Iron Creek Photography®: Big Cypress National Preserve

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Big Cypress National Preserve

80mm f/8 1/180 ISO50

150mm f/11 1/180 ISO50

150mm f/5.6 1/700 ISO50

As luck would have it, Sandy and I were in Clearwater Florida the same time our good friend Dave Gallagher was hosting a technical workshop at Capture Integration's Miami office. Shortly after finding out we were close (what's 300 miles between friends) Dave invited us to join him Saturday to meet Clyde Butcher and later join him on a swamp buggy ride in the Big Cypress National Preserve. Who could pass that up?

150mm f/5.6 1/125 ISO100

150mm f/4 1/125 ISO100

150mm f/5.6 1/125 ISO100

Getting on the road at 5 a.m. Saturday we drove to Clyde Butcher's Gallery in the Big Cypress National Preserve. Dave, you maybe my brother from another mother however the highlight of the day was meeting Clyde. Sandy actually got to sit with him for several minutes and they had a very nice conversation.

300mm f/8 1/180 ISO200

300mm f/8 1/250 ISO200

120mm f/11 1/250 ISO200

I went to Clyde's front yard and went to work capturing the shear beauty. As we were traveling light on this trip I used a very lightweight tripod along with the Phase One DF body and P65+ back. The lenses used during the shooting at Clyde's were a combination of the 80, 150 and 300mm lenses I used late last year in Jackson Hole. What a total difference in subject matter!

120mm f/11 1/250 ISO200

Later on we boarded 2-swamp buggies for a 6-hour tour of part of the Preserve.

120mm f/8 1/350 ISO200

120mm f/8 1/250 ISO50

Dave was nice enough to allow me to test the manual focus 120mm macro lens which I've had my eye on for sometime. While I failed to bring along the tripod for the buggy ride I did get the chance to use the lens and surprise - like it. A lot. Actually it's still in my camera bag. We'll be in Atlanta in a couple days and I'll be either forced to give it up or pay for it. I have a feeling it'll be in Arizona at the end of the trip.

120mm f/8 1/180 ISO200

Chris Snipes working in the muck

80mm f/8 1/180 ISO200

80mm f/5.6 1/350 ISO200

We shot so much that we've decided to split this into 2-parts. Part one will show examples of the P65+ with part two from the Canon 1DsIII. All the images included here were processed using Capture One Pro.

I think Dave was checking his e-mail....

80mm f/8 1/180 ISO200

80mm f/8 1/350 ISO200

We drove back to Clearwater late last night arriving shortly after midnight; just finished loading the images on the computer and processing the first batch and writing this part. The plan is to take it very easy today resting up for the drive Tuesday to Atlanta.