Rodney Campbell's Blog

Cathedral Gorge is one of the most famous attractions in Bungle Bungle Ranges in Purnululu National Park. The gorge ends in an astonishing natural amphitheatre of red rock. There are several rock ledges where you can sit under the overhanging rock walls and admire the view. The acoustics are also fabulous – with the sounds naturally wrapping within the space – it’s apparently even been used for musical performances.

Staring at the incredible rock walls that have been carved out by water over millions of years, it’s a great spot for quiet contemplation and awe with just the sounds of silence and the light wind swirling along the walls.

Sounds of Silence

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 1/2 sec at f/8, ISO 100 x 8 Frames

Whilst we were there I was hoping to take a full 360˚ panorama within the cavern.

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

There were quite a few people also with us here at this time of day (10:30AM), so I’ve had to painstakingly clone out all the distractions from around the scene. I figured I’d take the pano frames as soon as I could (almost straight after we’d arrived) before even more people came.

We were in the cavern for about 45 minutes before heading back. Little did I know we’d end up having the place essentially to ourselves by the end. Ahh well them’s the breaks :).

This panorama was taken from almost in the centre of the cavern and I took frames all the way around including pointing out through the massive gorge entrance. In the end I excluded those frames because of the inclusion of the sky and the rocks of the gorge walls directly lit by the sun.

I took ten sets of five bracketed frames (-2, -1, 0, +1 and +2EV) at 16mm with the 16-35/4. In post I HDR blended the sets of five brackets which did a great job with the rocks and walls but wrecked the white sand and gravel at our feet by making it all grey and muddy. I layered the HDR frame with the +1EV original frame and blended back in the nice original white sand and gravel and cloned out all the extra people. Finally I took eight (8) of the frames and stitched the panorama for this final result.

What you see here encompasses at least a 270˚ view from within this amazing cavern.

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