4th of July

What else could be more patriotic than celebrating America’s independence on a ranch in the Cowboy State?

One thing is for certain: A Bar A knows how to throw down. Over 400 people attend the celebration, 200 of which come from the neighboring towns (more like villages), to eat, drink, and watch some explosions in the sky.

Sparklers by the hundreds are handed out with children running and dancing behind them.

Children of all ages.

4th of July, especially here, holds a sort of timelessness; maybe it's the cowboy hats or maybe it's the subtle smell of horse manure wafting in from the corral. Regardless, nothing epitomizes the spirit of the wild west as accurately as the ranching culture. Viewed by some as the most productive and effective stewards of land conservation, cowboys and ranchers dedicate their lives to learning the natural rhythms and idiosyncrasies of their land.

Although techniques and equipment have evolved since the 19th century, most of the traditional values and practices attributed to the cowboy still remain. Their persistence and enduring resolve, regardless of the technologically driven world on the periphery, adhere them to an ancient code of ethics. They remain forever idolized as an American icon of freedom and independence.

Wild Life

Wyoming is huge. Huge, as in massive. Florida is huge too, but to put things in perspective, Florida is 66,000 square miles while Wyoming is 98,000 square miles. If you’re not surprised yet, then check this out: from the last census taken, Florida has 18,000,000 people. Wyoming on the other hand is just below 550,000.

I think my favorite thing about the Cowboy State is the space; the romantic, healthy kind of space: rivers, mountains, streams, rocky outcroppings, sagebrush, aspen groves and fields of wildflowers. This is not to say that Florida doesn’t have beautiful, natural areas. To set the record straight I am completely infatuated with my flat homeland, but with the presence of so much unoccupied land Wyoming exudes the essence of uninhibited, untamed wildness.

Over the past three days I’ve been blown away by the array of wildlife here on the ranch. The A Bar A could even be considered a wildlife sanctuary as it's managed with a conservationist’s mentality, lending itself to close encounters.

Saturday, I went hiking with two of my teens from the program and we came across a herd of five big horn sheep. Resting under the shade of a ponderosa pine, they casually gathered when we approached. The light was poor for photographing but I finally managed to get a portrait of the famed uni-horned sheep.

On the way back, a male blue grouse strutted and cooed in search of a mate.

That evening while fishing on the river, I looked to my right and only fifteen feet away a family of beavers was sharing a leafy branch. Unfortunately, my camera was elsewhere.

The next morning on the way to breakfast I spotted a female moose and her two calves resting in the willows. The male, not too far away, approached slowly and I moved cautiously for cover. Moose can be extremely dangerous when they feel threatened or challenged, especially when the young are involved, but I felt safe behind the buck-rail that bordered the river. This was my first encounter with a moose and I couldn’t get over how weird she looked. Somewhere mixed between a giraffe, horse, and cow, moose appear as though they wound up on the wrong-end of some twisted science experiment. They’re beautiful though, in a funny way.

Later on in the afternoon while taking pictures of the kids playing in the pool, I heard loud screams coming from the golf course. Looking up, I noticed a small black bear lumbering towards the ranch road. Quickly, I set off on a dead sprint to head the bear off and get a candid photo amidst the sagebrush. Generally, black bears are far less-aggressive and smaller in size than brown or grizzly bears, so I felt comfortable pursuing the animal. Not too long into my endeavor, however, I heard the manager yelling at me to come back. Unfortunately, despite several more encounters, this would be the only photo I made of our friend the bear.

Mile High Cookout

Named after a mysterious cowboy who lived and died amidst the gnarled ponderosa pines and coarse sagebrush, Slim’s Draw leads to the top of one of the highest mountains on the ranch property. Every Friday night the ranch hosts a cookout for guests and invited staff members. Bathed in Wyoming’s special brand of late afternoon light, Slim’s Draw offers a spectacular lookout on the North Platte Valley.

For the city slickers and east-coasters, their childhood love affairs of western freedom and wildness are consummated here. Cottonwood crackles in a burn pit, horses stir in the corral, folk songs dance off the frets of an acoustic guitar, and the smell of grilled meats and beans weighs heavy on the wind.

In celebratory fashion, children are escorted up the winding road in a restored fire engine from the 1950’s - its bright red frame glowing against thunderous skies in the distance.

As the sun dances over the mountains on the horizon, a few rays ignite the rain clouds in a fiery orange.

With full bellies and shuffling boots, the crowd disperses and heads for the catch pin to saddle up before the two-hour ride home.

In the distance, familiar silhouettes briefly crest the ridge as the last light of dusk gives way to the night.

Wyoming Skies

Leaving South Carolina early on Thursday morning, I set out for Encampment, Wyoming to begin a second summer working with the A Bar A Ranch. After 1,970 miles of mosaic bug splatters on my windshield, 7 fill-ups at the gas pump, and a miserably desolate drive across Kansas and Nebraska, I rolled into Encampment on Saturday afternoon.

This year, my job title is a little more specific as photographer, teen counselor, and fishing guide. Luckily for me, I have the flexibility of making my own schedule and most of my job consists of a daily improvise to entertain the guests. I have taken a loose definition of “entertain” to suite my style of fun - particularly camping, hiking, photographing, fishing, and exploring backcounry sections of the ranch. As long as the teenagers are happy, I’m doing my job. At the end of each week, I present a slideshow to the guests specifically focused on their stay and experiences.

One of my goals last year was to publish a coffee table book to highlight the rich history, the wildlife, the vast landscapes, and the eco-friendly management of the A Bar A Ranch. By the end of March 2009 the book was ready for print, complete with 120 pages and over 150 images. You can purchase a copy of the book or preview some of its pages on www.Blurb.com.

In many ways after such a long publication process and a full portfolio from last year, I feel satiated and contented to the point where I see my creativity stagnating.

The test this year will be to see if I can push past the pride of a job-well-done and convince myself there are more images to be had.

Farewell South Carolina

My time as a naturalist at the Francis Beidler Forest has come to an end. Looking back on my journal and browsing through a full portfolio of images I can say with some degree of confidence that I made the best of three months with Audubon. If I were to quantify this time it would break down to something like this: three full moons, two seasons, twenty-six guided canoe trips, one music video in the swamp, four large-mouth bass, one plane ride, five visits from friends, one leech, one completed guidebook, one redesigned brochure, eighteen swamp stomps, and 6,000 photos.

In one last effort to convey to the world the importance and sanctity of this little oasis, I have compiled a video highlighting some of my favorite moments I shared with the swamp. Enjoy.

Flyin High

There are many ways to see a swamp. You can canoe. You can kayak. You can walk on a boardwalk. You can slog through the water. You can even hop from cypress knee to cypress knee. Or, you can fly.

Buddy Wehman, a retired pilot lives just outside Harleyville, SC and keeps his 1939 Fleet biplane in a hanger at the Summerville airport. After months of looking at aerial Google maps I wanted to see for myself the braided channels and towering trees of the 1,600 acres. I love anything that changes my perspective. My main motivation, however, was to document the dichotomy between old growth forest and clear-cut lowcountry.

On Monday morning I met him at the airport and we waited an hour for the fog to dissipate. To kill time he dissected the simplistic anatomy of a biplane and told me about the time the propeller nearly severed his femoral artery. All alone, he used a belt for a tourniquet and drove himself to a hospital 30 minutes away. I figured I was in good hands should our plane crash into the Hudson, or in our case, the Edisto. Any fears or uneasiness about flying in a seventy year-old plane quickly vanished once I put on the leather hat and goggles.

Flying high over the eastern edge of Harleyville we had a great view of the wetland transition zones. This whole area is located along the Four Holes Swamp watershed draining some 500,000 acres of land. As seen in the photos below the dividing line between secondary growth and primary forest is pretty abrupt.

Imagine 60 miles of this landscape once again connected, uninterrupted, and allowed to flow freely to the Edisto River. National Audubon and other conservation groups are slowly buying up pieces of private land to revert logged sections back to old growth. This sort of thing takes a lot of money and of course, a lot of time.

This is what is known as Mellard's Lake. The house I live in is at the middle bend just on the left.

Buy One Get One Free

I had to share this with you. Two friends came to visit me in the swamp and excited to be in a state where you can buy fireworks year-round we came up with the great idea to have a roman candle fight on the water. Fortunately at the Hot Spot gas station everything was buy one get one free. So I put the Gator Cam to good use and recorded the ensuing chaos. 

The Art of Howism

Critics often talk about the fine line separating documenting and reporting, or taking pictures and making photographs. When looking at one of my images, viewers automatically receive the who, what, where, when, and why of every image. Hidden on the other side of the view plane, however, sits the methodology, the artistry, and the personal. Unless accompanied by an article or caption, viewers must infer for themselves as to how the photograph came to be. Precisely at that moment, when the audience is forced to look inward and interact with the piece, we as photographers have created art. Nature photographer Nancy Rotenberg calls this going “beyond the handshake” of the common snapshot. Regardless of its name, we can distinguish the two because of this illusive dimension. I used to tell my students in Honduras that with photography it’s more about what you decide to hide from the viewer than what you include. As artists and natural historians we have all the power to lure you into our little worlds through such simple tools as composition, happenstance, ethereal lighting, or jarring perspectives.

I do not claim to have mastered these techniques, but I’ve become increasingly cognizant in the field while experiencing the evolution from snapshot to photograph. I want to give you a glimpse of this process; a behind-the-scenes pass so you can see all that goes into the making of a single printed image. And perhaps this is counterproductive. Maybe the whole appeal is not knowing. But maybe, as I did with Jason, you will see that it’s in the filings, the discards, and in the “how” where artistry resides.

There's a log out in the middle of Mellard's Lake and when the water level drops gators and turtles use it as a sunning station to thermoregulate during the day. Since the alligators here don't see people too often, they are skittish and won't let you get too close. I love watching them through binoculars, their mouths forming a long grin. So I wanted a gator photo that portrayed life on a log.

To get the image I wanted I needed to not be behind the lens. So I mounted the camera on a boom arm which was lashed down to the floating log, hoping the gators wouldn't knock it over with their tails.

At first I had the camera rigged to a wireless trigger system where I could fire the camera from my house but this would only work half of the time. I would take the transmitter out with me when I took groups out paddling but too often we ended up in the photo. That's me in the closest boat. Also, when more than one gator climbed on the log it would tilt the camera and throw off the alignment of the horizon.

So I decided to cut the sky out of the photo and just concentrate on the log. I got rid of the radio triggers and replaced them with a timer which would take a photo every 15 minutes during the day so I wouldn't have to continually return just to take one photo. This allowed for gators to get accustomed to the camera and the constant clicking of the shutter. It wasn't long before they were right under the camera thankfully not hitting it with their tails.

The camera would take pictures all day. I wrapped a plastic bag around the body and left the lens exposed. While this might not be the safest thing, I've always told myself that the minute my camera stops me from taking a picture I need to rethink my priorities. A little sprinkle never hurts and in fact causes some dramatic imagery.

In the office it became a daily amusement to find what the Gator Cam would come up with. 11:30 AM proved to be the best time for the sun's position in the sky and the amount of reptiles sunning on the log.

Finally after a few weeks, I checked my camera to find the image I had envisioned. A reptile's paradise and a grinning gator.

So for the second series, I found this Prothonotary Warbler nest on a sweet gum tree just right off the boardwalk. The mom and dad kept coming back with grubs, spiders, and mayflies to feed its young. Typically the chicks will only stay in the nest for 10 days so I had to work fast in order not to miss this opportunity.

So I tried a telephoto first and although the idea of a nest and some chicks might be there, I wasn't satisfied with the message. So I went for a different approach. Setting my camera on a remote trigger system I was able to peer down into the nest without disturbing the birds or preventing the parents from feeding their young. After two minutes mom and dad paid no attention to the camera and returned to their frantic search for food.

I waited for the father to come back because it's the more brightly colored of the birds to offset against the shadows of the nest. A little fill flash lit the red mouths of the young begging for first dibs.

Swamp Stomp

The largest cypress tree on the Beidler property.

While this blog post may not have much to do with photography, it's another reason why I love the lowlands. A coworker of mine showed me this tree about three weeks ago since it's one of the biggest on the Beidler Forest property. Getting there is an adventure, trudging through waist-high black water and battling the swarms of noseeums. Surrounding this woody behemoth, contorted cypress knees seem to bubble like lava from the water's surface. Generally speaking, the older the tree, the more gnarly the knee. And when played with a hand or a stick, their varying sizes and shapes offer a wide range of organic tones from deep baritones to tinny tenors. I had the idea to bring out a few friends to make some real swamp music, with real swamp instruments. So without further ado, I bring you Swamp Stomp.

Virgins in the Swamp

On March 2^nd I started a new job working with the Audubon Society in the Francis Beidler Swamp located between Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina. The town I live in is called Harleyville. We have one traffic light, but it sits above a train track and always blinks yellow, so I’m not sure if that counts. There’s a bar, a Chinese restaurant, a motorcycle shop – which is currently holding a 50% sale on all leather, a store called “All Kinds of Things,” and a bustling Ace Hardware. On the road through town, everyone flashes the obligatory two-finger wave over the steering wheel. Regardless of the dried limestone and mud mixture caked on the sidewalls of my truck, I’m sure they all know I’m not from around here. Perhaps the Gators sticker gives me away, or maybe it was the time I bought a Starbucks vanilla frappuccino at the local gas station. Either way, I receive a wary welcome from the locals who comprise of mostly farmers and cement plant workers.

Harleyville exudes the traditional, the grit, the hospitality, and the simplicity of the rural south. It’s the kind of town that still sells beanie babies, “Pride of the South” t-shirts, and of course, beanie babies wearing mini “Pride of the South” t-shirts. It didn’t take me long to familiarize myself with the area. The roads in this backwoods hideout all stem off in an inbred fashion, eventually leading to the same intersection where a silhouette cutout of a kneeling soldier sits on one side of the street and on the other, an elaborate life-size display of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Parking spaces located on the left. 

Tucked away on the fringe of town (if there is such a thing) sits the Francis Beidler Forest. As the world’s only virgin cypress and tupelo swamp it comprises only a small section of the conserved land belonging to National Audubon. Most of the large cypress trees in this area are 1,000 years or older. 

The old growth constitutes roughly 1,600 acres in the heart of Four Holes Swamp, which in its entirety stretches for 60 miles before draining into the Edisto River. Once owned by a wealthy logging family, Beidler Forest came under a conservation easement in 1970 with the help of the Nature Conservancy and the National Audubon Society.

My official title is “seasonal naturalist.” I live in an Audubon staff house located on swamp property. In the house there are three bedrooms, two bathrooms, one roommate, and strange stains all over the brown carpet. It's absolutely perfect, not joking. When I turn on the faucets a pungent fart smell lingers in the immediate area. Even after a month I still have trouble brushing my teeth without gagging. My front yard looks out into an upland forest and from my back porch, Mallard’s Lake. At my daily disposal, a fleet of 5 canoes and 5 kayaks rest on wooden support racks. Although, not a lake by normal standards, it’s one of the deepest spots in the swamp (6 feet), so in our little circle we call it a lake. Last week I took a group from Michigan on a canoe trip and they had a good laugh at this. 

My typical workweek involves four days of canoe or kayak trips through a 4-mile channel in the swamp, leading school groups on a 1 ¾ mile boardwalk tour, aiding biologists with fieldwork, designing promotional material, and photographing along the 16,000 acre property.

Currently I am working on a new brochure and guidebook for Audubon in order to attract more visitors to the area. It seems every week we have at least 10 people from the surrounding towns show up for their first visits. I figure that with some powerful imagery, people will drop their preconceptions of a swamp being bug-infested, inhospitable, and crawling with bloodthirsty reptiles. If this doesn’t work, however, I’m prepared to take the next step and run a slightly different campaign:

 Live! Barely Legal! 100% Access! Get intimate with South Carolina’s oldest virgins!

I doubt this will fly with Audubon but could very well bump up the attendance of college students.

From what I hear, spring provides the best conditions for visiting the swamp. Reptiles begin to emerge from their warm hiding spots and the lush light green of muscadine grape and ivy dapples beneath breaks in the canopy. 

Many migratory birds nest and breed here. The more famous birds being the barred owl, yellow crowned night heron, and the prothonotary warbler. I think I’ll dedicate a separate blog to these creatures on a later date. There is just simply too much to talk about.

We have five species of aquatic snakes: the brown water snake, banded water snake, red-bellied water snake, greenish rat snake, and my favorite, the water moccasin. A typical day on the canoe trail we’ll see at least 10 snakes and sometimes even 20. I’ve become very efficient at finding and grabbing these reptiles. Still, no bites to worry about. 

Occasionally green and gray tree frogs cling to cypress knees or poison ivy vines. 

So yeah, I love my job. I encourage, with the utmost sincerity, for anyone to come and visit the swamp. Beidler Forest joins the ranks of one of my favorite places for solitude and witnessing wildlife truly as nature intended.