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09/20/2026

The September issue of National Geographic follows one of the great migrations along the southeastern coast: millions of striped mullet moving from the Carolinas down the Florida coast toward their fall spawning grounds.

Written by Boyce Upholt, the story explores the important role these fish play in the food web of the Everglades and coastal ecosystems. Photographing them meant spending a lot of time in the water, trying to keep up with schools moving like a single frantic organism. More than a few times, the combination of thousands of flashing fish, breaking waves and nauseating swell scrambled my brain and I ended up chumming the water myself.

Huge thanks to my editor Anne Farrar for bringing this story to National Geographic readers and to the The Everglades Foundation for supporting the coverage. And thank you to my captains capt_brianesposito and Capt. Jon-Paul Haydocy, and the pilots at HMC Helicopter Services 🚁, for helping put me in the right place at the right time.

Like some kind of southern Eden, North Carolina’s Black River stands apart with its white sands, tannic water and ancien...
09/19/2026

Like some kind of southern Eden, North Carolina’s Black River stands apart with its white sands, tannic water and ancient groves. Shaped by millennia of violent storms, fire, floods and drought, these trees are the ultimate survivors. Where their crowns were blown off by high winds and hollowed by decay from the inside, they continue to grow and thrive. It’s speculated that their elegant senescence is actually what saved them—they were too old and gnarled to be worth logging. Although many of these trees are hollow and impossible to age, several with intact piths were dated to be over 2,000 years by Dr Dave Stahle from the University of Arkansas, making it the oldest swamp on the planet and now protected by The Nature Conservancy in NC.
Image excerpt from my new book CYPRESS: The Last Old Growth Swamps.

Thank you to all of you who placed an order for CYPRESS, I’m blown away! 🙏🙏🙏 I’ll get to signing and shipping as soon as...
09/17/2026

Thank you to all of you who placed an order for CYPRESS, I’m blown away! 🙏🙏🙏 I’ll get to signing and shipping as soon as I can.
One of the best parts of working on a project like this is getting to nerd out over all the small stories that make these old-growth forests unique. One of those features is what’s called a “tip-up mound.”

Tip-up mounds form when trees are uprooted, leaving behind a pit where the root ball once was and a mound of exposed soil that slowly settles and decomposes over time. What’s really interesting is that foresters looking to replicate the complexity of mature forests are now intentionally pushing over trees to create this same kind of habitat. Old-growth forests teach us so much.

At beidlerforest, tip-up mounds are also important foraging grounds for nine-banded armadillos, which root through the loose soil in search of grubs, larvae and other invertebrates. I love armadillos, so this relationship gave me a good excuse to try to light up their nocturnal world, though sometimes the weather got the best of my equipment.

One strobe and trigger lost to the rain was worth getting that backlight to pop through the hole beneath the fallen tree, I think. Here are a few pics of the various setups I tried.

I’m very excited to share my new book, CYPRESS: The Last Old-Growth Swamps, nearly ten years in the making.Across 216 pa...
09/16/2026

I’m very excited to share my new book, CYPRESS: The Last Old-Growth Swamps, nearly ten years in the making.

Across 216 pages and 144 photographs, published by , the book takes readers into four of my favorite places on the planet—ancient cypress forests that have survived centuries of logging, development, and change. Through photographs and essays, CYPRESS explores these remarkable places, the wildlife and people connected to them, and the extraordinary stories that unfold beneath their canopies.

Photographing these forests over the last decade has been one of my greatest joys and has brought me closer to a family of passionate people working to protect and steward their future.

I can’t wait to finally share this work with you. You can purchase signed copies from my website or get them wherever books are sold.

Layout and design by the talented

Here’s a wild thing to think about. Of the estimated 40,000,000 acres of virgin cypress forests that used to dominate th...
09/14/2026

Here’s a wild thing to think about. Of the estimated 40,000,000 acres of virgin cypress forests that used to dominate the blackwater arteries, lakes and floodplains of the southeastern US, all but roughly 10,000 acres were industrially logged by the mid-20th century. Ten thousand out of 40 million is less than one tenth of one percent (0.1%). That’s what’s left of the old southern swamps. It kills me to think how the Mobile Basin, Atchafalaya, Mississippi Delta, Great Dismal, Okefenokee, Big Cypress and Winyah Basin once looked. We don’t have much to draw on, but what we do have is incredible, rare and inspiring. The pockets of old growth cypress forests that remain are because of extraordinary philanthropy, heroic conservation vision and a shared view that these ecosystems are worth far more than just board feet of lumber. For the last ten years, I’ve been trying to uncover and reveal some of the magic that four of these ancient stands hold: Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Congaree NPS , beidlerforest and Black River, NC managed by The Nature Conservancy in NC

I had no idea that Alabama was going to take my breath away so thoroughly until Wes Overvold and I traversed the state f...
09/04/2026

I had no idea that Alabama was going to take my breath away so thoroughly until Wes Overvold and I traversed the state for The Nature Conservancy magazine. If you’ve been around me for at least 15 minutes in the last year, you already know this, because I won’t shut up about it.

Alabama was a true surprise. Given my childhood home and allegiance to the Gators, it’s a big hurdle to say anything nice about the birthplace of agony for so many other SEC teams. But over the course of two weeks, I shot 26,000 photos and came away with a completely new appreciation for this small state and the astonishing amount of life packed within its borders.

We photographed it underwater, from planes, in caves, on Class IV rapids, and among bogs, swamps, forests, and islands. Everywhere we went, the landscape seemed to change—and with it, the species that called it home.

Alabama reinforced a lesson I keep learning over and over again: the South is unrivaled in its complexity, beauty, and biological importance. Some of the most extraordinary places are the ones we think we already know.

Cypress domes are fascinating landscapes, especially in the Everglades. National Geographic August issue takes readers i...
08/24/2026

Cypress domes are fascinating landscapes, especially in the Everglades. National Geographic August issue takes readers into their unique ecology and unravels the many facets that have intrigued me for over a decade. From the air, they appear like little volcanoes, their parabolic shape hollowing out in the center where constant water and some industrious alligators have prevented trees from growing. These depressions maintain water, providing gators, fish and wading birds a last refuge to survive the dry season, which is when I love to explore. What’s really interesting is how these contained forests are formed. Since cypress trees are deciduous, their leaves fall into standing water each autumn, where they slowly decompose, creating carbonic acid that erodes the limestone below. Over time, this deepens the depression and creates more substrate for roots, allowing larger trees to grow toward the center of the dome. In essence, they are creating themselves. 🤯

08/22/2026

August issue of National Geographic explores one of my favorite landscapes in the south: cypress domes. Written by Michael Adno, Mystery Forests of the Marshlands takes you into these beautiful, enigmatic and always surprising micro-forests. Special thanks to the extraordinary Anne Farrar for bringing this story to life 🙌 and to my good friends Garl's Coastal Kayaking Benji Studt and Mark Parry, without whom many of these photos and experiences simply wouldn’t exist. Long live the Glades!

Best job I’ve ever had. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there doing their best and to Hannah Stone for hiring me ...
06/21/2026

Best job I’ve ever had. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there doing their best and to Hannah Stone for hiring me 😘

06/08/2026

When I’m in the field and away from my kiddos, I try to bring them along virtually so I never feel too far away. They receive daily videos, which they call “Daddy Shows.” I love it because it keeps home a constant part of my mission and they love it because they see and learn all manner of fun things (mostly about snakes and alligators 😂).
I talk all the time about fawns left scattered around the swamp in the spring and I think most people feel I’m exaggerating, but it’s true. I almost step on them I see them so often. While out with reporter in , we stumbled on this one. Enjoy the daddy show!

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