Cover photo from "Crescent Rivers," by photographer Todd Bertolaet.
In the early 90s I was lucky enough to get Todd as my professor for a couple semesters of photojournalism at Florida A&M University. I ran into him and his wife again last year at a local First Friday gallery hop; I was there hitting up local artists for an art auction AIDS fundraiser I was working on. Todd agreed to donate a photo and a copy of his book for the auction...and then he reminded me of the time he made me "rap" about a photographic homework assignment I was turning in late. (It's no reflection on his teaching that I was a lousy photographer.)
For a few years I lived away from Tallahassee in the Arkansas Ozarks. Though I loved the mountains, I never got over missing north Florida. A sufferer of chronic insomnia, I'd lie awake at night flipping through images in my mind of the rivers and marshes. When I saw Todd's book, I realized that those were the images I'd lulled myself to sleep with 10 years before.
North Florida has a rich endowment of beauty, and of talented, kind, and generous people who are the source of my hope that we can preserve the region's other resources.