So I've had the great privilege
of traveling to some incredible places,
photographing these distant landscapes and remote cultures
all over the world.
I love my job.
People think it's this string of epiphanies
and sunrises and rainbows.
When in reality,
it looks more something like this.
(Laughter)
This is my office.
We can't afford the fanciest places to stay at night,
so we tend to sleep a lot outdoors,
as long as we can stay dry,
that's a bonus.
We also can't afford the fanciest restaurants.
So we tend to eat whatever's on the local menu.
And if you're in the Ecuadorian Paramo,
you're going to eat a large rodent called a Cuy.
(Laughter)
What makes our experiences, perhaps,
a little bit different and a little more unique
than that of the average person
is that we have this gnawing thing in the back of our mind
that even in our darkest moments, in those times of despair,
we think, "Hey, there might be an image to be made here,
there might be a story to be told."
And why is storytelling important?
It helps us connect with our cultural and our natural heritage.
And in the Southeast,
there's an alarming disconnect between the public
and the natural areas that allow us to be her win the first place.
We're visual creatures,
so we use what we see to teach us what we know.
Now the majority of us aren't going to go
way down into a swamp.
So how can we expect those same people to advocate
on behalf of their protection?
We can't.
My job, then, is to use photography as a communication tool
to help bridge the gap between the science and the aesthetics.
To get people talking,
to get them thinking,
and to hopefully, ultimately,
to get them caring.
I started doing this 15 years ago right here in Gainesville,
right here in my backyard,
and I fell in love with adventure and discovery.
Going to explore all these different places
that were just minutes from my front door step.
There's a lot of beautiful places to find.
Despite all these years that have passed,
I still see the world through the eyes of a child
and I try to incorporate that sense of wonderment
and that sense of curiosity into my photography
as often as I can.
And we're pretty lucky because here in the South,
we're still blessed with a relatively blank canvas
that we can fill with the most fanciful adventures
and incredible experiences.
It's just a matter of how far our imagination will take us.
See, a lot of people look at this and think,
"Oh wow, that's a pretty tree."
But I don't just see a tree,
I look at this and I see opportunity.
I see an entire weekend.
Because when I was a kid,
these were the types of images that got me off the sofa
and dared me to explore,
dared me to go find the woods
and put my head underwater and see what we have.
And folks, I've been photographing all over the world
and I promise you,
what we we have here,
what we have in the Sunshine State
rivals anything else that I've seen.
But yet out tourism industry is busy promoting all the wrong things.
Before most kids are 12,
they'll have been to Disney World
more times than they've been in a canoe
or camping under a starry sky.
And I have nothing against Disney or Mickey,
I used to go there, too.
But they're missing out on those fundamental connections
that create a real sense of pride and ownership
for the place that they call home.
And this is compounded by the issue that the landscapes
that define our natural heritage and fuel our aquifer for our drinking water
have been deemed as scary and dangerous and spooky.
See, when our ancestors first came here,
they warned, "Stay out of these areas, they're haunted.
They're full of evil spirits and ghosts."
I don't know where they came up with that idea.
But it's actually led to a very real disconnect,
a very real negative mentality
that has kept the public disinterested, silent,
and ultimately, our environment at risk.
We're a state that's surrounded and defined by water.
And for centuries,
swamps and wetlands have been regarded
as these obstacles to overcome.
And so we've treated them as second-class ecosystems
because they have very little monetary value
and of course, they're known to harbor alligators and snakes,
which I'll admit, these aren't the most cuddly of ambassadors.
(Laughter)
So it became assumed, then, that the only good swamp
was a drained swamp.
And in fact, draining a swamp to make way
for agriculture and development
was considered the very essence of conservation
not too long ago.
And now we're backpedaling,
because the more we come to learn about these silent landscapes,
the more secrets we're starting to unlock
about interspecies relationships
and the connectivity of habitats, watersheds and flyways.
Take this bird, for example:
This is the prothonotary warbler.
I love this bird because it's a swamp bird,
through and through, a swamp bird.
They nest and they mate and they breed in these old grown (?) swamps
in these flooded forests.
And so after the spring, after they raise their young,
they then fly thousand of miles over the Gulf of Mexico
into Central and South America.
And then after the winter, spring rolls around
and they come back.
They fly thousands of miles over the Gulf of Mexico.
And where do they go, where do they land?
Right back in the same tree.
That's nuts.
This is a bird the size of a tennis ball.
I mean, that's crazy.
I used a GPS to get here today,
and this is my hometown.
(Laughter)
That's crazy.
So what happens, then, when this bird flies over the Gulf of Mexico
and into Central America for the winter
and then the spring rolls around and it flies back,
and it comes back to this:
A freshly salted golf course.
This is a narrative that's all too commonly unraveling
here in this state.
And this is a natural process that's occurred for thousands of years
and we're just now learning about it.
So you can imagine all else we have to learn about these landscapes
if we just preserve them first.
And despite all this rich life that abounds in these swamps,
they still have a bad name.
Many people feel uncomfortable with the idea of wadding
in Florida's black water.
I can understand that.
But what I loved about growing up in the Sunshine State
that for so many of us,
we leave with this latent, but very palpable fear
that when we put our toes into the water,
there might be something much more ancient
and much more adapted than we are.
Knowing that you're not top dog is a welcomed discomfort, I think.
How often in this modern and urban and digital age
do you actually have the chance to feel vulnerable,
or consider that the world may not have been made for just us?
So for the last decade,
I began seeking out these areas where the concrete yields to forest
and the pines turn to cyprus
and I viewed all these mosquitos and reptiles,
all these discomforts,
as affirmations that I'd found true wilderness,
and I embraced them wholly.
Now as a conservation photographer obsessed with black water,
it's only fitting that I'd end up