From Mountain waterfalls to Low Country swamps

I woke up in early March in a hotel in Anderson, South Carolina, with the assignment of helping cover the 2022 Bassmaster Class. But my mind was on the beauty of the Palmetto State.

I've been fortunate enough to travel through the state a couple of times to and from Bassmaster jobs, and that's afforded me the opportunities to create beautiful prints for my online gallery. From Cherokee Foothills waterfalls to Low Country swamps, my South Carolina Collection shows just the diversity of this state's natural treasures.

Cherokee Foothills

The Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway cuts through the northwestern corner of South Carolina, and offers a stunningly beautiful look at this mountainous region. I was driving along the scenic byway when I passed what looked like an old service.

I quickly made a U-turn and found a spot to pull off. Upon investigation, I discovered the scene actually was nothing more than a facade built by a homeowner. But, man, was it ever cool! The "service station" included old signs and license plates, and an old, classic Dodge pickup was parked in what looked like a service bay.

It was perfect!

So I set up and created a print I titled "Old Fashioned Service."

I was soon driving on, wondering what other opportunities I would find. While the drive was gorgeous, I was having trouble finding suitable scenes to add to my South Carolina Collection. So I finally pulled over and did a quick Google search for waterfalls in the area.

The result that caught my eye was tagged "Reedy Cove Falls," and it was within 40 minutes of my position. So I quickly pulled it up on my nav app and headed down backroads of the foothills.

Soon, I was shouldering my backpack to make the short hike into what turned out to be an amazing double waterfall (seen at the top of this blog).

It was challenging to set up and capture the massive cascade. In the end, I eased onto rocks that were dangerously slippery and pretty much spider-walked my way into position. I had to use my Sigma 14mm Art lens to capture the entire scene, as water roared over the waterfall and rushed past me.

Congaree National park - A treasure of LOW COUNTRY SWAMPS

While cooling my heels waiting to start coverage of a Bassmaster Elite Series event at South Carolina's Santee Cooper chain of lakes, I got restless and started looking for some natural beauty to photograph.

And then I remembered a sign I saw just up the road on the way to my lodgings: It read "Congaree National Park."

One of my photographic goals is to visit every one of the national parks in the Continental U.S., so I quickly decided to use my last free morning photographing Congaree.

It was a great decision.

Congaree National Park encompasses 26,000 acres of the most beautiful and pristine swamps in the Deep South. It's simply jaw-dropping to walk amongst the massive cypress trees towering above the earth. In fact, the national park also is known as the Land of the Giants because of the huge trees featured in the nation's largest remaining expanse of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest.

A well-maintained boardwalk meanders through the swamp, but I eased across the mushy ground to the edge of Weston Lake after spying water through the trees. It was a beautiful setting, so I created two prints featuring the swampy pond.

"On the Edge of Weston Lake" (seen above) shows the cypress trees lining the lake, while "Weston Lake at Congaree National Park" illustrates the tranquil nature of this gorgeous body of water.

After walking the loop boardwalk, I drove around to another entrance point at a kayak and canoe launch to create the gorgeous "Floating Cedar Creek."

Congaree National Park isn’t the only beautiful swamps in the South Carolina Low Country, however. Days after my visit to Congaree, I was working on Lake Marion, which is filled with amazing swamplands.

I was floating around one morning, waiting on Bassmaster Elite Series anglers to show up when the sky above the Lake Marion swamps exploded in colors during sunrise.

So I just had to created the beautiful print titled “Lake Marion Sunrise” before starting my Bassmaster work. It is just one of the prints in my gallery that capture the beauty of these Low Country wetlands.

Low-country living

The South Carolina Low Country also is packed with reminders of days gone by. As you pass through small towns dotting the region, you see old stores and formerly stately homes that harken back to a day before big-box stores and subdivisions.

Take the mark on the map known as Wateree, for instance. There’s not much left of this little town, but I one of the buildings that remain from its glory days is the old Wateree Country Store.

This business was established in 1856, and once was the lifeblood of the local community.

Today, it is boarded up, but I can just picture people wandering in to pick up essentials and catching up on the latest news.

I stopped to photograph the old store, and created the beautiful sepia-toned print below to capture the days-gone-by feel.