The Charleston harbor blockade by Union Navy started in 1861 and was ended 1865.
There were multiple blockade runners attempting to move goods through the harbor over the length of the US Civil War. In addition both sides introduced iron clad war ships, the Confederate Navy also had the first submarines that sank ships in battle.
The Charleston military cemetery at the old Umbra Plantation became the grave yard for the Confederate States Navy, a section included to bury any unknown sailors.
This was taken from a large marsh dike that’s runs alongside another large dike. A canal runs between them, for some reason years ago two dikes made sense.
The water was low and we could see a good sized group of Egrets and Spoonbill all around a wooden trunk. There’s no way to really hide on the dikes. Grass can be 10 feet tall, but there are gaps. The shot below was from one of the openings.
At first I didn’t notice that long tail right in the middle of the lower group. The Alligator was around 9 feet long, just hanging out with birds
As expected we couldn’t walk past the group without them taking off.
In the image below you can see both sides of the wooden trunk, the gates upright. That’s how the trunk system works. Gates are on both sides of the dike, water flows through the wooden ‘pipe’ running through the dike itself. There are thousands of these trunks scattered across the Lowcountry ACE Basin controlling water levels through over the 350,000 acres here.
Bear Island, South Carolina.
I moved external drives around today, it’s much too hot outside so time for inside chores. I have a much smaller catalogue of photos on my drives now.
I went through folders checking everything worked and decided to find some early spring landscape images never published. Landscapes are usually good candidates for DxO Filmpack.
Below is a photograph finished with an old Kodak 35mm film stock. A Great Egret flying low over a rookery.
Best viewed large.
Take out color and the photograph becomes completely different. And a lot of fun too.
I do think it’s important to like post processing (developing) your photographs though. Just shooting monochrome helps me get started, seeing the image, but that creates flat jpg’s I feel.
Both photographs here were finished using a combination of Lightroom and DxO Silver Efex. Cropping and basic adjustments were first done in Lightroom. The images are completed in Silver Efex. Currently I use version 8 of Silver Efex, I will update to 9 soon. I like to wait a little while in case there are issues with the initial release. The last several versions have added many advanced editing features, the new one includes filters. If I just shot B&W and was new to editing a much simpler editing software, not Adobe would probably work just fine.
ACE Basin, South Carolina.
When forest wetlands, or swamp trees, suddenly die off what’s left are the bones of a ‘Ghost Forest’.
It’s a haunting scene that can be acres and acres of bones stretching to the sky. The usual culprit is salt water.
Under ground aquifers can be miles long, connected to other aquifers, and slowly be drained empty. There are two main reasons they empty, over development and now Data Centers. Both use a tremendous amount of water.
Those empty pockets can be filled by creeping salt water from rising tides, like here in the Lowcountry. Water seeks the lowest spot, and goes where it wants.
Below is a Stork high up in the bones of a Ghost Forest. Salt from the St. Helena Sound, ACE Basin slipped in here. This was a healthy swamp 5 years go. There are plenty of other places just like this.
Best viewed large.
Same swamp, same day, different water.
A good steady wind on the waters surface gently pushes the Duck Weed along. If you look close under the ramp you can see ripples on the surface.
The Alligator below couldn’t escape the weed completely though.
Poking around looking for little Tree Frogs, maybe an Anole. Instead a bright yellow Iris (?) was right there.
These were photographed at ‘Soldiers Ground’ a few days after Memorial Day.
There was just enough breeze for flags to slow move giving different looks as they unfurled. Basically shoot many images and decide which to keep later.
Because this is on land owned by a historical trust there are no restrictions on what flags can be flown. During the US Civil War there were a large number of different flags. Even the brief country of South Carolina. This makes for interesting colorful images.
Photographed using OM-1 mk2, OM 12-100 f4, Lightroom, DxO Filmpack, DxO Color Efex.
