I spent the day at the North Carolina Botanical Garden hanging the exhibit. Everything went together pretty much as I imagined it would, it just took a lot longer than I imagined. The exhibit consists of 29 wrapped canvas prints with captions that relate the images to plant conservation. There are also a lot of unframed prints on photographic paper available for purchase in a stand by the table.

A lot has been happening behind the scenes lately that does not make it to the web site. Most of the photographs I have been making for my next book are being kept under wraps until the book is published. However, you will have a chance to see some of these photographs at the exhibit at the North Carolina Botanical Garden that opens on January 9th.



Most of my photography efforts for the book for the last few years have been focused on finding and photographing the best examples of what remains of North Carolina’s natural places. The image above was made on the Black River in an area with the oldest trees in Eastern North America, bald-cypress with an average age around 1600 years.

The theme of the exhibit is North Carolina plant conservation. I selected images from across the State as well as across a range of conservation efforts. There will be photographs from public lands, grassroots conservation, North Carolina Plant Conservation Preserves, as well as some rare and newly discovered plant species. I also created some new images from properties managed by the North Carolina Botanical Garden especially for this exhibit. This one of Morgan Creek was posted on the web site last month:


Morgan Creek

This will be the first time I am exhibiting prints on canvas. I am really excited about the look and quality of the canvas prints. If you have only seen my images on the internet you will be impressed by what you are missing when you see these prints.

If you would like to help spread the word about the exhibit you can print out this flyer.

For more information about the exhibit visit the North Carolina Botanical Garden Web site.

I will be attending the annual meeting of the Friends of Plant Conservation on November 4th from 9:30am to 3:00pm. The meeting is open to the public so anyone interested in North Carolina's native plants is welcome to attend. In addition to presentations by Rob Sutter, Cecil Frost, and Rob Evans, we will be exploring ways to create and manage a system of Plant Conservation Preserves to protect North Carolina's imperiled plants in their natural habitats. The event will be held at the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill in the new Education Center. Registration is $15 and includes lunch.

Two of the new photographs this month are from a Plant Conservation Preserve in the mountains called Tater Hill. This preserve has a high elevation grassy bald, rock outcrops, northern hardwood forests, and a bog. When I visited it was too late in the growing season to photograph the rare plants but the dramatic landscape is interesting any time of year.


Tater Hill Plant Conservation Preserve

You can see the rest of the new photographs on the November 2009 page.

I recently returned from a trip to photograph some of the remnant prairies near Charlotte, North Carolina. My sister lives in Charlotte so I got to spend some time with her as well. She has these canisters on a shelf between her kitchen and living room with things like sugar, flour, salt, you know, the staples. I have been telling her for years it would be hilarious if one of the canisters had actual staples in it. Then she could watch the faces of her guests as they tried to figure out why office supplies were mixed in with the food. Well, she finally did it and was waiting for me to arrive so she could see how long it would take me to notice. I did not notice at first. I walked in the door, hugged her neck, and then, about 20 seconds later, I noticed it and burst out laughing! See, I was right, it is hilarious!


"Staples"

Anyway, back to the prairies. It seems strange to think about prairies in North Carolina. Today they are all but gone yet early explorers reported extensive prairies in the North Carolina Piedmont. Most of the evidence suggests these prairies were created and maintained by Native Americans. Many of the plants and animals that depended on the open conditions of the prairies now struggle to survive or are gone. I chose this time to visit because one of these plants, the federally endangered Schweinitz’s Sunflower, was at its peak flowering.


Schweinitz's Sunflower

One of the sites I visited was Mineral Springs Barren, a Plant Conservation Preserve whose purpose is to improve the habitat for the Schweinitz’s Sunflower. The few remnant prairies like this one are faint reminders of what once was, but from certain angles and perspectives, and with some imagination, I could see the open fields and bison that once characterized this area.


Mineral Springs Barren

A few weeks ago I visited New Lake in Hyde County North Carolina with the Carolina Vegetation Survey. We were looking for natural lake shore vegetation, a type of natural community that grows along these shallow bay lakes. No one in our group had been to this lake before so we hoped the community was in good condition. I had seen natural lake shore vegetation at other lakes and they can be quite lovely, large cypress trees marching out into a shallow lake with grasses swaying in the waves. We were disappointed to discover that the cypress trees had been cut long ago. Weathered stumps marked the places where ancient trees once stood. A new forest of young cypress now lined the lake shore.

If I had been alone I might have turned around and gone somewhere else, but the team I was with decided the rest of the vegetation was in good enough condition to sample so we would be there for the rest of the day.


The Carolina Vegetation Survey at New Lake.

The trees I had hoped for were gone and the light was too harsh for landscapes. After a few minutes of dreary thoughts that were not producing photographs I decided I should see what sort of macro subjects I could find. It did not take long to discover tiny sundew plants growing in the shade of the young cypress trees.


Water Sundew

One advantage of young trees is the foliage is easy to reach. These trees were mostly pond-cypress, very similar to the better known bald-cypress but the foliage is more like a rope than a feather and it points up from the stem rather than out.


Pond-cypress Foliage

After making the pond-cypress foliage photo I was out of ideas so I decided to sit quietly and observe until an idea was revealed to me. There was just one problem, there was no where to sit. The ground went from damp to soggy to shallow lake. The only dry place I could see to sit was the old cypress stumps along the lake shore. Most were weathered into very uncomfortable shapes, but after searching I found one with a very nice dry top that fit my bottom quite nicely.


Meditation on a cypress stump.

My photography process has a lot in common with meditation. I sit quietly without thinking and just let the images I see wash over me. I try not to judge or think, I simply observe. After a time an idea for a photograph is usually revealed to me, provided I can remain open enough to see it.

After sitting there for a time I realized the images of all the stumps I had searched while looking for a place to sit were running through my mind. When I first arrived at the lake I looked at them in a negative way, they represented the loss of something great that once existed. But now I was seeing them without judgment, just the physical objects detached from their meaning. Each was different, weathered, and spectacular in its own way. The Universe had spoken, I needed to photograph the weathered cypress stumps!


Weathered Cypress Stump #1


Weathered Cypress Stump #2

You can see the rest of the new photographs for this month on the June 2009 page.