Photographing the Basin

“Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.”
– Ansel Adams
Doug Hansgate was not long returned from a chilly, foggy, dam kayak trip into the Atchafalaya Basin that morning.
By 4:30 a.m., he and three students had set out from The Fairfax House Historic Inn in Franklin and were on the water exploring the “hidden treasure” that stretches across the center of southern Louisiana to the Gulf of Mexico.
He was introduced to the Atchafalaya Basin by locals such as C.C. Lockwood and Steve Uffman. They were interested in holding a photography workshop in and about the Atchafalaya Basin.
“It’s kind of such a hidden treasure, from my perspective, that there’s not many photographers that know about it,” Doug said. “I got more and more involved, and now I’m running the workshop, two weeks in the fall we’re down here” for six-day workshops.
Doug said he has met local people that show him and his students the sights within the basin. “It’s an outstanding photographic opportunity, and a chance for people outside of Louisiana to get to see the beauty of the swamps, and for us to come together, improve our photographic skill set.”
Out at 4:30 a.m., waiting for the sunrise, and later in the day, they’re out again. “We really cover a lot of the waters in the basin,” he said.
Doug has been shooting professionally for 40 years. But it’s his students’ impressions of the basin that he wanted to share.
Kate Stankey, of New York, experienced her first voyage into the swamp here.
“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced,” she said. “Other-worldly. It was unbelievable from the first day, something that’s almost indescribable to someone.”
Kate saw her first alligator in the basin this week, but she centered on the “pureness of (the basin). It’s reassuring that there’s still this available in our universe that is so pure and untouched.”
Doug added, “Even this morning in the basin, with the cold and the wind over in Lake Martin where we were…it’s the diversity of wildlife. We’re seeing cormorants, flights of ibis go by, we’re seeing ducks up there, then the egrets are up, we saw spoonbills, night herons. The diversity is incredible and it’s just so full of life that most people wouldn’t think.”
The colors of the basin in fall, the reddening of the cypress needles, the brilliant sunsets…they are a photographers’ wonderland.
Maryjean Wall, Lexington, Kentucky, said she’s visited many cypress swamps in the United States, and “they have a common thing about them, which I notice here also: It’s the peacefulness. Being close to God. Floating through there, it’s like nothing from the outside world can touch you, and that means a lot. People don’t realize how beautiful it is, they think, ‘Oh, swamp witch!’ It’s just you, the animals, the birds, the trees and water. It’s a treasure that most of the world could not even fathom if you told them about, and they wouldn’t want to be there because they’d be afraid of being eaten or getting dirty. It’s an escape from the modern world.”
Kate’s first experience with an alligator that morning somewhat rattled her. When Doug asked about its size, she said it was bigger than she wanted it to be.
“I’m a gator novice,” she said.
Hailing from Concord, Massachusetts, Jonathan Sachs said he came to this part of the world about 15 years ago for the first time on another photography trip.
“It really impressed me at the time,” Jonathan said. “I have wanted to come back for a while.”
He said seeing the basin from a kayak offers a “great perspective. You’re lower down and you go at your own pace. It’s been a great opportunity. The swamps…there’s just a sort of timelessness about it. It’s so different from New England—it’s flat then it’s hilly, there’s water, then it’s dry. The impact is really strong because of the difference.”
We, as residents of our given locale, often grow blind to our environs; conversely, first-time and repeat visitors see the landscape and the wildlife with a perspective natives may have lost, grown immune to.
Doug concurs. “I live about 12 miles from Niagara Falls. Six and a half million people come there to see Niagara Falls. I don’t think anything of it. But I ran a convention there, I had 600 photographers from around the country, and they were just unbelievable. I brought CC Lockwood as a speaker to my convention, and he and his wife were just blown away by the falls. I’m like, ‘It’s just the falls. Water goes over it, falls down.’ I can understand how people locally do not really notice the beauty they have.”
The photographers’ eyes and lenses not only captured the lush waterscape of the basin, but also the City of Franklin itself. “Just going down the streets here, with the light bulbs and the moss, and we spent one evening out here with my last group photographing the street scenes and some of the mansions.”
Maryjean, who comes from the heart of race horse country in Kentucky, says she sees that homeland of hers every day but “when I hear the reactions of people who come there for the first time, they’re dying over this, they’re so thrilled to see it. Yes, we do get a little immune to our environs, though we might still appreciate them we don’t see them through the same eyes after many years.”
Such ruminations aside, the trip is still about photography. A technical venture of shutter speeds, apertures, ISO, depth of field and so much more, especially in this era of digital cameras.
But it is also an expression of creativity.
“It’s a creative outlet,” Jonathan said. “It’s an art form, like painting. There’s a lot of enjoyment just in creating some image that’s aesthetic.”
There’s unique, personal expression in the click of each shutter, too. “Everybody’s photos are totally difference,” he said, and his co-students agreed, saying the act of photography can be spiritual and emotional.
Doug flipped through photos on a laptop, thrown to a projector and then a screen. “To me it is about being able to express that emotion that I as a photographer sensed at the time and be able to put it off to the viewer. The swamp in early morning, with that mist and fog as the sun is rising…most people would have a lot of fear and trepidation about that. My effort is to try to portray the swamp as I felt and as I saw but also bring it to people that are never going to have that opportunity, to spread that information around.”
From his perspective, he and his students are trying to create things that allow people to experience something they may never experience, and that yet other people need to know still exist. “My imagery is what I do to help that happen,” he said. “As far as the teaching goes, I’m hoping to leave a legacy of images and provide students with the knowledge and the ability to create images that are going to allow them to excel and become better and better at their skill and artistic vision. It’s a passion of mine and it’s something I work pretty hard at.”
These students are indeed learning under his tutelage, yet they have garnered experiences of their own, photographing polar bears in Alaska, in France photographing horses.
“What’s important to me is that the Atchafalaya becomes part of that,” Doug said
Maryjean has been shooting six or seven years on digital. “I had to abandon an early photography interest because film was so expensive,” she said. “After I retired, and digital was here by then, I just started learning it, and it was like a whole new desire to make photos just welled up again.”
Kate said the digital revolution is something “you just have to embrace it and run with it.”
“I’ve been doing photography pretty seriously for 25 or 30 years,” Jonathan said, and it’s always a learning experience.
Doug thanked the community here in Franklin and around the Acadiana area.
“Everybody is just very open and friendly and sociable,” he said. “Everybody from the restaurants that we’ve been to, and car washes, got to meet some of the locals who showed up places to go. I appreciate that the community is that friend. I have not had one bad experience at all.”