There is a primeval swamp in North Carolina called Merchant's Mill Pond, and it's exceptionally beautiful to photograph. I include it in my Best of Southern Nature photo tour. Bald cypress and tupelo trees rise out of the shallow water creating an eerie scene that one would expect to see in the Jurassic period. In fact, a dinosaur would be most fitting here! The first time I visited this swamp, I was still shooting a medium format film camera, the Mamiya RZ 67, and virtually all my 6x7cm images were taken from a tripod. This shot was captured from a canoe I'd rented in the state park, and the water was about three feet deep. I extended the legs of the tripod and sank them into the muck for stability with the camera about 6 inches above the surface of the swamp. Back then, I was shooting landscapes with Fujichrome Velvia, which was 50 ISO, and in order to maintain complete depth of field I used f/32. That, in turn, meant the shutter speed had to be slow, and that required a tripod. There are a lot of water birds in the swamp -- egrets, various species of herons, wild turkeys, and a lot more -- but with the film camera, a low ISO, and a slow shutter it was impossible to capture the beautiful landscapes plus get a bird in flight. Therefore, I used Photoshop to add the egret. I also used the Sky Replacement feature to replace a white sky with a sky that had more drama. I didn't record the shutter speed, but I believe it was around one half second. My next Southern Nature tour will be in April, 2023.
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