Big Room speleothems, Carlsbad Caverns National Parks / Rebecca Latson

For this month, I’m taking a break from the continuing series of photography along Yellowstone’s Grand Loop Road to discuss photography of a subterranean nature.

How many of you have ever visited Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico? I did this past March. As I marveled at the highly-ornamented speleothems (cave formations), the word “Baroque” popped into my head. Carlsbad Caverns may not be the largest or longest cave in the National Park System, but it certainly is the most accessible cave in which to see a wide range of naturally-baroque ornamentation created from the precipitation of calcite out of water.

The trail through the natural entrance and down into and through the cavern, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

Carlsbad Caverns is unique among cave-centric parks in that you can explore a 2.5-mile portion of this cavern on your own, at your own pace. You don’t have to keep up with a guide who - while admittedly imparting fascinating information about the cave - is still maintaining a relatively quick pace on a tight schedule. This self-guided tour conveniently allows me to take my time observing the cavern and its features while experimenting with different compositions and settings.

Speleothems

Before going any further, here’s a quick primer of formations you will encounter while hiking the self-guided trail.

Stalactites form when water containing dissolved minerals, like calcium carbonate, drips from the ceiling, leaving behind deposits as the water evaporates.

Stalagmites form when mineral-rich water, carrying dissolved calcium carbonate, drips onto the cave floor and deposits the minerals as the water evaporates, creating a rounded or cone-shaped structure growing upwards from the ground. 

Stalagmites and stalactites are often confusing to separate. Which one hangs from the ceiling and which one pokes up from the ground? Just remember, the “g” in stalagmite stands for “ground,” and the “c” in stalactite stands for “ceiling.”

Stalactites and stalagmites, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

Flowstone refers to sheets of calcium carbonate developing along cave walls or over stalagmites. Flowstone hangs downward and may create rippling or curvy curtain-like sheaves known as draperies. Whale’s Mouth on the trail down from the cavern’s natural entrance is a fine example of cave drapery.

Whale's Mouth is an excellent example of flowstone and drapery, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

Soda Straws are the earliest growth phase of stalactites, beginning as thin, straw-like hollow formations. These extremely delicate “straws” are equal in diameter to the water drops conducted along their length. The Doll’s Theater near the end of the Big Room trail is a large collection of soda straws.

The Doll's Theater is an excellent example of soda straws and some thin columns, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

Columns occur when stalactites and stalagmites fuse together.

Popcorn are small knobs of calcite created when calcium carbonate-rich water flows over a bumpy surface. The water evaporates faster on the bumps, leaving behind a thin mineral film. Layer by layer, these knobs grow out from the wet surface. The cave features known as “lion tails” are stalactites tipped with cave popcorn.

Popcorn at the tips of these stalactites give the speleothems their name of "Lion Tails," Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

All these speleothems developed over thousands of years. Think how many centuries it took to create the huge stalagmites covered in flowstone and drapery, like the formations known as Rock of Ages (aka “Old Man”) or the Temple Of The Sun.

Can you imagine the thoulsands of years it took for the Rock of Ages speleothem to form? Captured with an Apple iPhone 16, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

Cave Photography

Cave photography is low-light photography. If you’ve read my Traveler article about cave photography, you’ll know I’ve used smartphone, point-and-shoot, and SLR cameras in my attempts to photograph the amazing speleothems found within caves of the National Park System. Think of this article as an addendum imparting even more information learned during the self-guided tours I took on three separate days while visiting this national park.

No Tripods/Bipods/Monopods

There might be the odd old NPS page for this park out there on the internet indicating the permitted use of tripods in Carlsbad Cavern, but I’m here to tell you, tripods/bipods/monopods are absolutely NOT allowed. You’ll read this in the park’s cave tour descriptions, on the recreation.gov tour descriptions, and on signs near the visitor center’s ticket counter.

As such, all the shots in this article are hand held. Normally, with a tripod, I’d be using a small aperture and ISO and a much, much longer shutter speed because the camera would be stationary. To compensate for handholding the camera, I utilized a higher ISO (3200), larger apertures (f3.5-f4), and slower shutter speeds of 1/30 – 1/40. These were the settings for my shots regardless whether I used flash or ambient lighting within the cavern.

Note: the term “ambient light” is the general lighting within a space provided by natural or artificial sources. In this case, it’s the park’s artificial lights along the trail as well as focused on various speleothems.

Using a slow shutter speed while handholding your camera with a wide aperture and a high ISO can be a recipe for a blurred composition. To counteract that challenge, I applied the “burst method” of pressing down the shutter button for several “clicks.” Out of those multiple shots, I was guaranteed at least one relatively clear, sharp image. The burst method works, but it takes up space on your memory card, so bring spare cards – and spare camera/flash batteries if you choose to use this method.

Flash

The park allows flash on your cameras during your self-guided tour with the proviso to be courteous of other visitors. A flash pointed directly at the subject – especially if there are people facing the camera - can be a total annoyance to those around you, blinding them momentarily. Plus, flash pointed straight ahead doesn’t necessarily capture shadowed distances very well and it usually blows out (overexposes) those features nearest you.

What I did discover after experimentation (no people were blinded during my tours) was that use of a bounce flash worked best. Bounce flash means pointing your hot shoe-mounted flash head at an angle to or straight up toward the ceiling. The light bounces from the ceiling or walls, illuminating the subject area with a softer, less harsh light over a wider area.

I kept my flash pointing straight up. Sometimes it worked well, sometimes the resulting image still required massaging during editing. And this brings me to the subject of editing. If you only intend to use your photographs on your smartphone or as small images on a web page, you won’t need to use much, if any editing. However, if you intend to use larger versions of your images on a website, to create a print, or for an article like this, then a little (or a lot) of editing is required to bring out the scene, reduce overexposure, and remove noise (grain) inherent with low-light photography. I don’t intend to get into the weeds about this, but I will suggest things here and there throughout the article.

Ambient Light Vs Flash

Ambient light on these large stalagmites gives them a more mysterious look, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

Whether you choose to use a flash as opposed to just  the ambient cave lighting is a matter of preference as well as what you wish to achieve. I found the ambient lights imparted a sense of artful mystery and wonder to the cave features.

Flash reveals more detail and eliminates shadowing, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

Flash performed a better job reaching out into the nether portions of the composition while simultaneously removing shadows and highlighting all the distinct details of a speleothem. I also noticed much less noise in those flash images.

Light Color

Using flash along with the cavern's ambient lighting will often create a more saturated yellow light to the composition, requiring some specific color desaturation, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

The cave’s artificial lights are cool white or warm yellow. For the most part, my ambient light shots were true to light color. Sometimes, though, I noticed a saturated yellow or orange shade to my images, especially while using my flash. Why?

It’s all about the white balance and the use of multiple light sources (flash + ambient lighting). If you keep your setting on Auto White Balance (which I usually do), your camera will struggle to compensate in terms of light color and strength. Sometimes I left it alone because I liked the results, and sometimes I worked with desaturating the yellow in the photo.

For those images I really liked but was unable to tone down that saturated yellow color, I converted them to black-and-white shots. I used a flash wtih the image below, hence the more saturated yellows.

Original color image of cave speleothems along the self-guided tour, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

The above image converted to black-and-white, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

Noise (Grain)

Let’s also talk about noise, which you will see quite often with low-light shots. Noise consists of gritty little pixels colored pink, yellow, blue, and white. They really do look like sand grains on your image, and they can ruin a shot. Noise-reduction software like Imagenomics, Nik Dfine, and Topaz DeNoise reduces and may even eliminate that grain. The key to success is judicious application. Too much noise reduction and everything looks plastic.

An extreme example of noise in a cave image, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

Hot Pixels

While this sounds like an awesome name for a music group, hot pixels (aka sparkles) are really defects in digital camera sensors that appear as pin pricks of bright yellow, white, or blue on your low-light shots, and are most noticeable on the dark or shadowed portions of a photo. This often occurs when using a longer exposure time and/or higher ISO. Your photo editor’s spot healing tool will remove those tiny little dots of light, but it can be a time-consuming process depending upon the number of “sparkles” you have. 

Different cameras and lenses

My iPhone 16 did a decent job of capturing the scene resulting in very little to no editing, although there is not as much detail included as in photos captured with my SLRs, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

In addition to different SLRs and lenses, I also used my iPhone 16’s camera, which held up quite nicely. This surprised me since my iPhone shots in Wind Cave and Jewel Cave did not turn out even half as well. A smartphone sensor is teeny compared to an SLR sensor, and if you look closely at an enlarged shot on your desktop or laptop, you’ll see this lack of detail. However, if you only look at these photos on your smartphone, then the shots are quite nice, even when you expand the shot for a slightly closer look. Smartphones tend to have a much better bead on automatically determining light color and intensity. Turning off my iPhone’s flash and 3-second interval icons also improved my low light scenes, I discovered.

Capture More Than Just Specific Speleothems

As you photograph within the main Carlsbad Cavern, make sure to capture not only specific speleothems, but also larger areas (admittedly more difficult to edit) as well as parts of the trail. Why parts of the trail with maybe people included? Because the trail is neat! Get those switchbacks leading you down to the Big Room. They make nice leading lines taking your viewer’s eye from Point A to Point B in a composition.

The paved trail down from the natural entrance toward the Big Room, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson

Listen To The Silence

This has nothing to do with photography, but listening to the park's sounds is as much a park experience as seeing, and not enough people listen. The quiet of this cave is lovely. All you can hear are your own footsteps. Stand still for a moment and you might hear the occasional drip of water, as well.

How can you experience this if there are crowds of people on the trail?

• Take the earliest tour time available. Before March 23, 2025, it was 8:30 a.m. Now, the earliest time is 9:30 a.m. Reservations for the self-guided tour are through recreation.gov.
  
  
• If taking the Natural Entrance Trail, hang back from the initial crowd. Everybody is clumped together in excitement to get on the trail. Let them pass, wait a minute or two, then start your descent.
  
  
• If taking the elevator straight down to the Big Room, you’ll have the opportunity to walk around the Big Room trail before the arrival of those trekkers descending from the natural entrance.

If you thought of Carlsbad Caverns as nothing more than just a big hole in the ground, maybe seeing these photos will entice you to take your camera and visit this national park for yourself. Use this article’s information, be observant of your surroundings, and apply a little thought to your composition to get the most out of your low-light cave photography.

Carlsbad Cavern is more than just a hole in the ground, Carlsbad Caverns National Park / Rebecca Latson