Caver And DP Kasia Biernacka Lenses ‘The Deepest Cave’ For NatGeo Special

Director of Photography (DP) and caver Kasia Biernacka is at home in her native Poland but like most cavers, she’s dreaming of being back in a cave, specifically the Sistema Cheve cave in southern Mexico.

For 20 years, Biernacka has taken numerous trips to photograph and explore the natural wonder, believed to be the deepest on Earth, which is located in a remote mountain range in the state of Oaxaca.

Last year, she joined a 69-person international expedition led by National Geographic explorer Bill Stone and served as DP on the one-hour special Explorer: The Deepest Cave, premiering May 30 on the National Geographic Channel and on Disney+.

In 1990, two years after the cave was discovered, explorers poured green dye into the stream flowing into the mouth of cave, and subsequently found the colored water at the mountain’s base, approximately 1.6 miles from the cave’s highest-known entrance at the time. That would make Cheve the deepest in the world, following the current title-holder, Veryovkyna in Abkhazia in Georgia, which is about a quarter mile shorter. Over the years, through various expeditions, experienced cavers have ventured into the labyrinth and set up “camps” within. The Deepest Cave chronicles the expedition team’s efforts to crawl, climb and traverse the cave, safely. (Four individuals have died in the cave over the years.)

In the 2021 expedition, the experienced cavers and their crew—it takes a village of support staff to handle the logistics like food and supplies—spent more than 1,500 nights underground and discovered more than 12 miles of passages previously unseen by any human.

Biernacka herself explored the cave, gathering both moving and still images within the confines of the cave, filming Stone and other cavers in their latest adventure. She spoke via Zoom about the experience and how she eagerly is awaiting getting back to the cave next year.

Angela Dawson: I was just looking at the photos you took in an article about the expedition on nationalgeographic.com. So, you took stills as well as served as the DP on the film, right?

Kasia Biernacka: Yes, I just took several shots here and there when I had some time. I was not the (official) photographer on this trip. Filming was my first priority and I had filming gear but not a separate still camera.

Dawson: As the DP on The Deepest Cave, lighting is important, filming equipment is important, and I’d imagine this is a very remote location, so the logistics of having everything you needed for the entire process must have been tricky, right?

Biernacka: Yes, but it wasn’t the first time I’d been in this cave. I’ve been a part of this project for 20 years. I was at Cheve on many expeditions before so I knew the terrain and I knew the obstacles and challenges. I was able to prepare the gear for the circumstances, which are things like hard rock, water and humidity, which was actually our main issue because the lenses would fog up.

Also, there’s the challenge of low-light conditions. Caves are dark and you can’t do much about it. You can bring in lights but the passages that we discovered were huge so we used the light from the headlamps of the cavers. We didn’t want to flood the cave with light because it’s not natural. We wanted to, of course, show the passages but our choice was to leave it more natural and dark as it is. The cameras we chose were the Sony Alpha 7S III (with movie/still capability), which were quite new on the market a year ago. We knew they were very sensitive and very good in low-light conditions so it helped us to work in dark spaces. They are compact and sturdy because when we crawl through the tiny passages, the gear gets very beaten up all the time. But the cameras survived.

The size of the gear was crucial because we would go into the cave for two weeks, which was the standard length of my cave trips.

I also had to take food and some clothes to change for the night because there is an underground river that we had to go through. We would get wet and have to change clothes for the night. So, what we could take in was very minimal.

With the filming gear, we couldn’t bring in everything we wanted because it’s a long way from the entrance to the depths of the cave. That took four or five days each time. Everything had to be checked and double-checked before we took it because we had to carry it throughout.

So, filming was challenging but we had a very good crew. We had professional cinematographers (and Emmy winners) Pablo Durana (The Trade) and Rob Gowler (Life Below Zero). They’re not cavers; this was their first trip to the cave. But they had very good rope skills so they adjusted to the cave and the environment very quickly, and they did a great job. We also had people on the surface doing interviews. I was very happy with the crew.

Dawson: The special ends on a cliffhanger, so are there plans to go back and continue the expedition?

Biernacka: Of course. We’re still in the process of discovering. Actually, you can never say a cave expedition is complete or a cave is totally explored, because there’s always the possibility of finding new passages. You just have to go in and check it in person. You can’t send a drone in to do it for you; you have to experience it and search for the continuation in person. That’s unique in the world of cave exploration. It’s not like on the surface, where you can send a Google
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car to map it out for you. We do it with our hands. So, of course we’ll be going back next year.

We’re super-excited with last year’s discoveries with 20 kilometers of new ground covered. We were very lucky. We put lots of work and effort into it and we want to see where the cave is going. I’m looking forward to it.