Journal Of Light

In wonder and gratitude, prize-winning photographer John Moran travels the Sunshine State with his cameras, seeking his vision of natural Florida as it must have appeared to Ponce de Leon and other early strangers in paradise. This remarkable collection of images and essays celebrates the magic of a landscape born of water, he writes, and "blessed with beauty beyond measure."            The book caps Moran's 20-year odyssey to discover the soul of one of the most photographed states in the country. Still, he says, for a photographer who works on the road, he doesn't get around very much. The outer limits of his travels ordinarily are defined by places close to home, with names like Live Oak, Cedar Key, and Micanopy. Working mostly in north and central Florida, Moran says his pictures consecrate a region "steeped in blackwater swamps and rivers, populated by egrets and alligators."Keenly aware that much of the state's wilderness has all but vanished, his pictures sometimes only suggest the illusion of unspoiled nature. "I can't tell you how often I've had to recompose my pictures to eliminate a beer can or a bed mattress or worse in the woods," he writes. At times, he's made his best pictures literally within sight of his car, "aware of my own impact on the land, mindful of the myth of untainted nature that I promote with my camera." He's also worked in unconventional situations, lying inside a homemade PVC pipe-and-burlap blind to photograph da