last week was the harvest moon, and the tides were perfect for an evening paddle into my favorite spot at caw caw swamp. i met my buddy brad at 930, about an hour before high tide, at the put in. we got on the water right away, and we were quickly heading into the swamp. the night was perfect - no wind at all - which allowed for a glassy surface on the water, and resulted in amazing reflections of the grass, trees and night sky. i was able to get a pretty good time-lapse of the trip, as well as a few photos of the trees, painted with light. this place is pretty amazing, and i hadn't yet paddled the complete loop in the dark yet, which i was quite excited to experience. we got to see a lot of egrets and herons in the distance, but most of them were scared off by the sound of my shutter, firing every five seconds, so we never got very close to them. the time-lapse was shot at the highest iso my camera could handle, which is why the images are so degraded, but it still gets the point across. i was also able to capture a few good images of some of the dead trees that are scattered through out the swamp. these images were six second exposures - shot from the tripod head mounted to my kayak - while i was in the boat, and it was still in the water. i was quite surprised at how still i could stay by running the boat into some saw grass and bracing with my knees. brad helped me out by going off to my right and using his flashlight to paint the trees and give the images that sweet lighting that i was hoping to achieve. if you look close at the top of the tree in the first still image, you will see a nest. this is an osprey nest, and we were really hoping one of the birds would be in the nest, but it seems they weren't home that evening. we finished up our trip as the tide began to quickly drain out of the swamp, around 1 in the morning. it was long night, but well worth it. check out the video and images in the gallery for a better look.
caw caw harvest moon paddle time-lapse
