A Little Bit of Digital Can Replace a Whole Lot of Skill

The Snow White Diorama, Fairyland Caverns, Rock City Gardens 

For many years, beginning around 1982, I was the more-or-less official photographer for the tourist attraction Rock City Gardens, on the cliffs of Lookout Mountain overlooking Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 1993, Todd Smith, who was in charge of Rock City's advertising at the time, asked me to update their photos of the dioramas in Fairyland Caverns.

A tour of Rock City begins with walking around massive rock formations, through deep clefts in the rocks, along cliff tops, and finally, through Fairyland Caverns; a semi-man-made cave featuring ultraviolet-lit dioramas of nursery rhyme scenes. This is what family entertainment was like before Disney World and video games, and the place still holds a special fascination for kids of all ages.

The problem was working out how best to photograph all those scenes illuminated solely by ultra-violet light. It was also a problem that the light was uneven, but that was solved easily by buying several ordinary, small fluorescent lamps and replacing the tubes with ultraviolet ones. These were mounted on light stands and placed around the scene wherever more light was needed.

Another problem was that different brands of color films varied in their response to ultraviolet light, and a third problem was that there was no way to meter accurately for correct exposure.

(I should mention that one of the things I like best about commercial photography is that it is an endless exercise in problem-solving.)

I was using Hasselblad medium-format cameras at the time, and fortunately, they had interchangeable film backs. So I went into the caverns with my tripod-mounted camera and four or five different films by Kodak and Fujifilm loaded into the film backs. I also had a back for my camera that used Polaroid instant film. I made some Polaroid exposures by guess and by golly to get into the ballpark, then made a series of exposures on each roll of film, recording the data in a notebook. (No iPad in those days.)

After the film was processed, I examined each roll on a color-correct lightbox, choosing the film that gave the best color rendition, and also, the best exposure for that film.

Oh -- one more problem. The job had to be delivered on 4x5-inch film. Which meant that I went back into the cavern with my big Cambo studio camera and shot everything all over again, using the film and exposures that had tested best. Since it was necessary to use a smaller aperture to achieve sufficient depth of field with the larger format, some of those exposures were several minutes long.

Now, here's the kicker: in 2012 I was visiting Rock City with some of my grandchildren. As we walked through Fairyland Caverns, I casually snapped some of the dioramas with my Olympus digital camera. Those casual photos looked almost as good as the ones over which I had labored so painstakingly nearly 20 years before.

One of the hardest things for me to deal with as digital imaging took over photography was the fact that so many of the technical skills which I had labored to acquire, and of which I was proud, were now as useless as buggy whips. The average tourist who walks through Fairyland Caverns snapping away with his cell phone probably makes photographs that are nearly as good technically as those that took me days to make 30 years ago. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Photograph and text copyright 2022, David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

My most recent book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, is a 304-page soft-cover with more than 200 color photographs. Published by Countryman Press, it is priced at $22.95. Signed and inscribed copies are available directly from me at (423) 240-2324 or djphoto@vol.com.