From ghost orchids blooming in ancient cypress trees to panthers moving through the wetlands below, Mac Stone reveals centuries-old ecosystems.
WUSF's Cathy Carter speaks with the National Geographic photographer about his new book "Cypress: The Last Old Growth Swamps," one of which is Corkscrew Swamp in Naples.
The interview below was edited for clarity and brevity.
Mac, you describe the remains of America's cypress forest to be ancient, sacred places.
They are truly distinct from any of the other swamps or wetlands or forests that you might encounter when you go out on a walk or on a hike, because these trees, in some cases, can be 2,000 to 3,000 years old, and the canopies underneath them are also ancient, and so the animal interactions that happen underneath these ancient canopies are also old, and they're truly unique because it is a glimpse of how the Southeast used to look and function before industrial logging took over.
And for those who may not be aware, can you tell us a little bit more about what was a large-scale effort to strip millions of acres of growth forest?
At the turn of the 20th century, there was really an effort to drain and transmogrify the Southeast to become productive, or what we call productive, which is agriculture development. So, there is actually a federal decree, the Swampland Act of 1850, that incentivized states to drain and to cut down their swamps, and so of the 40 million acres that once used to exist of the southeastern old-growth swamps, now only 10,000 to 12,000 acres remain. So, this book really dives deep. It goes underwater. It goes way up in the canopies; it goes into the backcountry. It is my love letter to these swamps.
Your photos are amazing, and I think one of the reasons is that rather than solely relying on a telephoto lens, you actually do something called camera trapping.
Camera trapping might be the most frustrating aspect of wildlife photography because you set your camera out, and in some cases, in the tropics and in South Florida, it’s subject to rain and humidity and hurricanes. And what you're hoping for is that an animal is going to trigger your beam and really take its own photograph. And so, you set up these elaborate systems with speed lights and strobes to kind of create this outdoor studio, if you will. And so, you really show up to the camera trap after a month or two months of not being able to see it, and then you scroll through the images, and it really is like Christmas morning when you get something that you've waited so long for. It's one of the best gifts you could get. Most of the time, however, you get black bears that have come and completely demolished your systems, and so I lost probably six cameras throughout my tenure in shooting these images. So, it's a costly endeavor, but when it works, man, it really pays off.
"Cypress" is a coffee table book with beautiful photos, but also essays. And in one, you said "the swamp will change you."
The swamp changes you in so many ways because it challenges constantly our conventional ideas of beauty. When you get into a swamp, and especially an old-growth, ancient virgin swamp, you know it's hard walking through these systems, and you're slogging through, and you're kind of always on alert. And what you realize when you go into them, you feel a way that you can't get anywhere else, in any other ecosystem. You aren't struck by the sheer grandeur. You're struck by the amount of life that is packed into these bottlenecks, and everywhere you look, you see something fascinating: snapping turtles, catfish, alligators, snakes, frogs, raccoons, orchids. I mean, bromeliads everywhere. It's just unbelievable, and you really can't get that anywhere else. And that's what I mean. It will change your concept of what is beautiful and what is inherently American and what is inherently southeastern. And that's what I love.
Stone shares his work documenting the last old-growth cypress swamps of the American South at the Tampa Bay History Center on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.
