Almost exactly 18 years ago I made the image above. It seems like a few months ago! For those who like the “chatter” it was at ISO 100 f5 at a 60th sec, with a Canon EOS 20D. Why I went on to spend literally thousands on not one but three successive full frame SLR’s with multiple Canon L series lenses eludes me at this point! Any sensible photographer would have kept going with the 20D until it fell apart and embarked on a round-the-world tour instead! However work, life, family, and sometimes just a lack of effort get in the way of such adventures. That said, this image was made 7,000Km from home! What was once Cypress Gardens in Florida, back in the day when there was a butterfly house!
On my first visit to the gardens, there was a modest car park, one strolled over to the entrance purchsed a modest ticket, went in and wondered around the Cypress Knees, had a coffee, maybe made a photo of the “Southern Belles”. On my next visit, the car park had been moved further away and what was once the car park had a roller coaster sat on it. Mind you it was a good ride! This image was made on that 2nd visit.
A few years later I was hoping to make a third visit, that was until I was told to buy the tickets before heading there – that sounded worrying. I did a bit of research to find that Cypress Gardens, as was, had been consumed by Lego Land! Where once was topiary was now “Masters of Flight” ride, where once a cypress tree with Spanish moss now “Benny’s Play Shop” and where I once sat and had a coffee under a tree now “Taco Everyday”. At least the “Florida Pool” where Jane Russell once filmed one of her famout aquatic sequences is still there – although now overlooked by the Lego Wave Pool and the “Joker Soaker”! I never did buy a that third ticket!
Things move on and times change, in my opinion even the “Disney Experience” is not what it once was. Things do change but then so do we. If I’m honest when I was 20 would I have been more interested in a fast ride than a quiet cup of coffee amongst the trees – maybe so?
S.H.O.U.T. 