Sounds Overheard: Alligator Primeval Love Songs

An alligator at sunrise in Everglades National Park.

Listening to big old bull alligators bellow is a primeval experience. After 200 million years on earth, these guys have perfected a low, deep, rumbling sound that raises the hair on the back of your neck. Creepy, and thrilling.

•  0:00 two male alligators bellow
•  0:25 alligators thrash
•  0:38 bees in tree canopy
•  0:55 Northern Cardinal sings
•  1:01 Barred Owl in background
•  1:27 Red-winged Blackbirds
•  1:52 White Ibis fly overhead

I was deep inside a hardwood hammock in Everglades National Park, and two love struck males were bellowing back and forth as they competed for the affections of a lone female. The three occupied a living room sized water hole, a small refuge during this month’s height of the dry season. I imagined the female being enthralled by their macho display. I kept my distance.

While they arched their backs and raised their massive heads out of the water, I recorded the low rumbles emanating from their vibrating diaphragms. The water along side them pulsated, with tiny water droplets shooting upward from the surface. After their squabble echoed off the surrounding trees, I was left alone with the quiet sounds of a frog or two, a lone cricket, and the low buzz of bees high above in the flowering tree canopy.

At the edge of the hammock I captured song birds, including the Northern Cardinal while a Barred Owl hooted way off in the distance. Upon emerging onto the sawgrass prairie, a rambunctious group of Red-winged blackbirds were chattering away. Then complete silence, broken only when the beating wings of six White Ibis flew right over my head, the leader squawking directions to the group.

For those interested in learning more about listening to cardinals and how to attract them to your yard here is an excellent resource https://www.worldbirds.org/attracting-cardinals/ . 

During my assignments and travels I've been recording the sounds I overhear, and many don't have supporting photographs or stories. This occasional series will be my excuse to share my audio orphans, these Sounds Overheard.

Young History Detectives Discover Segregation

History was being made 50 years ago this week as the first cross country buses of  freedom riders rolled into Alabama and Mississippi, only to face withering racial hatred and violence. As two brilliant PBS television documentaries have shown, the non-violent participants played a pivotal roll in nudging the Kennedy administration to finally act, and the civil-rights movement turned the corner that leads directly to our current times.

Did we really live in an America were segregation of whites and blacks was not only legal, but thrived south of the Mason Dixon line? Where white mobs beat and murdered blacks while racist police did nothing? Where schools and hospitals were segregated, blacks sat in the back of buses and weren’t allowed into restaurants?



Multimedia audio slide show tells 1960 story of first Florida high school to integrate. iPhone & iPad version.

I know we did, as I grew up in the 1960’s. I recall flickering black and white television images of students blasted with fire hoses and reading about the freedom riders in Life magazine.

But do young people today know this history? Recently I found out that some Miami high school students were amazed to hear that segregation was a way of life in their home town.

Being white and living in Idaho and Washington state, to me the civil-rights movement was an abstraction. I had never experienced discrimination. In my family we were raised to be inclusive, my parents frequently reminding us that the color of one’s skin did not matter. Then Martin Luther King died. His assassination shook my college idealism to the core, and for a while my friends and I wondered what sort of world was awaiting us.

When I moved to Miami 30 years ago it rarely occurred to me that I was living in the deep south. I remember in 1980 our realtor remarking that just a few years before our Miami Shores neighborhood had been “red lined”, where banks would keep minorities out by applying more stringent loan requirements than to whites. Though no longer pure white, we wouldn’t have to worry about “them”, she implied.

Miami’s Jim Crow legacy hit home when a family friend told of being able to buy a senior prom dress at a downtown department store, but she was unable to try it on first as the fitting rooms were for whites only. She had to buy it and hope it fit. She went on to be the first African American woman judge in Florida.

When history teacher David Monaco, left, told his AP American History class Miami used to be segregated, Taylor Altidor, right, and her classmates couldn't believe it.

In the years since the lens through which I viewed my adopted community was that of a rich cultural stew, Cubans and Nicaraguans and Colombians, Coconut Grove Bahamians and African Americans, with Haitians rounding out the mix. An occasional remaining Gringo would be tossed in for seasoning. South Florida’s civil-rights legacy was not on my radar screen.

Last February my radar lit up. I was commissioned to produce a multimedia show about the 50th anniversary of Florida’s first high school to integrate, and while interviewing former students I learned first hand what it was like to live in a segregated Miami.

Paul Wyche, who in 1960 entered the then all white Archbishop Curley School for Boys, told me how his cross country team left a Howard Johnson’s restaurant when he was refused service because he was black. And as a student sports reporter for the Miami Herald he and the black basketball players were called the “N-word” in Homestead.

Constance Moore Thornton described to me the “colored” and “white” drinking fountains at her neighborhood Winn Dixie grocery store, which offended her, so she refused to drink from either. Yet as a rebellious teen she rode in the front of Miami’s buses and endured stares from both blacks and whites without incident. She helped integrate sister school Notre Dame Academy, and like Wyche, felt fully accepted by their Catholic school, faculty and fellow students.

Sandwiched between the Spring 1960 student-led sit ins that integrated lunch counters in Tennessee, Georgia and throughout the south, and the May 1961 freedom rides, history was being made in Miami too. The Archbishop quietly admitted black students into his Catholic high schools in September 1960, without “making a fuss” the Miami Herald reported.

Black and white students from the early 1960s returned to their high school to share their experience with integration.

The Archbishop did not have to worry about politics nor historic prejudice within his jurisdiction, plus hundred’s of Cuban students were then flooding his schools as they fled Fidel Castro’s revolution. A few black students moving up from all black parish elementary schools was, as we would say today, a no brainer.

The boy’s school had inherited a legacy of inclusiveness from it’s name sake, Fr. Michael Joseph Curley, Bishop of St. Augustine. In 1916 he led a vocal public campaign on behalf of thee Sisters of St. Joseph who were arrested in violation of state law which prohibited white women from teaching in “negro schools.”

Miami-Dade County schools did not desegregate until the early 1970s, and then only under a a federal court order, which was not lifted until 2001. Observers note, however, that the public schools had to deal with segregated neighborhoods, busing and a sprawling district encompassing hundreds of schools.

To mark the 50th anniversary of it’s integration, Archbishop Curley Notre Dame planned a day long event during Black History Month where students from that era - black, white and Latino -  would share their experiences with the students of today. Principal Brother Sean Moffett asked me to tell the story through multimedia, and my first challenge was how.

I decided to interview two former students, now in their 60s, to open the story by talking about their experiences living as teens with segregation. No explanation at first as to why, I wanted a bit of mystery to draw viewers in.

I set up a mini studio at the school the day before the celebration, shot on black seamless and converted the files to black and white to evoke a historic feel. From 50-year-old yearbook photos I cross cut to color as the story shifted to the present day.

Constance Moore Thornton remembered "colored" water fountains at her neighborhood Miami grocery store.

Not wanting to build my visual story on just the official ceremony, I photographed the Advanced Placement American History class researching integration history, including exploring micro fiche film a the public library and interviewing students from the early 1960s. This also gave me a great “History Detectives” hook.

I recorded natural sound from the library trip, machines whirling and students reading, and wired subjects with lavaliere microphones and recorders during classroom discussions.

But I was stuck on how to use audio to tell the overall story, from historic perspective to describing events. My technique of interviewing a subject and building a narrative around whatever came out of their mouths would not work. I had points important to the story and set events already photographed. I decided to write a script, and with the help of Junior Taylor Altidor, who would be narrating, and history teacher David Monaco, that’s what I did.

Taylor leads with her amazement in learning about Miami’s segregationist history, and describes how her multiethnic school of just over 300 students embraces a philosophy of inclusiveness. And she notes how those who pioneered integration 50 years ago led to her way of life today.

The result is a five minute multimedia audio slide show that I hope is an informative and emotional history lesson for today’s students. The school plans to feature the piece on the ACND web site, driving traffic from media interviews with students and administrators. They've also received requests to place the story in several university history archives.

Many thanks for the help of Brother Moffett, CFC, VP of Student Services Douglas Romanik, David Monaco, and Taylor Altidor.  And thanks to the freedom riders and all those who took risks during the civil-rights movement ... today our country's race relations are far from perfect, but they've come a long ways in 50 years.

“I Hate Moving Around”, Teen Wants Adoptive Family

In the card game of life, the dealer has given Corey more than his fair share of tough hands to play. When his mother died two years ago while he was 14, it was after her long struggle with self destructive behavior. His father had long disappeared from his life, and the State of Florida became the orphan's only parent.

His first foster care placement found him forced to clean house and do chores while the family’s biological teens did nothing. “So I went on runaway”, Corey says, and he’s bounced from one placement to another ever since. Temptations not resisted led to spending a year at a structured camp on the edge of the Everglades.



Teenager Corey describes his life in foster care and why he wants an adoptive home.
iPad friendly version.

Corey is the subject of the second multimedia audio slide show I’ve produced on commission for the Heart Gallery of Broward County, the traveling photographic portrait exhibit of children in foster care that long for permanent adoptive homes. Only one in ten teens are adopted from foster care, and multiple agencies will deploy the shows in recruitment and training seminars and on line hoping to improve those statistics.

Last October Corey finally moved to a Broward County home where his foster mom “Miss Michelle” and foster brother “Q”, as he calls them, are providing a loving environment that he says he’s thriving in. He’s attending school, has a girlfriend, is pulling his weight at home.

It may be the momentary clarity of a 16-year-old, but he says he wants to become a chef  and attend culinary school after graduating from high school in two years. He’s done with temptations, he says, and adds “some people try to get you into doing bad things, but you just have to show them you are a leader and not be a follower.”

All Corey says he needs now is a family to adopt him, before he ages out of the foster care system at age 18. When be becomes an adult he knows the State of Florida will support him if he stays in school, but he longs for that permanent family. One that can sustain him and give him love, which he can return unconditionally.

Last month two teen girls’ shared their thoughts about why they should be adopted, and the advantages over adopting a baby. See more stories featuring Miami multimedia photography that blend public-radio-style interviews with photojournalism.

Sounds Overheard: Cuban Exiles Play Dominoes

Playing dominoes with less than two full hands at Miami's Domino Park.

For the older generation of Cuban exiles living in Miami, Domino Park, in the heart the Little Havana neighborhood, is a direct connection to their old lives in Cuba. Located on Calle Ocho ( 8th Street ) just west of downtown with its modern high rises, dozens of men, and a few women, gather all day and night to play a very traditional game.

Be transported to Little Havana's Domino Park with 37 seconds of natural sound.

The clack clack clack of game pieces slapping against the worn metal tables pierce the animated conversation, wafting cigar smoke and aromatic Cuban coffee. The official name of the tiny park is Maximo Gomez Park, named after a Cuban revolutionary who fought against Spanish oppression in the late 19th century.

After the Spanish American War, decades of 20th century strongman governments, the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and 50 years of Fidel Castro rule, these domino players are still waiting for the oppression to finally end on their island homeland.

Meanwhile, they will keep playing dominoes in Miami.

During my assignments and travels I've been recording the sounds I overhear, and many don't have supporting photographs or stories. This occasional series will be my excuse to share my audio orphans, these Sounds Overheard. 

More audio recording and Miami multimedia photography can be viewed here.

Sounds Overheard: Pig Frogs & Grumpy Birds

Bottle nose dolphin fishing for lunch alongside my kayak last Sunday at Coon Key where Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge meets the Gulf of Mexico.

The Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge is a hidden natural gem that most motorists miss while racing across busy Tamiami Trail from Miami to cosmopolitan Naples on Florida's south west coast. The refuge  protects a unique subtropical estuarine ecosystem, ranging from marsh wetlands to mangrove lined islands along the Gulf of Mexico.


Listen to 1:50 recording of wading birds at dusk followed by chorus of frogs.

About an hour before sundown I pulled off Tamiami Trail and parked in the newly constructed Marsh Trail parking lot. With no other visitors at the tall observation tower, and only the low rumble of an occasional highway truck to distract me, I quickly slowed down and began to hear the amazing sounds of the saw grass marsh settle down for the evening.

Hundreds of wading birds, great blue herrons, snowy egrets, coots and white ibis were settling into the trees of a water surrounded rookery, squakwing and honking and grumbling amongst themselves. As the sun reached the horizon, they calmed down a little, with the ibis flapping their wings in unison.

In the fading light a chorus of frogs croaked back and forth, a high pitched chirp chirp chirp of reptilian love calls soon overpowering the sounds from the rookery. Finally, in the pitch dark, pig frogs got to work sounding like, well, croaking pigs. I imagined tourists thinking wild hogs were crouched hiding in the tall grass, waiting for an opportune moment to pounce and devour the uninitiated traveler.

The only creatures attacking me were the voracious mosquitoes, which were sucking blood from the microphone holding hand I extended from under my bug jacket's protective netting. Hidden natural gem or not, it was time to retreat to the safety of my car.

During my assignments and travels I've been recording the sounds I overhear, and many don't have supporting photographs or stories. This occasional series will be my excuse to share my audio orphans, these Sounds Overheard. 

More audio recording and Miami multimedia photography can be viewed here.

“Adopt Me, I’m Unforgettable”, Foster Teen Dreams

Best friends Celene and Sheaundra are hanging out in the park together, seemingly typical teens giggling while swinging, gossiping about school friends and alongside a sun sparkled lake share whispered dreams for their future.

But unlike the other children playing in the park, these two girls have no families.  Both have lived in foster care over half their lives, orphans after the State of Florida severed their parent’s rights to raise them. They both long to leave their group homes and be adopted into permanent families.



Teens who’ve lived half their lives in foster care describe why they want to be adopted in this 3:10 audio slide show. iPad friendly version.

The problem is, teens in foster care have an uphill battle finding what the Heart Gallery of Broward County calls “Forever Families”, says Barbara Schechter, Executive Director of the Ft. Lauderdale based traveling exhibit of photographs featuring foster children who are available for adoption.

Of the 90 foster children currently featured in the Heart Gallery, 60 per-cent are teens, but only 10 per-cent, about six, will find permanent families, she says. With children under 12, adoption rates are much better, with 30 per-cent being adopted, and the percentages are even higher for those under eight years old.

Schechter believes some potential adoptive parents let unfounded or exaggerated perceptions about teens in foster care get in the way of their considering older children, fearing the foster care system has hardened children into uncontrollable or defiant teens.

At times, she says, teens “are set in their ways, they talk back, they don’t want to be told what to do or how to do it and they don’t like to follow rules”. Then notes, “actually, this could describe my own teenager”, and can apply to foster teens too.

Schechter suggests approaching teen adoption as a mutual decision between child and family, allowing plenty of time for both parties to get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. “Families who can be open about who they are and what they expect can help to make the matching process much easier for the child”. Teens are old enough to choose their family, she adds.

To help prospective adoptive parents start thinking about teens, the Heart Gallery commissioned me to produce a multimedia audio slide show featuring the voices of Celene and Sheaundra.

Teens in foster care often have some tough history, Sheaudra, 15, frankly told me in December, and that’s why they need a family.  “I think that’s why people kinda judge us. They think it’s our fault (we’re in foster care), but it’s not my fault ... because my parents made these mistakes, and I didn’t”. 

Celne, 14, thinks adopting teens is easier than adopting babies because “... teens are more mature and it’s easier for them to learn than a little kid ... (who) messes up the house, throws stuff, yells and has temper tantrums...”.

She’s a very self confident young lady when she wraps the multimedia show with “I should get adopted ‘cause I’m awesome, I’m smart, I’m mature ... I’m unforgettable!”

The Heart Gallery of Browad County is not only looking for people to adopt children, but also matches those willing to be mentors, donate time, become a child advocate or donate funds. They work hand in hand with Child Net, the private, not for profit organization that manages the child welfare system in Broward County for the State of Florida.

See more stories featuring miami multimedia photography that blend public-radio-style interviews with photojournalism.

Talking Picture Postcard - Tibetan Harvest Prayers

While Buddhist monks chanted and tossed paper prayers up to the blue sky, ranchers and farmers whooped, hollered and sprayed cheap liquor over the two dozen people gathered at the edge of Qinghai Lake. Last July an extended family of ethnic Tibetans were praying for a successful harvest and green pastures for their livestock.



View an iPad  friendly version of this 28 second audio slide show.

Monks carefully placed prayer flags to capture the breezes at this tiny holy place, a row of low stupas sprouting from the rocky and treeless soil where green grass, endless sky and brilliant blue lake merged.

We had spotted the multiple colors while speeding by on the highway, and when we followed the rutted track toward the lake, the only people around were two dirty children willing to pose for coins atop a horse. I wandered over to the fluttering flags, and within minutes the celebrants arrived, monks and civilians pouring out of 4 x 4 pickup trucks.

Located in a depression of the Tibetan Plateau 10,000 feet above sea level, saline Qinghai Lake has no outlet and is China’s largest. Qinghai means “Blue/Teal Sea” in Chinese, and also names this sparsely populated province that contains only about 6 million of China's 1.3 billion people.

Like the few lines we scribble and mail home describing our vacation travels, this Talking Picture Postcard, a brief five photographs and 28 seconds of field-recorded sound, is my way of saying “The weather is fine, having a great time, which you were here.”

And also, "have a great harvest!"

View more Miami multimedia photography at my portfolio site.

Sounds Overheard: Listening To A Lunar Eclipse

While camping in the Florida Keys last month during the total lunar eclipse, I actually set my alarm for the middle of the night so I wouldn’t miss a rare astronomical event. What an amazing sight, the moon was a dull orange, the nearly black sky allowed millions of stars to pop into sight above the tropical button wood and gumbo limbo trees at Bahia Honda State Park.

Take a minute and a half from your hectic day, put on a pair of headphones or ear buds, and listen: first, gentle waves on the sand, then soft splashes and bubbles in a rocky tide pool, and finally a lone cricket rhythmically chirping above the distant waves.

I imagined I was looking up at the same disappearing moon just as my ancestors had, possibly from the entrance to their cave, the campfire long burned down, their bellies full of mastodon. I wondered if they were frightened at this unexpected sight?  Were they frightened by the sounds coming from the darkened woods? A saber tooth tiger roar, a hissing volcano?

My ears could only hear the ocean gently lapping on the beach a few yards away, the crickets chirping in the underbrush ... did Cave Man Tom hear these same sounds?

Water, crickets, sound, oh my, why was I daydreaming when I could be recording these wonderful sounds? At 3 AM I snapped back to 2010, pulled out my recorder and microphone, and had a great time capturing sounds under that big orange moon.

During my assignments and travels I've been recording the sounds I overhear, and many don't have supporting photographs or stories. This occasional series will be my excuse to share my audio orphans, these Sounds Overheard.

Finding Sounds Among The Trees

Sometimes making sense out of a complex soundscape is like photographing a chaotic scene ... at first, you just can’t see the forest through the trees.

Which are my key sounds ? Can I isolate them from the background noise ? Is that sound reconcilable? How will it help tell my story ? Will the viewer experience the real life scene in front of me ?



In the above audio slide show listen for horns, conch shells, and cymbals fading to chanting, then scooped rice and finally clanging tea cups. I Pad friendly version.

Upon entering  the Arou Ba Temple in China’s Qinghai Province, my senses were blasted by the monks blowing low notes on eight-foot-long brass horns. Squawking reed instruments competed with ringing finger cymbals. The Yellow Hat sect Tibetan Buddhist monks were chanting, slowly at times, then as rat-a-tat-tat fast as an auctioneer.

At first I listened and watched to get a handle on the action, and for the monks to become accustomed to my presence. I began to use my recorder’s shotgun microphone to select one sound at a time, choosing my story building blocks carefully. If one monk’s chanting was distinctive, I recorded it. When all the instruments played at once, I sensed the complex acoustic mix would be my intro. Three voices were playing off each other, so I placed my omnidirectional mic to capture the layers of sound.

I especially enjoyed discovering the sound of rice being scooped up and dropped over a series of decorated silver bowls and rings, a meditation performed together by two monks.

As I saw a compelling image, I’d break for photography. One by one my story elements, once hidden between the trees, showed themselves to me and were recorded or photographed. An incredibly fascinating forest emerged.

Here's a link to past posts from my three week trip to China last July.

Sounds Overheard: Quacking Toy Ducks & The Law

Keeping an eye out for the law, grown men are playing with whistling toys on the Saturday morning I visit the San Telmo street market in Buenos Aires.
Hear the bustling San Telmo street market in this one minute sound clip.

Quack quack quack, buy “the little duck !” one man offers. Amid a long shrill and trill, an entrepreneur announces “canaries, for children, help your self !” At first the third is wary of my microphone, explaining they are unlicensed street vendors and keep a look out for the police. “Portuguese roosters!” he shouts as he scurries down a cobble stone side street.

The weekly market overflows from Plaza Dorrego, the Argentine capital’s oldest, along streets lined with colonial era architecture. Street musicians and tango dancers perform, tourists and locals fill the outdoor cafes, and antique shops hide treasurers.

During my assignments and travels I've been recording the sounds I overhear, and many don't have supporting photographs or stories. This occasional series will be my excuse to share my audio orphans, these Sounds Overheard.

Never Say Never - Insightful Voices Drive Multimedia

Roger’s favorite high school subject is English, taught by his favorite teacher Brother John Corcoran, who is also his cross country coach. Such relationships provide many teaching moments. But Roger’s greatest inspiration has been observing his mentor quietly overcoming adversity.



Link to iPad and iPhone friendly version.

During our taped interview earlier this year discussing why he liked attending Archbishop Curley Notre Dame,  Roger described Brother Cocoran as an interesting and approachable teacher, as well as a challenging and goal-setting coach.

Over the past school year Roger and his teammates have watched their coach recover from an accident, return to walking and then to full duties at school. Roger has learned “to never say never,” an unofficial lesson.

Such insights, straight from the student mouths, have been the driving force behind the six-part multimedia series ACND commissioned to focus their “There’s A School For That” campaign.  By using journalistic still photography and public-radio-style audio interviews, the small Catholic prep school on the edge of Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood is growing enrollment and strengthening ties with its support community.

Anecdotal reports suggest these audio slide shows are succeeding in small ways:
- A mother reported her son insisted on enrolling at ACND after being impressed by their web site, where the shows are featured
-  Another new student said he chose Curley “to find my athletic potential," directly borrowing a line from one show.

This is my sixth and last post about this project. Thanks again for the help of Principal Brother Patrick Sean Moffett, CFC, his assistant Daphne Dominique, Dean of Students Douglas Romanik, and former Public Relations director Catherine Doble.

Here are all six multimedia audio slide shows from Miami high school Archbishop Curley Notre Dame.

Sounds Overheard: NYC Subway

The $ 2.25 to ride the New York City subway is probably the best entertainment admission price in town, especially if you travel through the underground with your ears wide open.



Earlier this month I recorded the sounds of a classical Spanish guitarist, then a Manhattan bound train arriving, doors closing, being whisked to another station, where I’m finally left alone on an abandoned platform. Direct link to two minute clip here.

Sure you need your eyes to read the stories on your fellow traveler’s faces, spot the rat running down the rails, be amused by the zombie Halloween costumes. But listening to the sounds surrounding you will make the trip much richer.


Conversations in Polish, Spanish, Chinese and where in the world are they from ? Music from violins, flutes, drummed upon plastic buckets. Humming air conditioning, whooshing air brakes, ear shattering screeching. Foot steps, the train fading down the tunnel, now it’s quiet.

During my assignments and travels I've been recording the sounds I overhear, and many don't have supporting photographs or stories. This occasional series will be my excuse to share my audio orphans, these Sounds Overheard.

Close Encounters Of The Alligator Kind

I received a stock photo request this week from National Wildlife magazine expressing an interest in using an alligator photograph of mine to illustrate an article about their favorite places to see wildlife.

While I was digging the image out of my digital archive I got to thinking about the fun times I’ve had with Alligator mississippiensis.

Alligator finds dwindling pond at height of dry season, Everglades NP

Don’t worry, I’m not a mountain man with wild beasts stories, or a species discovering biologist nor an accomplished wildlife photographer. I’m just a guy looking to enjoy the outdoors, and photography and kayaking are great excuses to do so. In Florida, alligators come with the territory.

Nine Mile Pond is my favorite place to paddle in Everglades National Park as it features a five mile loop threading between mangrove islands and over the sawgrass prairie, all with water not much deeper than a paddle blade. Fluffy clouds and blue sky mirror themselves on the water. Wading birds and fish eating Osprey fly above. If you are going to experience just one Everglades paddle, this is it.

Rising sun warms alligator's back, Everglades NP

But by the middle of May two years ago it was the heart of the dry season, and I paddled off the pond and down a mangrove covered trail. The water was as wide as my paddle, about 18 inches deep, and muddy brown. After a hundred yards, I could see about a dozen ‘gators up ahead enjoying the only other body of water left, a house sized pool.

Female gator gently touches male to say she's ready for love, Everglades NP

I stopped paddling and drifted forward, and suddenly felt a solid bump transmitted through the kayak’s hull and directly to my back side an inch above. I listened to a scraping sound run down the length of my boat and imagined rocks protruding from the murky bottom. As my stern cleared, I looked over my shoulder only to see a six foot long alligator rise up to the surface. I had run over a gator, and was drifting toward a dozen more.

American Alligator makes daily stroll from Flamingo Bay to Eco Pond, Everglades NP

Now if you are an experienced swamper please tell me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always reasoned that my 12-foot-long orange craft looks like a big old predator in an alligator’s eye. Why would they attack me? No worries, I thought, I might as well make a few photos, and that’s when I shot the seven footer in the top photo as it drifted by my wide angle lens .

Faces On The Radio

As my ears thumped to the pounding rhythm of goat skin drums, my eyes were arrested by the  heavy coral beads hanging from the young Tibetan girl’s hair. I heard tinkling silver bells. I saw orange color. I heard the crowd, then saw her intense expression. Sound and sight sent my brain the story of hundreds of folk dancers and musicians driving the devil from a Buddhist temple.




Click here for an iPad friendly version of the audio slide show above.

While traveling in China’s remote north western province of Qinghai this July, I found that my ears had become just as sensitive as my eyes. I would discover an interesting natural sound, bleating sheep, whooping celebrants, chanting monks, and then I’d find a portrait to photograph, putting a face on that sound.

When working in multimedia I like to close my eyes and imagine the sound coming from my car radio, and ask, “do I see what I’m hearing” ? Yes, then lets put a face to the sound. Lets put a face on the radio.

Photography and natural sound work together beautifully to produce a richer, fuller story than either component could on their own. In this two minute audio slide show I chose 13 portraits of Chinese I met - Han, Tibetan and Hui - and wrapped a field-recorded sound clip around the photograph.

Close your eyes and listen ... what can you see? Now open your eyes to hear even more.

I wrote almost every day about my July experiences here. More multimedia photography from China can be viewed here.

Talking Picture Postcard: Tango Dancing Ghosts

Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, Argentina:

Wandering the narrow alleyways between the mausoleums, I feel the cold winter breath of grieving stone statues blowing on my neck. I shiver as I look into the faces of those buried here, the bearded military man frozen in brass, the child’s youth photographed and trapped under porcelain.



Click here for an iPad friendly version of the above audio slide show.

Is there anything alive here ? In my imagination I hear the plaintive music of a bandoneon, the accordion-like instrument that’s the soul of Argentine tango, accompanied by a small music hall piano. Are the ghosts dancing, or are the tunes from last night’s bar still playing in my head ?

I’m exploring the famous Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aries, a city of 6,000 graves laid out along orderly streets and avenues. Since 1822  Argentina’s rich and famous have been buried here, including Evita Peron, wildly popular with the poor she championed and the beautiful wife of President Juan Peron. She died of cancer at age 33 nearly 60 years ago.

Her family crypt is often thronged by still worshipful admirers and tourists, yet it was decades before her remains were resting here safely under 27 feet of cement. With the winds of Argentine politics the corpses of  Evita and Juan traveled around the world, with Juan’s hands being stolen by politically motivated grave robbers.

No such drama today. Today the only serene living creature I encounter among the granite and marble monuments to the dead is a sleeping feral cat, curled up under the statue of a stately dog and it’s once young owner. I still hear the tango music in my head, blending with the quiet feline’s purr.

All photographs captured in the Recoleta Cemetery with Nikon P6000 “point-n-shoot” camera, with natural sound recorded in San Telmo neighborhood’s Club Sur, August 2010.

For more multimedia visit Miami Multimedia Photographer.

Multimedia Roots Sprouted Decades Ago

Multimedia story telling is a lot of fun. Simple as that. Why ?

It reawakens that excitement I had a a kid in the 1960s burying my nose in stacks of "Life" magazines over at my friend Mike’s house. Those double page black and white photos depicting a devastating Appalachian flood and solders dying in Viet Nam riveted my attention.

Story telling photography hooked me then and there, exposing the wider world to sheltered me living in a tiny Idaho town.



Click here for an iPad friendly version of the above audio slide show.

Multimedia rekindles the amazement I experienced on my first newspaper job in 1970s Seattle while photographing The Adventuress, a 1913 wooden schooner. My sailing companion, a television photojournalist, opened my ears by using his movie camera attached microphone to highlight wind in the sails, lines singing through pulleys, waves splashing and voices chanting.

Wow, a new way to tell stories other than with pictures. I thought back then that if for any reason I couldn’t continue working as a photographer, I would like to work with sound. It took a while, but here I am, having fun with sound ... and pictures.

Like with the fifth multimedia audio slide show from the “There’s A School For That” series commissioned by Archbishop Curley Notre Dame High School here in Miami. Senior class president Jessica tells why being a leader has helped her grow as a person and prepare for college. Photographs, audio interview and ambient sound allow you to see and feel her commitment in making ( while fasting for a weekend ) and delivering 3,000 peanut and butter sandwiches for the homeless.

Each of these two minute shows took between 40 and 50 hours, two in the field photographing and recording, and at least three more days on the computer cutting audio, editing and processing photos, assembling and tweaking the time line. A lot of work, but also a lot of fun.

I’m grateful those roots for exciting story telling have continued to grow in me all these years. Its fun, simple as that.

View more Miami multimedia photography here.