everglades treeline during the day
Photography by Mac Stone

See the Everglades in a New Light With Photographer Mac Stone

National Geographic Explorer and wildlife photographer Mac Stone unearths hidden treasures of the Florida Everglades through his camera lens.

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Less than five minutes into my excursion with conservation photographer Mac Stone, he’s abandoned the trail. The National Geographic Explorer and contributor wades into the field toward a patch of dune sunflowers sprouting a few steps from the path, derailing our conversation (not for the last time). 

“Sorry,” Mac says sheepishly. “I’m always so mission-driven, scheming for a month to go and take a picture. I rarely [get to] come and shoot photos like this.” He’s winging it, taking in the blank canvas before him. I laugh it off—this is why we’re here. I’m eager to see my childhood backyard through his eyes. As an environmental writer, I spend much time learning about Everglades degradation and restoration. Even for those of us immersed in the subject, it can be perplexing, but being out here among the swamp’s raw beauty, it’s simple—this is what we’re fighting for. 

We’ve ventured into Immokalee’s CREW Cypress Dome Trails—part of the larger Everglades watershed—on a late March morning. Neither of us has been to this destination full of pine flatwoods and wet prairies, something Mac is all too eager about. Within 60 seconds of breaking from the trail, he whips out a reflector to redirect the morning light, reclines flat on his back and aligns his camera lens to be level with the tiny patch of flowers. The golden petals soak up the sun as delicate, string-like stems defiantly dance in the breeze—one swift gust, one misplaced step, and the flora may break. This moment is a prologue, a declaration of the fragility of this place we call home.

When he’s in the wild, Mac’s scientific mind is on. His background—three years monitoring wading bird patterns in Everglades National Park as a biologist for the National Audubon Society—keys him into granular moments, from the way spores sprawl like veins on one type of fern and coat a leaf’s backside on another, to the trails alligators leave in the winter, when water levels are low and they try to keep themselves wet. He’ll move on for a moment, then circle back to see the scene evolve before his eyes. What looks like a regular tree to me becomes a story to him—what might this vignette of bubblegum lichen become if he lined acrylic panels to frame the trees and lit the pieces from behind? He could isolate the plant, put it on a stark white background, and experiment with color, similarity and texture. 

The lighting isn’t right at this time of day, and the camera’s settings are off, he says, making notes for future visits. Once a month, the Gainesville-raised explorer leaves his transplanted South Carolina home and heads back to the swamp for his work as a member of The Everglades Foundation’s board. He keeps ideas like this in his back pocket, waiting for the day he’ll return to the same location and realize his vision. Other times, Mac dedicates weeks of his life to capturing a single photo of certain phenomena. Not long ago, Mac was intent on photographing a hunting behavior exhibited by the bottlenose dolphins that live in Florida Bay. The sea mammals use the shallow flat of submerged prairie to their advantage. A pod of four or five dolphins finds a school of fish, then one dolphin breaks from the group, moving in a rapid circle and kicking sediment up to confuse the prey. The fish get trapped in mud rings and jump out of the water, where the rest of the pod waits with open mouths to catch their meals. “It’s brilliant,” Mac says. “You can see them teaching the next generation how to do it.” The photographer spent two weeks flying over the bay’s 850 square miles with a biologist, scouring for evidence of the wild meal-prep technique. 

The photographer breathes Florida swamps. For the past two years, Mac’s been creating a limited-edition photography book with about 130 images—including the hard-earned dolphin shot—which The Everglades Foundation is gifting to supporters of the nonprofit’s endowment campaign. In 2022, the organization quietly launched the three-year push to raise $75 million to cement the team’s commitment to Everglades scientific research, advocacy and education initiatives forever. In the first two years, running quietly among patrons, the campaign raised $60 million. Now, the group has opened fundraising for the final stretch to the public. Artistic works like Mac’s help stimulate support by stoking curiosity and appreciation for the delicate, at-risk ecosystem. Mac, who has contributed to the endowment himself, was a clear choice to helm the project, with his love for the River of Grass’ landscape and wildlife, scientific background and talents as a storyteller. “[You have to show people] this is why we care so much,” Mac says. “To do that, you gotta take people into the system and show them some of the miraculous narratives and interactions of animals that play out.”

It’s a crucial time to put boots on the ground. In some way or another—whether through funding environmental nonprofits’ programming, signing petitions or directly investing in infrastructure—all Everglades support goes toward the $23.2 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), the largest ecosystem restoration project in the world. Established in 2000 as a 30-year, even partnership between the federal and state governments, CERP is building pump stations, restoring more than 40 square miles of the Kissimmee River floodplains and raising Tamiami Trail to rebuild Mother Nature’s model for South Florida’s ecology. The system has been fractured by decades of dredging, channelization and development, resulting in habitat loss, vulnerable shorelines and devastating toxic outbreaks like the 2017 and 2018 red tide events. Restoration support and efforts have ramped up since the harmful algal bloom plagues, thanks to the rise of public awareness and engagement via social media; and groups like The Everglades Foundation, Captains For Clean Water, South Florida Water Management District and Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation uniting to amplify the message. 

But the fight isn’t over. CERP continues to face obstacles, including ongoing land-use battles with the Florida sugar industry, which aims to preserve its eight-decade control on Lake Okeechobee for irrigation needs. Beyond the push-back and continued human alteration of the wetlands, the Everglades will require a lifetime of consistent effort and maintenance to clean up more than a century’s worth of disruption and foster a symbiotic relationship between person and place.

Mac speaks passionately about the mission to protect Florida’s wetlands—a zeal ignited in childhood. At 14, he stumbled upon an old Minolta SR-T 101 film camera hidden in the depths of his parents’ closet. His backyard became his muse. Mac didn’t have the formidable mountain ranges or lofty skylines people are used to seeing exalted. Still, he found equal awe in Florida’s swamps and prairies—with their tangled webs of Spanish moss ornamenting the canopies and undulating stretches of wiregrass shivering with life. Where others saw dirty backwaters, Mac saw an Eden and was determined to change public perceptions. “That’s what the photographs became—little proofs that this is gorgeous, and the adventures I was having were real,” Mac says, recounting his boyhood escapades as we explore the trail. 

The same year he found his first camera, Mac got a job working at his uncle’s digital photo store, restoring old prints. One day, he came across a luminescent black-and-white shot of the moon over cypress trees—Moonrise (1986), a Clyde Butcher original. “That was my first introduction to the Everglades,” Mac says. In high school, he and his father first ventured to the Ten Thousand Islands. The pair spent a spring break week paddling around and sleeping under chickees, camera in tow. Mac was entranced by the vast stretches of wilderness, unlike anything he’d seen. Gone were the pocket parks and isolated swamps of his hometown; there, in the midst of the Glades, seemingly endless mangrove forests and cypress groves unraveled before him. Mac’s camera became an extra limb as he made his way through Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and his time with Audubon.

When he thinks of The Everglades Foundation book, he reflects on the pieces encapsulating the wetlands’ truths. “There are a lot of little quiet moments in that book that aren’t big, incredible wildlife behavior,” he says. Mac lifts the camera to his eye line, pulling me into such a tale: A reflection of trees hovers in the background of his frame, and patches of persistent duckweed decorate the foreground. “Those are important, too, because that’s part of this,” he says, his arm sweeping from the brush to the horizon. It is all connected, from the pollen coating the swamp’s surface in a thin sheen to the warbles of hidden birds pinging through the trees.

The trail slopes to the right, but Mac charges straight ahead, where a towering cypress dome beckons the brave to wander off the path. “You ready to get wet?” he calls, trudging forward into the shin-high water. Ripples form as we move, our limbs lifting and sinking as we navigate the labyrinth of submerged branches and sunken holes. It’s tranquil; the sounds of feet sloshing and Mac’s content humming form the score of our trek. Every now and then, he notes how clear the water is, a looking glass that stretches to root-covered bottoms, or how the light pierces through a cypress grove. With every new photo, Mac illuminates the glory of one of the most vibrant places on Earth. His steps are measured, confident—there’s an ease to his pace that comes only from years of similar pilgrimages. 

For all the familiarity, Mac often encounters a different landscape—though not always for the better. He recalls returning years later to the Ten Thousand Island spots he visited on that first kayaking trip with his father. Mac wanted to capture frames of the transformative place. Instead, he found a mangrove graveyard, the imperial forest reduced to a ghostly shadow. “Things just aren’t there anymore,” Mac says. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting.” 

Remote swamp locations are inaccessible to most, and not everyone can spend their days scanning the land from a helicopter, but they can connect to a photo Mac publishes on social media, in a publication or in a book. Job security, he jokes, is no issue for him, as there’s always something new to find. “The Everglades is so many different things,” Mac says. “It’s sea turtles nesting on the beach in the moonlight. It’s cypress domes. It’s millions of mullet running down the East Coast. It’s bottlenose dolphins. It’s spoonbill chicks nesting in a mangrove island. It’s salt flats. It’s crocodiles. I will never run out of things to look at or ways to be inspired.”

At the trailhead once more, we pass a gaggle of eager children about to embark on a journey parallel to our own. One of the boys calls out to us: “Are there bears in there?” Mac responds in kind. “Oh yeah, big black bears. They’re nice.”  

“Panthers?” 

“Panthers, too.” 

“They’re nice?” 

“They’re all nice.”  

Photography by Mac Stone