The Experience

This week’s newsletter is simply a progress check looking at what I have accomplished thus far and what I have left to do before the fall semester starts. Since January 15, 2005 when I arrived in the Everglades to start this project I have taken almost 20,000 images, kept and catalogued over 5,000 images, and driven close to 15,000 miles. I have covered a lot of ground over the past four months and seen and photographed a lot of interesting things. I have flown over the Everglades tracking Florida Panthers, traveled to rookeries via airboat to count White Ibis nests, captured and banded the endangered Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow, and hiked through swamps, prairies, and forests I have had some once in a lifetime experiences so far and I have been fortunate enough to capture most of these experiences on film.

This weekend I was in Maine meeting with several different professors who have been working with me over the past few years. I was able to finalize who will be working with me next year as I shape this experience into the book. It was nice to have some time to meet with my professors who all had very good feedback and were very encouraging.

As of this week I am going to be getting back into the photography side of this project at full speed. I have been traveling a lot over the past month and feel like I haven’t got as much done as I would have liked. However, I do not have a single plan between now and the end of June when I plan to move back to Orlando for the rest of the summer. I will also be making a trip down here in August for a week or so to experience and photograph a few things that won’t be happening in June, such as alligator nesting. That being said, I now have a checklist of images I would like to capture between now and the time I leave here in just over a month. It should be an exciting month and I hope that you will enjoy the images as much as I look forward to taking them.