| |
 |
| © Jad Davenport |
| The Crystal Maiden painted in light. Click photo for a gallery of Jad Davenport's images from Belize. |
"She was probably brought here as an offering to Ixchel, the moon goddess," Dr. Jaime Awe said as we packed our gear into waterproof Lowepro camera daypacks and adjusted our helmets at the entrance to Actun Tunichil Muknal. A limpid river streamed through a mouth draped in vines; outside, it looked like a set from a Stephen Spielberg film. But the inside was all Stephen King.
Discovered in 1989 and opened to the public in 1998, it is the most famous cave in Belize. Awe, director of the Institute of Archaeology, which manages the country's archaeological treasures, led us into the darkest heart of Xibalba, into a cave where the Maya met their demons. One who never returned was a nameless 20-year-old woman known only as "the Crystal Maiden."
We worked our way past a rock-fall maze, squeezed through narrow cracks, forded oil-black pools. Four hundred feet beneath the rainforest, a half-mile inside Xibalba, we emerged into a chamber as big as a Broadway theater. Our headlamps illuminated a magic world of candlewax stalactites and travertine dams. The floor was littered with hundreds of ceramic jars and pots; Awe said more than 1,400 artifacts have been cataloged here.
There were also skulls and long-bones. "At least 14 people were sacrificed here," Awe said as we tiptoed among the relics.
Broad shotgun blasts of light from multiple strobes wouldn't do the delicate artifacts justice. We needed something more precise. Next to a collection of a pots, I set up the tripod and employed a technique custom-made for the Polaroid character of digital photography -- light painting.
The concept is simple, and the results colorful and artistic. With your camera on a tripod set for a long exposure, you use a flashlight as a paintbrush, stroking different parts of your subject. Vary the time the focused light spills on a particular surface and you control its intensity. Move farther away from the camera-to-subject line of shooting, and you create different moods.
With my self-timer set for 15 seconds and the D200 in mirror-up mode to reduce vibration, I had time to press the electronic cable release, walk over to the pots, click off my headlamp and paint. For the next 2 hours I experimented with exposures ranging from 30 seconds to 4 minutes.
Finally, it was time for the Crystal Maiden. We found her in a catacomb high above the main chamber, where she was most likely sacrificed more than 1,000 years ago. Her skull was tilted back, jaws open in an eternal scream, her bones so crusted in calcium carbonate that they sparkled like broken glass.
I spent more than 3 hours in her tomb, taking light painting a step further by creating a palette of painted images from the same position. One of her skeleton, a couple background shots of cave formations. I even popped a strobe on Awe as he crouched beside her. Then I combined them all into a single exposures using the D200's in-camera multiple-image software. No need for Adobe Photoshop.
DEEPEST DARKNESS
Humidity soon built in the sepulcher from the heat of our wet bodies, and my lenses fogged. I asked to shoot solo for the last hour to clear the air. It was a mistake.
I heard a woman's voice whispering in the dark. Another caver? The gurgling river in the blackness below? Something else? Turning around to a noise, I thought I caught the flash of a bare leg disappearing behind a stalactite. Glen playing a prank? Ghosts hadn't been on Hagan's list of caving joys. The maiden was done modeling and I was done shooting. I hastily packed up the camera and retreated backwards out of the open grave.
At the lodge that night, Bruce nodded when I told him how it felt to be up there alone with the maiden. "Sacrificial caves are a world apart from other caves," he said. "They're dark. And I'm not just talking about cave-dark," he said, sliding a drink in front of me. "I'm talking about light-sucking and life-sucking dark."
Life-sucking dark. I wondered if Allard had a flash recipe for that.
BELIZE
Want to explore the country's caves? Here are two good contacts:
• Belize Tourism Board: 800-624-0686; travelbelize.org.
• Ian Anderson's Caves Branch Adventure Company & Jungle Lodge, cavesbranch.com. Set on the 58,000-acre Caves Branch Estate, this wilderness lodge an hour west of Belize City offers expeditions to sacrificial caves (including Actun Tunichil Muknal-Cave of the Crystal Maiden), jungle survival courses, river cave tubing, jungle treks, and overnight camping expeditions. This outfitter also can arrange caving day-trips for those not staying on the property.
|
