I almost didn’t venture into the swamp, today. I was running late, I had the wrong boat loaded, and the wind was gusting pretty hard. I packed a pair of gunmetal gray shorts, in case I did manage to go mudding. When I arrived at the water, the tide was all the way out, and it wasn’t very low. After paddling my canoe (not my kayak!) against the stiff wind for a while, I realized that I was going to have a hard time getting to the mud hole that would be usable at this tide level. I would have to paddle about 2 miles, and by the time I got there, the tide would be coming in, again.
I shot some wildlife video, and I tried my hand at fishing. Shooting video was nearly impossible, while the boat was being buffeted by the wind. The fish weren’t biting, either. So, I decided to paddle to the wooded spot, with the peat mud. When I arrived there, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make the hike to the mud with a tripod, two cameras and my gear bag. I considered that I could fish some more and go home. There was no shame in going home clean, or so I told myself. Finally, I got up my nerve. My trail was overgrown, so I hacked some grass out of the way with a machete. I collected my gear and started into the woods.
When the mud hole came into view, it looked good. It had no standing water and the surface looked very inviting. Looking at the image on the right, how could you not want to jump into that? So, I changed into the gunmetal gray shorts and set up some shots of me, walking through the swamp, climbing onto the tree you see in the picture below, and literally jumping into that mud. The mud was thick, so I only sank up to my crotch. What ensued was a long, slow sink that was all recorded on video. Needless to say, I didn’t make it out alive.
I should mention that these video frames are not from the video. They are from the out-takes. However, I thought they looked pretty good, so I used them to illustrate this blog entry. Here is one more, from when I was climbing down from the tree to move the camera.
The last photo…climbing down to move the camera…is quite an engaging photo. Thanks for posting.
That shot will be in the “behind the scenes” clip that will be released on October 5. There were too many good shots that I had to cut, in order to maintain continuity in the feature video. I felt I had to collect the out-takes and put them into their own clip.
Looking forward to seeing both videos…outtakes are always fun to watch. I remember on my last visit to your place we went out in the evening to an area of peat mud…it can be tougher to get out of, as I remember…but much fun to sink into.