  Carlin, Dave and Andrea also scoped out Water Cave for dive opportunities.

Mike Broome went to Grand Caverns with his family.  His family had fun, and the NSS discount was good.  They let his family stay late to see the movie and Mike shared survey stories with the tour group.

Ken described finding some small caves in Hemlock Gorge near Prettyboy Reservoir.

Upcoming Trips

July 25-27 – Missed Opportunity and Saltville Quarry Cave Surveys

-Harper’s Ferry climbing with Rob

August 16 – TriTrogs Annual Trip to Friars Hole Cave

August 28-Sept. 1 – Old Timers Reunion

Oct. 10-12 – Fall VAR at Rich Mtn Battlefield

Others?

After the break, the program was “European (and Worldwide) Cave Photography - From a Publisher's Perspective,” presented by Sue Widmer. Below you’ll see the notes I took from her slides.

Sharpness

Composition

Lighting

Good model placement

Audience appeal

High res file

Purpose

Not in 72-dpi(stamp size)

sharpness

Tripod mounted

Model not moving

Focus

Perfection

Composition

Cave features prominent (even for the critters)

Interesting perspective

Balanced

Contrat—photoshop can adjust

Scale (sometimes)

Lighting

-well placed flashes (firefly triggered or radio triggered flash units)

-avoid burnouts (cannot be fixed)

--ambiance (how do I feel in a cave)

--use of assistants and models to hold/aim flashes

---variety of models—give credit to everyone who helped

Good model placemnt

--location in composition

--stance/action

--included for scale or to demonstrate action

--patience

--facial epression-attitude

--experienced and trained models/assistants

audience appeal

is it interesting to look at?

Is the cave the main focus?

Is the formation or passage special or unique enough to hold the viewer’s attention for a month?

Wow| factor

High resolution

Raw or tif file

Needed for printing, crpping and enlarging (300 dpi)

Better for photoshop enhancement

30-100MB

purpose

calendar

society/scientific/report photo (as Sue publishes)

club newsletter

trip documentation

friends and memories