Deep in the Tunnel

At my local beach there's two tunnels that were created for a highway and train to cross a large wetland fed by a year round creek. There's not much if any wetland left, but the tunnels have held up well. For three years now around this time of year, I've put on my booties and carefully slipped into the slippery darkness to photograph a unique phenomena were the setting sun shines directly down the center of both tunnels. The actual window of perfect alignment is about 3 days, but plenty of interesting variations show up before and after these days. The first year when I accidentally discovered it was the best. It was classic clear Fall weather with wildfire smoke in the sky. This made for a very deep red light that when aligned to the aperture of the tunnel, lit up the various rocks and vegetation with an intense spot of color just as the sun slipped below the flat ocean horizon.

This year and similar to last year, the horizon was hazy and not producing the intensity of light first witnessed. But still, with the ever changing creek and ocean conditions, there's always something interesting and new to focus on photographically. This year, after only 3 shots, my primary digital camera went blank. Darn! I did have a back-up film camera with me with about 5 shots left on a roll of 120 Velvia, but when that film returns from the lab (if it ever does - Hello Bay Photo, it's been over 2 weeks now!), my expectations of of having anything of substance are pretty low given my clumsiness with manual metering and the conditions that day. I returned the following day with my D70 for a few shots, but all in all, it looks like it'll be another 12 months, before I get another chance to work some Aztec magic in my little tunnel mysteriouso.

You can see a gallery of shots taken in this tunnel here: http://www.eddickie.com/new/inthetunnel.html

from this year - "Spider Love"