Redlights and Redeyes

When I get a gig for The New York Times Travel section, it is usually something that lends itself to photos.  Tropical locations, amazing homes, and plenty of tourists to serve as my compositional elements.  This one was a bit tougher, but really fascinating for me as a curious soul.  I love Florida, even with all of its head-shaking quirks.

The writer was following in the footsteps of African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston and her travels through Central Florida.  Take away Orlando and Disney, and the center of our state is completely different of what you think about when you hear the name Florida.  Completely devoid of any towering condos and sun-burned tourists, Central Florida is for lack of a better word – backwoods.  Full of failed orange groves, cattle, and polka dotted by one-stoplight towns, it is by far one of my favorite places to explore.

Minus the wild hogs.

I ran over a huge on in the middle of the night crossing the state, ripping of the entire front end of my car.  You tell someone that in the coast, they gasp, and fret over my VW’s damaged exterior.  You tell someone in Central Florida that you hit a hog, the first question is “Did you keep it?”  Seriously.  Good eating apparently.

Alas, I digress. Needless to say the footsteps of Zora were pretty far apart taking me from Eatonville (one of the nation’s first black incorporated towns) to Sanford to Ft. Pierce and back again – twice.  Most of the landmarks were full of history – her home, segregated cemeteries, landscapes – but less-full of people.  Essentially, I would find a place and would have to wait days for someone to walk through.  I took it as a challenge and ran with it.  I even broke out a Diana and shot a whole toy camera series with it, but in the end the color from these places took control over any gimmick I could have come up with.

In the end, they’re snapshots of places where things use to happen – places people like to write about.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 14th, 2010 at 7:56 am and is filed under The New York Times, photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.