Walk down to the bottom of the hill and take a left when your reach the lake. Pass the lighthouse, you're almost there.
See that outcropping of land in Lake Dora? That, my friend, is eight acres of Wonderland.
Welcome to Palm Island. My Research & Development Lab, Art Studio, and Muse for two decades. It's easy to get there. Walk along the shore towards the boardwalk meandering along the shoreline over impassible swamp.
By the way, please consider not trying to wade or swim there.
Much like the more popular tourist attractions of Florida where you should keep your hands inside the ride car at all times, for your first time out, might want to stay on the board walk.
Here we are at the entrance.
Across the water on the other end of this boardwalk is where the adventure begins.
Welcome to the land that time forgot.
Through the years I have taken hundreds of walks down it's twisting and winding paths walking the same 8 acres over and over. Every new roll of film I wanted to try out, every camera and every lens I bought. This is where I experimented with them and figured out how they worked.
From black and white Fomapan 100 film trying to depict the Florida Swampland trying to swallow all that Parks and Recreation had built...
...to using a cold war era Russian camera called the Fed 2 where I played with soft focus and bokeh to try to depict it as a magical wonderland.
When I wanted a completely different type of portrait of my eldest goddaughter, I knew exactly where to go.
There are many photos that got away. There was this pair of dead trees. They always looked iconic to me but I could never quite capture the feeling I felt looking at them in person with my cameras and myriad varied lenses and films.
But I learned a lot from trying. Over and over. Didn't even think about it. Just pure creative play.
Most of all, I learned that the best photographers for any given subject, are the ones next door. I did not get that for a long time. I thought you needed to travel far away or hire beautiful people to pose for you to take compelling photographs. Palm Island taught me you will never photograph well a subject you are not immersed in. You will never know the most compelling angle or capture the best light of a subject you do not spend lots and lots of time with. At least, that's what works for me.
There's no guarantee, but it helps. Oh, and like any other art, it also doesn't hurt to have strong feelings for and about the subject.
I later learned that the reason photographs for any single National Geographic story are so amazing is because a photographer on that assignment will immerse themselves for months taking on average 14,000 photographs to get the few that end up published.
Do travel and take new and wonderful photographs. Meet a stranger and ask to take a street portrait. But it may also be worth your time to photograph the everyday. There's enough next door, at your local park, or in your neighborhood to photograph for a lifetime.
See you next Sunday for another Episode of Fistful of Film.
~Morgan