Landscape Photography
There are not many buildings like this around any longer. And yet here we have two, almost in sight of each other. I have seen a few others, but they were in colder climates.
This was a temporary place to hold the remains of the recently deceased. Buildings like this were important in areas where the ground was frozen.
Another ‘found on a walk’ series.
Behind this Heron is a huge marsh, salt and tidal. When low tide a good spot for them to hunt. Crossing over the dike, like here, goes to a fresh water marshland.
A dirt road runs along the dike top here and is a small highway for the birds and Alligators. Each side is lined with ‘gator trails’ going up and down the sides.
Woods can be seen at the end of this curve. With the different types of environment all meeting here there is any number of animals around.
People always ask about the Alligators out here. Depending on who am I talking to it’s good to mention the things you don’t see, not the obvious Alligators.
Now this one is easy to spot going across the water. However once he reaches the other side in the reeds he is invisible.
It’s very quick and easy for this snake to go by water from one marsh grass stand to another. This is an open canal, maybe 40 yards (37 meters). Click above for details.
I was interested since we walk the dike, and reeds, where this guy was heading.
From what I can tell it was OK. The eyes make me think it is a Brown Water Snake, not a Cottonmouth.
Snake size is maybe 5 feet (1.5 meters), mid sized.
Taken in Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston.
The clear lines and design of a cemetery is missing here. Area are still marked for boundaries, but they are stone edges, walls, or old wrought iron.
I find this to be much more peaceful than line upon line of uniform graves.
A little research and I found this statue has a name ‘Little German Boy’. Considering the time frame of the headstones, places of birth, it fits.
The Bethany Cemetery was created when the old Lutheran one in Charleston suddenly was full due to a yellow fever epidemic.
Later on the actual site of the first cemetery was lost. In the 1930’s the church land was sold off in lots, fast forward to 1981 and graves were found during excavation. Later on 437 graves were relocated to Bethany.
This Tricolor is one of the first things I saw in the morning.
The bird is sitting on a wooden ‘trunk’, a very old method of moving water between marshes. They were first built by enslaved West Africans who used them in their homelands. Most today are the exact same style, a few metal, but most wood.
I walked by the Heron and he stayed there after I was long past. Light was getting better but the air is very warm and wet it still gives a haze long after the sun is up.
Note; the photographs here are finished with a matte type look. Because of the very humid haze the raw images already looked to be matte, so I went with it.
The skyline.
I must be paying a little more attention lately. Most likely I blunder past many of these beauties while staring up in the air.
This is the shot Ellen finds much more often than me.
