"Welcome to the Low Country"
Salvaging our road trip with a few days in South Carolina, plus last call for Art Drop #10.
The most difficult part of going on a road trip is knowing that at some point you have to drive home. We had the benefit of knowing our friend Colin Czerwinski was in South Carolina and that gave us the opportunity to both break up our drive and take us on a different route home from Florida.
Taking some truly beautiful roads through Georgia we eventually joined up with the interstate near the coast and made our way around Savannah into the southern tip of South Carolina, Colin’s neck of the woods when he’s not in New Jersey. Once we settled into our accommodation on Hilton Head Island he sent over a text welcoming us to the “low country” and we made plans to see him over the weekend.
The next day we learned about the area’s history and ecology at the Coastal Discovery Museum and then went to Fish Haul Beach Park. We timed our arrival there to coincide with low tide so that Diana and our daughter could look for shark tooth fossils while I worked on some photographs. As I stood watching them a loud flapping sound caught my attention behind me. I turned around to see a bald eagle scavenging on the beach probably 50ft away from me. It was a memorable welcome to the area. The exposed beach and mud stretched into the distance and I could see there were more bald eagles out there too. It was a very different view to the Gulf of Mexico, and already we knew it was worth stopping here.
The real highlight for us was visiting Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge on day two. We had planned to be there early the next morning, but the teething pain that we detailed in our last post continued and really impacted not only our daughter’s sleep but ours too, so after a bad night we had to start late and miss the beautiful morning light.
With no other choice but to make the best of it and shoot anyway, we joined Colin at Pinckney as soon as we were able to and enjoyed the exotic landscape (to our eyes) of live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, an undergrowth of palmettos and a thriving salt marsh habitat teeming with wildlife. My only request that day was to see an alligator, as we definitely don’t have those roaming around northern England (where I’m originally from) or even here in New Jersey. Unfortunately, there were no good sightings to be had – just a young alligator mostly submerged in a pond, so my quest goes on. I was thrilled though to have a close encounter with another creature far less dangerous, which you can read about at the foot of this post.
Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge is quite large and doing justice to the whole site needs time and probably a bicycle. But in the few hours I had there I was able to appreciate the amazing biodiversity and landscape, and the changeability of the light with regards to photography. It’s flat and exposed, and just in my brief visit I experienced how quiet and calm it can be one minute, before becoming overcast with strong winds the next.
Below are some of my photographs from that day.
As you may notice, I enjoyed looking at the gentle curves and natural compositions that presented themselves in and around the marshes and ponds.
I hope to return to Pinckney Island one day – it was evident how much potential exists there for photography through the seasons and in different lighting conditions – but as a first taste this was a lot of fun and we are grateful to Colin for the introduction. You might also enjoy Colin’s perspective of the same photowalk.
LAST CALL FOR ART DROP #10
Our latest art drop features two photographs from Diana’s evening under a waxing gibbous moon at Rosemary Beach, Florida. We have prints available of Moonlit Gulf and Color Field Gulf until midnight on March 7, 2024, after which these works will be unavailable for twelve months.
To read more about the paper, sizes, and pricing click the button below to visit the art drop page on our website.
So that’s what we have to show for our long haul to Florida, South Carolina and back. We now look ahead to Art Drop #11 coming your way on April 1, with perhaps an update of sorts to come between now and then.
Bye for now,
We learned at the Coastal Discovery Museum that armadillos were native to this area but my assumption was they were probably shy and reclusive creatures that I would have no chance of seeing. At Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge, Colin and I were walking along when we heard some rustling in the shrubs at the edge of a pond. An armadillo came into view, snuffling around using its snout as an effective digging tool. We watched it for quite a while and it came incredibly close to us, either unaware of our presence or just not caring we were there. Later we passed an open area where another two armadillos were foraging. These two were much more skittish, but to go from zero armadillo sightings to three within an hour was something I had not been expecting that day!
Beautiful photos. Looks like a wonderful trip!
My son loves The Coastal Discovery Museum. When he was little we used to go out on the pier during low tide to watch the crabs. Thanks for the tour!