Glow Worms & Galaxies
“All photographs have a story, but few begin with a rope descending into darkness…”
These above photographs were created after rappelling more than 100 metres (330 ft) straight down into one of the largest river cave systems in New Zealand’s North Island. The descent happened at night, with only headlamps, the sound of water below, and the knowledge that the light we were leaving behind wouldn’t return for a while. Once we begin our descent into the cave, one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen slowly revealed itself. As we descended through the air, thousands of pin points of blue light scattered across the cave walls, all around us. These blue points of light are called glow worms.
Click on the images to enlarge.
Glow worms are not worms at all, but the larval stage of an insect (Arachnocampa luminosa), found almost exclusively in New Zealand. They produce light through a bioluminescent reaction in their bodies, using it to attract insects which become caught in the silk threads hanging beneath them. In the right conditions, entire cave systems can glow with an ethereal and otherworldly blue light. Sometimes the most memorable star-like scenes aren’t above us at all, but hidden deep within the landscape.
One of the defining moments came when I looked back up toward our abseil system and entrance to the cave, now in a distant opening far above. I was able to see the Milky Way and Southern constellations through the cave opening. Joel was descending on rope, briefly illuminating the space around him as he moved through the void. That single human figure suspended beneath the night sky, surrounded by glow worms became central to how I wanted to tell the story of this place.
Photographing in this environment was a technical challenge. The light from glow worms is extremely subtle, pushing long exposures and careful focus. Many of our long exposures were 4-5 minutes at F1.4 and ISO 6400 to reveal as much light as possible. The humidity was constant, fogging lenses and testing gear. Many frames didn’t work, but the ones that did felt earned! This is also an incredibly fragile environment, with glow worms depending on stable humidity, airflow, and darkness, and even small changes in light or movement can affect them, so everything we did inside the cave was intentional with the aim being to document the place without leaving a trace.
The night images shown here are blends/composites. The Milky Way was photographed outside the cave and later aligned to its true position in the sky, which allowed me to show the night sky above with far greater clarity than would be possible from within the cave itself. The goal was to show the scene in an artistic but honest way, which I’m happy with!
By day, the cave felt completely different. Natural light revealed the scale of the system: the height of the walls, the river cutting through the floor, and the sheer vertical drop we were about to descend at night. These daytime images are some of my favourites from the expedition, grounding the night scenes and showing the more easily understandable reality of the place. The abseil image (first) shows our abseil setup during the day! The glow worm image (centre) reveals some of the deeper features and formations of this cave system, far further in past our abseil section. The glow worms here were absolutely out of this world, forming constellation like patterns on the walls in dense tendrils. After 15 hours in the caves, these are my images from this insane place.
In a separate cave system nearby, I captured two more images that approached the idea from a different angle. Instead of looking up through a single vertical entrance, these compositions framed the night sky through lower cave openings, allowing more of the sky to become part of the scene. One image (first) features the constellation of Orion (and the red hydrogen of Barnard’s Loop) rising beyond the cave entrance. In the second image, in the sky is the Gum Nebula (as well as Sirius, Orion, and Carina), a vast and subtle emission region normally invisible to the naked eye, revealed through long exposure and careful processing. In both cases, the cave acted as a natural frame, linking the darkness below ground with the structure and depth of the night sky above. Cool to see Earth’s own night sky!