Travel

INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL & DEEP QUESTS

by Robbie Shone. “The Cathedral Doors.” From Hong Meigui Expedition.

The quest to discover new places on Earth remains, despite the fact that most people think that we’ve already found and mapped all there is to our planet. But the reality is that there are still plenty of places yet to be seen or experienced.

Photographer Robbie Shone has long stoked a personal quest to discover and capture the images of the insides of the deepest, longest, and largest caves. He aims for journeys to the center of the earth.

Shone has explored the furthest ends of the Clearwater Cave system in Malaysian Borneo, about 117 miles long. He has dangled in the middle of one of the world’s deepest natural shafts, 509 meters deep, in Miao Keng, China.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Shone explained “Exploring somewhere no one else has been before, is a very, very special feeling. It pushes me on to keep finding unexplored caves.” Shone is also “drawn by the photographic challenge,” of photographing these hard to reach caves.

Shone will go anywhere to pursue his quest. He’s explored far and wide, including caves, mountains, and glaciers in China, Borneo, the Alps, Papua New Guinea, and more.

He will do just about anything to get his shot, including spending long periods of time underground. He 13 full days underground, for example, exploring a cave system in Vietnam.

While Shone tends to travel with private expeditions that have selected him as expedition photographer, some of the caves he photographs are open to be explored by the public. The Clearwater Cave system is one of these, though most visitors don’t go quite as deep as Shone.

Shone has received a lot of positive attention for his work. He has been published in National Geographic, Bear Grylls Great Outdoor Adventures, GEO and Intelligent Life.

Shone holds the IRATA Level 3 Supervisor certificate which qualifies him to work and supervise people working at height on ropes. He has assisted film and television crews including BBC ‘Earth – The Power of the Planet’, ‘Ultimate Caving’ and ‘Blue Peter.’

Currently, Shone’s work is on display in Spain at the Gaias Centre Museum in Santiago de Compostela until September 14th, 2014 as part of the Fresh Water Exhibition.

Read more about Beautiful Quests, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including Beautiful Quests and Send Offs, Beautiful Progress for Scientific Quests, Better Food Better World, and The Quest for Beautiful Data.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Quests in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 06.01.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!