Last month in Florida, the amazing Karine Aigner joined forces with local biologist and University of Florida graduate student Alli Smith, for our July photography workshop. They took a group of ten girls out in the breath-taking Corkscrew Swamp, a National Audubon Society sanctuary located in southwest Florida; just North of Naples. Girls Who Click awarded two scholarships for the workshop. These girls were able to use professional cameras provided by Borrowed Lenses.
Karine Aigner starts her workshops discussing composition, light, and focus — but the real work, she says, is “learning to see.” She wants her students to look past their initial gut observation. It’s not just looking at a flower: it’s noticing what is on it, around it, in it; seeing it as a part of the landscape, or, individually, or in terms of the pattern and designs of its shape. The farther the group progressed into Corkscrew Swamp, the more they saw.
Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary occupies approximately 13,000 acres in the heart of the Corkscrew Watershed in Southwest Florida, part of the Western Everglades. It is primarily composed of wetlands. These include the largest remaining virgin bald cypress forest in the world (approximately 700 acres), which is the site of the largest nesting colony of Federally Endangered Wood Storks in the nation. In addition to the Wood Stork, Corkscrew provides important habitat for numerous other Federal and State listed species, including the Florida Panther, American Alligator, Gopher Tortoise, Florida Sandhill Crane, Limpkin, Roseate Spoonbill, Snowy Egret, Tricolored Heron, White Ibis, Big Cypress Fox Squirrel and the Florida Black Bear. Several rare plants are also found here, most notably the Ghost Orchid.
The girls not only got to experience the watershed up-close-and-personal by walking the wooden boardwalks through it, but they also got to see the Ghost Orchid, as well as some of the wildlife it’s known for! They spotted alligators and otters, and even survived a short Floridian squall that lent itself to some amazing shots with water droplets. At one point, an over-habituated and over-friendly juvenile ibis approached the group looking for food (see above). Karine and Alli took the opportunity to explain that while it is a fun experience to have a wild animal approach you (and in this case gnaw on your fanny pack) a tame ibis is not a good thing. While it seems fun, the ibis has learned that it’s easy to get food out of humans, but most human food is not nutritionally valuable to the bird. Some parts of Florida have problems with people feeding ibises so much bread that they essentially don’t eat anything else—and they’re in very poor body condition because of it; bread is not nutritious.