This is the Slope 190 Mine, originally (if not still) owned by the Lackawanna Coal Company, in what is now McDade Park in Scranton, PA. I believe it's roughly 300 feet underground. The mine has been out of service since the 1960s and is now a tourist destination, with guided walks through the shafts daily.
By entering this image, I'm breaking from my streak of DPC-safe entries; after getting six 6+ images in a row, it's time to do something a little more risky. I may, in the process, be making it impossible for me to achieve my hitherto unstated goal of getting ten consecutive 6+ entries any time soon, but I'm entering this anyway, just to see what happens.
I don't think this is very DPC-friendly; it's too contrasty, too complex, too little eye-candy-like, but I've decided to like it anyway. It's also my favorite photograph (I think) of my June photos--at least, those that aren't clearly outtakes from other submissions, or photos that are part of side challenges that have already gotten a fair number of views.
On the title: because Lord of the Rings is cool.
This was tough to shoot. I had no tripod; I think I leaned the camera on something nearby and stable, but this was still hand-held at 1/4 sec. The 1600 ISO made the results very contrasty, and I lost all detail in the shadows. No amount of fussing with the RAW file or Photoshop could get anything but black in the black areas. Still, though, I was able to save a huge amount of detail in the merely dark areas. Here's the original, unedited except for the addition of a border to aid comparison:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict a 5.4.
--
Indeed, this did much better than expected! It was poking around 5.3x for the first day, and then shot up half a point. I should start predicting more often.
Statistics
Place: 114 out of 341 Avg (all users): 5.8780 Avg (commenters): 7.6667 Avg (participants): 5.7363 Avg (non-participants): 6.2813 Views since voting: 943 Views during voting: 236 Votes: 123 Comments: 9 Favorites: 0
I didn't vote, so I didn't give you a 7. :-) I like it better in the more monochromatic tones of your original, but it really does look like a very intriguing place to visit! And congrats on that run of 6's. That's something I have never achieved (and never will.) Very impressive!
Gave this a 7 as well, and its unfortunate voters didnt maintain your 6+ streak. I can imagine that caves are difficult to get a decent shot of, and yours is very good. Love LOTR too :)
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
