Recycling

I am having a garage sale tomorrow.  Mainly, I want to reduce the clutter around the house and the office.  The fringe benefit is that some of the stuff will be recycled, i.e. used by someone else for a while rather than hitting the land fill.

Sounds of the Wing

Black skimmers and sandwich terns in flight at sunset

I had just finished running and was resting with friends when I asked Julie about her recent trip to North Carolina.  She said it was so peaceful and relaxing, I even heard the sound of a bird flying. To me that’s a normal day. Whether it is the buzz of a hummingbird, the whistle of a flock of blue-winged teal or the quietness of an owl flying over my head at night.  But to her with a busy life in Baton Rouge, family and job it was unusual and refreshing. A serene moment to catch up on the way it feels to really live on earth. Our conversation made me think it would do everybody good to take a few minutes off each day to listen to the sounds of nature.  You don’t have to be in a cabin in North Carolina or in the Atchafalaya Swamp to do it, for even in most big cities you can find a place to experience a little something called nature.

Seven Billion

I feel crowded.

About one hundred of the seven billion people on earth. 

Jeweled Web Print of the Month

Jeweled Web

 

About this print:
A winter morning backlit dew covered spider web shimmers and dances in colorful hues like jewels dangling precariously.

 

*For more info and to purchase your print  HERE*

Fall Hummingbirds and Surprise Lilies

Fall officially begins on Friday and I can already feel it in the air. We have had a few cold fronts that actually cooled off the nights enough to turn off the AC.  You don’t need a weatherman or calendar to let you know the best season is here, just the plants and the birds.  The summer garden is done, the muscadines ripe and dropped and the sugar cane is taller than my topknot.  The plant that really tells me fall is here is the bright red spider lily that some call the surprise or hurricane lily.  It pops up out of nowhere and in my yard there is always a new one or two not near enough to be propagated by last years. 

Surprise Lily

The cardinal flower is another.  I have a friend that calls it the summer’s end flower.  Its cardinal red also gives a spurt of color to the forest that will slowly lose its leaves throughout the fall months.

The birds are harbingers of the seasons too.  You can look in Dr. George Lowery’s book, Birds of Louisiana and see a list that shows which are here when...or better yet you can go out doors and look.  The blue-winged teal are here, the blackbirds are flocking, the warblers are leaving, and best of all the hummingbirds are flocking, or better put, there is a charm of ruby-throated hummingbirds in my backyard.  

When my one hummingbird brought in two, then three then more friends I got out my extra feeders. For eight days I have had six feeders out and the one by the kitchen window has had fifteen birds within inches of it at one time.  

Eleven Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds at my kitchen feeder.

I am estimating seventy-five birds in my back yard.  This will last for a few more days, then groups of them will head off to the south.  I clean the feeders, store them, enjoy the cool air and watch the leaves slowly fall, for fall is in the air.

Acme Book Co. 1981

While preparing for the upcoming LPB screening on August 17th of my 1977 film Atchafalaya: America's Largest River Basin Swamp, I have been finding all kinds of old memorabilia. One that brings back fond memories is a monthly newsletter that Acme Book Co. issued before my first autograph party for my premier book.  It too was on the Atchafalaya and came out 4 years after the film.

Acme Book Co. Newsletter Cover July 1981

Acme Book Co. was a unique bookstore owned and operated by Larry Fisher.  And on that day in 1981 I was dumbfounded to find a crowd of fifty folks waiting for my autograph, a pot of gumbo, beer, caviar, champagne, and a Cajun combo…fiddle and all.  These were pre Barnes and Noble days when bookstore owners were always in the shop and knew their customers by name. Charles Elliott also had a great independent bookstore called Elliot's. Claudette Price ran the bookstore at Godchaux's.  Claitor’s had a very nice private bookstore in the shopping center where I had my first gallery. There were a few more and it's sad to say that Danny Plaisance of Cottonwood Books is the only independent bookseller left. 

So, here is to beer and gumbo and Acme Book Co...what a way to present my first book.

Atchafalaya Memories

On August 17, 2011 LPB will broadcast my Atchafalaya Movie that originally premiered in the spring of 1977 at the LSU Student Union Theater to a standing room only crowd of 1,400 people.  LPB is going to show it during their summer fundraiser evening.  This brings back fond memories of my carefree early days in the Basin.

Meeting the people I called swampers was a big part of those recollections.  Calvin Voison and Gwen Carpenter Roland were two of the first swampers I met and we became fast friends.  I just saw a post in Gwen's Facebook page that told about her favorite picture I took of her. In the photo she is looking out the window of Pajo Curry's shack on the Atchafalaya River. 

Gwen Carpenter at Pajo Curry's shack

I wasn't a people photographer at all when I first entered the Atchafalaya.   The long stretches of calm and peaceful days out there exploring alone in my canoe made me appreciate the times I ran into the swamp people. I learned to photograph them from afar and not get in their way.  And in this way I learned people photography.

I'll post some more memories on my early days in the swamp before LPB shows, Atchafalaya: America's Largest River Basin Swamp.

August E-Blast + News and Specials!

We just launched the CC Lockwood August E-Blast! Check it out HERE for info on the August 17th LPB premiere of CC Lockwood's 1977 Atchafalaya movie +  Prints of the Month Sale (see below) + Upcoming Fall Photo Workshops!

Don't miss out on our fantastic August Special on ALL Prints of the Month! These $100 signed CC Lockwood prints are available at the special price of $40 for the month of August. Check them all out HERE!

 

Black Widow

I can’t remember how long it has been since I have seen one, but when I turned over the rain barrel by my greenhouse it jumped out at me like coal on snow.  It was a female black widow spider hiding on the wooden frame below the barrel.  The red hour-glass contrasted brilliantly against the shining black exoskeleton on her abdomen.  I carefully photographed her and wondered if she could or would bite one of my chickens or if my chickens would eat her if they had the chance.

Female Black Widow Spider; Latrodectus mactans

Chicks and Tomatoes

When it rains it pours.  This weekend my tomato production went from 5 pounds to about 15 pounds per day and I hatched 15 chicks in my incubator. I am using an incubator because currently I have a rooster less hen house, at least for one more month.  I have an Araucana cockerel who will reach maturity in about a month. I am getting 5 to 8 unfertile eggs per day, so I borrowed some fertile eggs from two friends.  One has a flock of Araucanas and the other a flock of mixed breed yard birds.  So the fifteen that hatched are white, tan, buff, black, and the black and grey aracanas.  Yesterday I photographed these young chicks.  The light colored ones photograph best.

Last year my tomatoes were too thick so I planted 5 per row instead of 6 per row.  Guess what...they are still too thick.  The heirloom varieties I have just keep on going like the Energizer bunny.  I am not afraid to crawl under the vines to pick, so it is not all that bad.

The blueberries down the road are coming in also.  It’s a healthy time in the kitchen at our house.  We also have a crop of lemon cucumbers, bell and fool you peppers, okra, squash and many herbs. The cucumbers look like a lemon and taste like a cucumber.  The fool you peppers look like a jalapeño and taste like a spicy bell pepper.  All is good.

Winter White-tail

Special June Print of the Month: Winter White-tail

About this print:

Early on a foggy winter morning a large White-tail Buck looks toward a camouflaged CC on hearing the click of a Nikon shutter.

Purchase yours today: HERE

*Reminder:  

Looking for a Father's Day gift? 

I'll be signing books at Bowie's Outfitters from 10 am to 1 pm this SATURDAY June 18th, so stop by and pick one up for the special father in your life. 

Bowie's Outfitters 8630 Perkins Road (225) 766-1200

High Water in the Atchafalaya

It’s a hot day with big beautiful cumulus clouds.  Very humid, the water is brown but not heavily silted as I start in the Classic Bayou Canal, a place I have paddled and motored 300 times.  It is 12 plus feet deep; I have seen it dry.   Sycamore, persimmon, willow and pepper vine close it into a tight jungle of vegetation, so different than the 70s.   The birds are varied and full of song.  At one point I smell a rotting animal.  I am sure some have drowned.  On I idle slowly, a blue dragonfly lands on my bare foot.   I stop listen and think of all the days like this, peaceful – and very quiet in its own way and alone. 

The wind is cooling; the deep green of the tree tops sway slightly. As I see a beaver resting on a floating bald cypress log, I know the terrestrial wildlife that did not move out in time is having a hard life. The birds and aquatic life on the other hand dance with joy. A beaver is an aquatic creature, swimming and building dams, but when the water goes over its den too quickly for him to rebuild higher…life is different.  I move closer and get good shots and see this dazed look on its face. He is confused with no dark hole to crawl into during the daylight hours.

A little later I come on to a patch of land 21 feet by 15 feet and see the backs of two armadillos protruding from the dirt.  I stop and photograph them while four more come crawling out of a hole that is not much more than a depression.  The water table is about 10 inches down, so they cannot dig proper holes.  Lucky for them the insects are kind of trapped here too.  Food!

After dark, I was just falling asleep on a friend’s small houseboat.  It was a fairly primitive craft, but was mosquito proof.  I heard a human-like voice and something bumped the boat.  I leaped out of bed and after getting no reply to “Whose there!” I shine my light out into Bloody Bayou and see something that looked kind of white and swimming.  It came toward me and the white was actually tan.  It was a White-tailed Deer, a doe and she was swimming like an Olympic athlete.  She came right up to the boat.  Looked like she wanted to climb aboard, but the deck was too high.  I thought for a minute that she might want me to lift her up on deck, but I knew that would turn into a real mess.

I first met the Atchafalaya in the high water years of 1973-75.  It was fun remembering those great days when I could paddle about everywhere and today I could again.  The water is already dropping.  The system is getting a good flushing of fresh water.  The terrestrial animals will bounce back and the Basin remains as my favorite place in the whole world and a gem in Louisiana’s portfolio.

A Full Mississippi River and the Morganza Spillway

Yesterday I took a helicopter flight over the Morganza Floodway and saw the Mississippi full to the high banks in West Feliciana Parish and across it was near the levee top on the East side in Pointe Coupee Parish.  Big, scary water, yet not enough to open too many of the gates at Morganza. 

The Mississippi River being relieved of some pressure
by means of the Morganza Spillway 

 In the picture you can see agricultural lands in the background.  That reminds me of 1970s when we were battling to stop the Corps of Engineers channelization project on the Atchafalaya River.  That project would have drained much of the Atchafalaya Swamp during normal water levels and that would have dropped the guard of landowners to do more development within the floodway.  Then when a Mississippi River flood needed the relief of the spillway, it too would be developed.

Happily most of the Atchafalaya Basin below Highway 190 is still wet and wild. And hopefully the backwater flooding will not harm too many homes.

Giant waves rushing out of the Old River Control Structure
are over 30 feet tall.

Last Thursday I drove over the Old River Control Structure and photographed the giant standing wave.  The hydraulics of all that water coming through the structure made a colossal 30-foot tall wave that makes the rapids in the Grand Canyon look miniature.  Good for crawfish and bad for raccoons and deer, the Atchafalaya is getting a good flushing.  I am dreaming about all the exotic plants being flushed out to never return, that's pie in the sky, but what the heck, let's dream.

Beach Morning Glory

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The May Print of the Month is now available!

"Beach Morning Glory"

About this print:

This print features the beautiful light and airy summer bloom of a Beach Morning Glory, Ipomoea stolonifera, at Santa Rosa Island in Florida. Rich in texture and mood, this photograph evokes the warm subtle memories of Gulf Coast summers. 

Regular Price: $100

Special Print of the Month Price: $40

Paper size: 11" x 17.5"

Image size: 11" x 17.5" (see image above)

Paper Type:  Epson Lustre Archival

*Please keep in mind: Due to the differences of individual computer monitors the  final print's color, brightness, contrast etc. can vary from what is seen on computer monitors.

*Order this Print of the Month HERE*

*View and purchase previous Print of the Months HERE*

...

Spring Workshop Photos

My spring photography workshops recently ended. It was a great time at each, with beautiful weather and lots to see. I'm hoping some of you can join me in a few months for my fall photo workshops. I'm looking forward to them already.

ATCHAFALAYA BASIN:

Workshop student photographs in the basin from a canoe.

Cypress

Wildflowers

BURDEN PLANTATION:

Workshop students shooting the flora at Burden

Water Lilies

Blue Flag Iris

The Oil Flow iPad App is out!

My new iPad Photobook App is now available! 

To learn more about and see more screen shots of the app click: HERE
To purchase it for only $2.99 click to go directly the iTunes store: HERE


PRESS
A recent interview concerning The Oil Flow app:

Three Different Days

Life is different and exciting for a natural history photographer. Take three days last week. On Thursday I was in my bateau (cajun flat boat) cruising the bayous in Terrebonne Parish looking for eagles, then on Friday I was in my backyard taking pictures of my chicks that had hatched 12 days earlier and finally on the weekend I was in New Orleans photographing parades for a project on the good things of Louisiana.

I left Bayou Black Marina for my eagle search dressed warmly as it's always colder in a boat moving over the 60-degree water. The multitude of herons, egrets, ibis, coots, moorhens and anhinga that were here during the Eagle Expo were gone to mate and build their nest in rookeries. The eagles were still here. I saw 22 adults and 7 immature on a 50-mile boat tour. During that boat ride I found 6 nests I had not seen before. The eagle recovery plan is working well here in Louisiana.

On February 18 I hatched nine Araucana chicks in my incubator, the eggs came from my friends, the Roland’s, who live down the road from my house. The eggs are blue so when these grow up I will be adding beautiful blue eggs to the beige, brown and white I now get. The chicks make great photo subjects also. Right now I have 21 eggs in the incubator, which should hatch this Thursday. This is a mixed batch. I collected eggs from friends that have a number of different varieties. I’ll post pictures of all the different looks when they hatch.

After putting my Araucana chicks back in the brooder, I headed out to New Orleans to photograph some parades, especially the second line walking parades. My good friend Al McDuff told me about the Red Beans and Rice Walking Parade and that was my main goal. The crew met at Port and Royal Street at 1 PM and soon gathered to about 100 members dressed in costumes decorated in red beans, rice and other colored beans.

Some were very elaborate and beautifully done. As they walked, danced and jived down Royal Street, many Marti Gras revelers joined the route. In all I shot 1,400 photographs in three days of Mardi Gras. The digital world makes my shutter finger more active. This girl’s bean decorated mask was one of my favorites.

Spring Photo Workshops!

We're only a couple of weeks away from my spring photography workshops! Read more below for details and be sure to sign up soon, as space is limited.:

Atchafalaya Basin Photo Workshop: April 2 

 

Join CC Lockwood for a canoe trip into the scenic Atchafalaya swamp, followed by a post-op critique session on April 19 of your photographs taken on the trip.  A pre field trip lecture on March 31 will focus on shooting techniques as they apply to swamp photography from boats.  For more details please click HERE.  

Tunica Hills Photo Workshop: April 16

Join CC Lockwood for  a hike through the forest, hills, and waterfalls of Tunica at Clark's Creek, followed by a post-op critique session on April 19 of your photographs taken on the trip.  A pre field trip lecture on March 31 will focus on shooting techniques as they apply to hiking in the forest. For more details please click HERE.

1977 Atchafalaya Movie Premiere Print!

March's Print of the Month is a very limited original (we have less than 30 left) print from my 1977 Atchafalaya: America's Largest River Basin movie premiere. 

 

About this print:

This print is VERY limited with less than 30 remaining!

This is an original 11” x 17.5” movie print advertising  CC Lockwood's premiere of his 1977 film  Atchafalaya: America's Largest River Basin Swamp.  Directed by C.C. Lockwood and Marty Stouffer.  Produced by C.C. Lockwood.  Each is printed on a lovely slightly textured thick matte paper and is hand-signed in silver by CC Lockwood. Get your little piece of Atchafalaya history today. This unique vintage black and white advertising movie print looks fantastic matted and framed.  These won't last long! 

More about this print from CC Lockwood:
"In the late 70s, as I was working on documenting the Atchafalaya Basin through my photography, the Corps of Engineers planned to deepen the channel of the Atchafalaya River in the interest of flood control.  But, in fact, the plan would only have complicated flooding problems.  Ultimately, it would be the ruin of a vital wetland.  I had to find a way to let more people know how valuable the Basin was.  So, I extended my sojourn another year, now with a 16-mm movie camera and the help of my friend Marty Stouffer, who was successfully making educational wildlife films at the time. 

The film was wildly successful.  The LSU Union Theater was packed to the gills for its premier showing; with the theater's 1,315 seats and its aisles filled, some 400 people were turned away.  Congressman Henson Moore spoke, along with Sandra Thompson, executive director of the Governor's Atchafalaya Basin Commission.  The Copas Brothers played songs from the soundtrack before we showed the film.  Louisianians were thirsty to learn more about the basin."

-CC Lockwood

Click HERE to purchase one of these fantastic limited prints!

Whooping Cranes at White Lake

I saw my first whooping crane in Louisiana last Saturday, ten birds that were brought in from the captive breeding program in Patuxent, MD. They are in a temporary holding pen at White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area, a beautiful refuge of marsh in Vermilion Parish. It's almost 71,000 acres. Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries oversees this area and is a partner with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in this Whooping Crane reintroduction program. In 2004 while working on my Marsh Mission project I got to see how productive and beautiful this marsh is.

I saw my first whooping crane, Grus Americana, in 1973 from the deck of Captain Brownie Brown’s wooden, pink tour boat. He was a real character. At that time there were only a total of 70 whoopers in the world, 51 wild birds and 19 in captivity. The endangered species act was passed that year and I have been interested in studying these rare animals ever since.

According to Dr. George Lowery’s book Louisiana Birds, the last native Whooping Crane in Louisiana was captured in the marsh near White Lake March 11, 1950. There were thirty-eight total birds of this species in the whole world that year. Nationwide their numbers dropped to an all time low of twenty-three in 1953. Since then they have been on slow but steady climb up to more than 500 birds with 382 of those in the wild as of 2009. All because of successful conservation efforts of the USFW Service and many others.

Bob Love, Coastal and Non-game Resources Division Administrator, of LDWF is heading up the effort to restore a population of America’s tallest bird to its historic habitat in southwest Louisiana. He tells me it’s been a full time effort for a year and a half to get the paperwork and infrastructure set up for this release last week. Many of his cohorts have assisted, especially the staff of Rockefeller refuge. Rockefeller was the number one reason the alligator became one of the most successful comebacks of wildlife in America. Tom Hess has been on the staff there for years and has been very instrumental in helping the comeback of the brown pelican and bald eagle in Louisiana. Tom was there on Saturday to put radio collars on the juvenile whooping cranes. I have known Tom and Bob since the early 70’s when I took a few courses in LSU’s wildlife management grad school.

I watched the ten birds from a blind about 100 yards away; the biologist do not want the young birds to imprint on humans. They have been fed by puppet heads that look like adult cranes and are cared for by biologist wearing crane suits. All efforts are to give these birds a chance to make it in the wild and adapt to their new but historic home near White Lake.

Bob looks at this release as a gift to the residents of Southwest Louisiana and another reason to take care and restore our subsiding wetlands. I think and hope this could be a magic nugget that gets us over the hump to do that, save our wetlands, not only for the whooping crane, alligator, egrets and wood ducks, but also for the wonderful people of coastal Louisiana. If you want to help the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Foundation has a special fund for the whooping crane project. Private funds are needed. To donate please visit: www.wlf.louisiana.gov/lwff and be sure to note on your gift: The Whooping Crane Fund. 

Japanese Magnolias

Boom, a burst of pink and purple brightens the streets of Baton Rouge.  The Japanese Magnolias are ready to erupt any day now in these wild colors contrasting starkly with the browns and grays of winter vegetation. Soon, you will be able to see some of my favorite trees on Highland Road.  The bloom is late in my book, as I have seen them pop out as early as January 8^th in warmer years.  South Louisiana has had two cold winters sandwiching a hot dry summer of 2010. Pretty weird that we had no freezes or frost in the winter of 2008/09, then about 20 last year and are working on 20 this year too.  These have been cold hard freezes for the south; my birdbath has had an inch of ice on it five times this winter.  Last year we had two 5 inch snows.

Weather though is one of my tools. As a nature photographer weather along with light makes or breaks a photograph. A colleague of mine says that there has been a picture taken of everything in nature. (Except for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker) I won’t totally agree with that, but you do need some spectacular light and great technique to get a different rendition of a great egret or a grove of bald cypress trees. Rain, wind, cold or snow makes it hard on the cameras and the body, but that’s when you need to be out there working the many beautiful habitats of Louisiana.  

Finally some color is on its way. Get ready for spring.

Be sure to also check out the WEATHER photo album I recently posted at my Facebook page: HERE

Big Cypress Slough

To me the only thing better than paddling slowly through a forest of bald cypress trees would be to go back in time and paddle through a virgin stand of the same.  Today though I was with some huge trees. The majestic cypress I drifted by were ancient; their fluted and buttress bases were thirty, forty and some even fifty feet in circumference. They grew amongst a number of younger trees. Because they did not have a good saw log they escaped the clear cuttings of the early 1900’s.

It was cold and still with blue skies and the reflections of the trees on the clear water made good photos.  Wood ducks flushed ahead of us as we paddled quietly. Great Blue herons squawked as they launched into flight from the treetops. Schools of pan fish scurried ahead. No turtles or alligators showed their face on this winter day, but signs of raccoons and otters were on every floating log.  Occasionally breaking into the sounds of nature we could hear the hum of big tugs pushing barges on the Mississippi or a four-wheeler carrying a deer hunter to his stand. But mainly it was quiet, peaceful and fantastically beautiful.  A boat, water and big trees…what more could I want?

Press Release: Eagle Expo Photo Workshop 2011

PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release

Put your digital camera to work in wildlife photography with CC Lockwood.  Much has changed in nature photography in the last 30 years. CC will teach you to improve your photographs through this workshop which is in conjunction with the Morgan City Eagle Expo.

February 11, 2011- 9 am LECTURE: CC will lecture on the techniques for bird and landscape photography with emphasis on digital photography.

February 11, 2011-Noon: Field trip with Black Guidry via a boat trip to an eagle nest to photograph Bald Eagles, other wildlife and landscapes.

This workshop is open to photographers at all levels of expertise as well as non-photographers, but space is limited so reserve your spot early.

More details on signing up can be found HERE

About CC Lockwood:

Wildlife photographer C.C. Lockwood has lived and worked in fragile ecosystems whose preservation shapes his artistry. Through words and images, he has captured the unique sense of space in wild places as diverse as Louisiana swampland and the rugged backcountry of the American West. His work has earned him international acclaim as an environmental artist, including the Sierra Club's Ansel Adams Award for conservation photography. Lockwood's work continues to reflect changes and perils in the natural world.

Contact:

Amy Shutt, public relations

Cactus Clyde Productions

Ph: 225.769.4766

www.cclockwood.com