Description
LOCATION: Lauderdale by the Sea, Florida, USA
STORY BEHIND THE SHOT: As a wildlife photographer, it’s my responsibility to resist thinking of wildlife as “pets”, but sometimes it can be awfully tempting. During the COVID summer of 2020, I spent a lot more time with the local turtles in my backyard, and while getting to know each of their personalities, and their willingness to be a model, I was relying on their physical differences to tell them apart from a distance. That made me break my rule of not naming wildlife, by coming up with descriptive names like “Fibi-Notch-y”, “Old Faithful”, and pictured here in Aurora is “Barnacle Bob”. With local beaches mostly devoid of swimmers & boats during the lockdown months, there were actually tons more turtles living happily right at the water’s edge – at times, so many that it was tough to tell them apart without these silly names!
While I shot the “good models” in countless positions over countless days, on this one particular day, the dancing light ripples in the clear shallow water made for a visual texture that reminded me of the aurora borealis, the likes of which I see underwater only once in a blue moon. The simple geometry of the sand ripples overlaid with the complex and highly dynamic movement of the dancing light made a pattern that blew my mind, as nature’s art once again superseded my wildest dreams.
And turtle lovers rejoice! There’s plenty of other turtle images between the SeaScapes and Fish Faces Collections, but Against All Odds and Best Day Ever are two that were also shot right in my backyard of Lauderdale by the Sea!
TO PURCHASE AURORA AS A FINE ART PRINT ON ALUMINUM: While we normally display Aurora in it’s original 3:2 vertical ratio, its actually quite flexible to be cropped into different shapes. We’ve printed it for clients as a square, and even cropped into a horizontal, so feel free to ask about any customization that works for your wall space. You can get it here online in several vertical sizes, but contact our interior design team for assistance with custom crops & sizes up to 200″ tall.