"Wilderness, to me, is a spiritual necessity."

March 9, 2012 6:08 AM

"My experience reinforced my sense of dedication to use my art form of photography as an inspiration for others to work together to save nature's places of spiritual sanctuary for future generations." Clyde Butcher uses large format cameras to document the beauty of Florida. His work is simply breathtaking.

His online galleries:

Panhandle Florida • West Coast Florida • East Coast Florida • Central Florida • Everglades • Keys • South Florida

posted by quin (12 comments total)

I keep meaning to visit his gallery in Venice (a hop, skip, and a jump from where I live). That olde-timey camera of his is just, like, wow, man.
posted by Gator at 6:11 AM on March 9, 2012

How did I not know about this guy before now? Incredible stuff, thank you.
posted by cmyk at 6:17 AM on March 9, 2012

Thank you for this!
More folks besides us Floridians need to know about Clyde and his work.

Here are some videos of Clyde on YouTube that show the man and his work flow.

Enjoy!
posted by THAT William Mize at 6:23 AM on March 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

Just beautiful. Thanks for posting this.
posted by jquinby at 6:23 AM on March 9, 2012

It seems like "grizzled with white beard" is the price one pays for taking photos like Ansel Adams.

Totally worth it, in my opinion.
posted by ShutterBun at 6:46 AM on March 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh wow. That's just lovely. I may have to pick up one of his books for my brother who lives part of the year on the west coast of Fl.

Of course, the problem is that the shopping cart program on Clyde's website doesn't correctly handle email addresses with "+" in them, and also barfs on "#" in the address field. Sigh. So I'll have to go try again to buy things this time using stupid settings.

(peeve: "+" is a perfectly valid email address character and has been for DECADES. i am going to print out copies of the smtp rfc's and start using it to beating shopping cart programmers who think it's not, and also leave flaming bags of dog poop on the doorsteps of application layer firewall folks who fail to handle it (F5, I am looking at you and your ASM))
posted by rmd1023 at 6:54 AM on March 9, 2012

It seems like "grizzled with white beard" is the price one pays for taking photos like Ansel Adams.

It's like the final level of photography, where you're going out with a camera in its most elemental form. Light tight box, a lens, and a photosensitive medium.
posted by Mercaptan at 8:06 AM on March 9, 2012

Just wow.
posted by zzazazz at 8:11 AM on March 9, 2012

Wonderful! I'd like to see a couple of them in colour though. I'm a philistine.
posted by sneebler at 9:12 AM on March 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

And thus my impractical desire to own a view camera is renewed.
posted by Doleful Creature at 10:43 AM on March 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

I had the honor of photographing Clyde a while back and he gave me a tour of his darkroom. He's converted an old drive-in movie projector into a large format enlarger that has to be seen to be believed. His wet darkroom is about 12 foot wide and at least 40 feet long so he can develop his large format images.
posted by photoslob at 2:42 PM on March 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

I love visiting his little gallery in the Everglades. It's a fabulous place in which to witness the photos. The books are great, but the large scale images are really impressive. The gallery setting matters, too. Seeing whichever birds, amphibians, reptiles, and (sometimes) mammals are lurking about that day; smelling the water and the muck; listening to the life of the river of grass: it all combines to add a new level to the experience of seeing his photos. Of course, the photos are great on their own. But if you can do an Everglades tour first, then seeing the photos years later will set off little sensory triggers in your brain.
posted by theplotchickens at 6:35 PM on March 9, 2012