Photography assists my seeing, remembering and understanding, but in pursuit of the most visually captivating photographs I sometimes miss the basic truths in the landscape. I’ve photographed the swamps and bayous of the Atchafalaya Basin since 2014 with a desire to capture the cypress trees.

Marty laughed when I told him what I wanted to do. It was the summer of 1998, and we were four years out of high school riding one of those casino-to-casino buses through Las Vegas. Marty was celebrating his college graduation; I wasn’t. After dropping out my sophomore year, I was still trying to figure out what to do with my life.

My neck snapped back as the impact thrust us forward. The force accelerated my van, and we started to spin. My feet pressed into the floorboards as the second impact struck with the sound of crushing sheet metal.

Imagine exploring a 10,000 acre lake by boat on two nights, two years apart--once in winter, once in summer. How likely is it that you will unintentionally photograph the same trees both times?

Sitting on the edge of the boat with my legs dangling in the water, I flipped on my flashlight. The red crescent eyes of one, two...14 gators glimmered as they skimmed across the dark waters of the swamp. This was no time to hesitate.

During college, I worked as a restaurant server in the French Quarter, regularly using the St. Charles Avenue streetcar to commute from Tulane’s uptown campus. St. Charles is an iconic New Orleans street, because of the streetcar and because the avenue is a presentation of architecture, family history, and wealth.

After four days and nights in the summer swamp heat, I had yet to make a photograph worth bringing home. Due to the historic floods throughout the Mississippi River Valley, lakes and bayous throughout Louisiana were flooding and high winds moved through the night.

My assistant Matt and I launched my little flat boat loaded with photo and lighting equipment at the landing off old Highway 51 in Manchac. It was an early February evening, the air was brisk with a winter storm brewing on the nearby New Orleans horizon.

Early in my career a seasoned photographer offered the following advice, ‘If you’re going to speak visually, use visual language. Don’t use written language to speak visually.’

By Ash Wednesday morning at 4am, everything was cleared away. The neutral ground was raked clean of beads. No ladders held their spaces. In the silence, voices and parade brass echoed. Memory hung in the trees along St. Charles like beads.

“Avoca” was taken in Pierre Part, Louisiana – a Caribbean-esque bayou town. I found this houseboat in the Avoca Canal, but the name is also a nod to the avocado green of the houseboat’s exterior.

During the winter of 2016, the Mississippi River reached flood stage, and the Bonne Carre spillway was opened to prevent flooding in New Orleans. Levees were overtopped throughout the Mississippi River Valley.