How is Spring going where you are this year? Down south it's almost over, but not quite yet. We started out in a severe drought and finally started to get some rain the last week or two, and with it, flowers... everywhere. This is perhaps the farthest behind I have ever found myself in editing our Spring blooms, but maybe that's because we have more flowers to shoot than we ever have before. Our next hybrid Iris bulbs to bloom are called Cubs Win It, and they went all out with around 20-30 blooms in the one garden bed.

I'm making an attempt this year to better document the process of shooting, so with all of the Iris blooms I am using my older, big, heavy camera, a D850 and a macro lens. That means my other cameras are being used in the documenting process. The Iris flowers are large enough that they don't really need a macro lens, it just happens to be one of my sharpest lenses, and the combination gives the truest rendition of the colors and textures.

With the Iris bulbs the edit I'm doing is very minimal. The goal here is to represent these blooms as close to real life in color and contrast as possible. We will eventually be using these images as stock photos for our Iris website (DIG) so we need them to be as true to how we see them in real life as I can make them. I do love the pastels in the yellow iris bud below, it just has that painting look to it, but it is a very unique yellow.

There are a lot of "NoID" blooms in our yard this year, which means they either have "No-ID" yet or they are just unidentified for good (generic). The purple below is an example of a more generic Iris bloom in our garden, the same with the pure white Iris blooms below.

I find the pure white flowers the most difficult to photograph since the white tends to blow out and you lose all texture and depth. This is a lot like trying to shoot snow when it all just turns into a white blob, so underexposing the whites is the best way to go.

This is an example of a Violet NoID Iris bloom, for the moment, since we will be able to identify this one eventually. We had one bed that had one named sign but two completely different blooms came up, so we will have to go back and verify records to give this one a proper hybrid name. It's such a beautiful violet purple and in the shade it just turns almost luminescent.

Cubs Win It Hybrid Iris

The hybrid Iris bulbs are the heart of our new Iris garden and these were some of the first ones to show up this Spring. These are called Cubs Win It which have this very light blue-purple upper flower (called their Standards), yellow beards, and deep dark blue-purple lower flowers (call their Falls).

Their blues look purple in some light and blues in other light. You can tell below how flowers look vastly different depending on how the sun is hitting them. Shooting flowers in the shade or reflected sun is almost always my aim to reduce the glare and properly show the colors.

This is just a very small taste of what's to come from our Iris Garden . If you haven't seen the earlier Spring posts you can check out First Set of Iris Blooms to Share or when we first got started this Spring with Bright Spring Colors Are Here when we got out the fertilizer and got to work.

If you have any garden photos to share just reply to our email or leave a comment in the post below. Until next time...

It has taken far too long for me to get to our spring blooms, but I finally made it to that part of my Lightroom edit. Each year I have tried to document our spring flowers and I did this year, I just never got to the editing part. Last year this time was insane with colors, see Our Spring Flowers Blooming Out, but this year our area, in the Southeast U.S., is in the middle of a pretty severe drought, so our spring rains never came this time. We weren't sure if we would see any colors this time, but the iris blooms are one plant that doesn't really care if there is rain or isn't rain, they will give you a field full of color regardless.

This is our first spring after planing our huge Iris Garden all last year, so we had (and still have) huge expectations for the hybrid Iris blooms this year. Throughout the year last year we built raised beds and planted over 65 unique hybrid Tall Bearded Iris, see Progress Update on Raised Iris Bed Construction for the details, and now we get to see what all the hard work produced.

So, if you love Iris blooms, you are in for a bonanza of unique Iris colors over the next few weeks on this site.

I love these first frames created with a vintage Nikon lens. The Iris take on an almost painting-like quality. Between the old lens, the wind, and the wildflowers, these were some of my favorite of early Spring.

My 50 Year Old Vintage Nikon Lens

Those first images above were all the transplants from last year that we spread out all over the property around the house (not the hybrids, stay tuned). And they were actually shot with a lens that was released by Nikon in 1978, the Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 Ai-S.

I picked up this manual focus lens, well used, several years ago, and every time I take an extra minute to use it I remember why I like it so much. This lens is going to be much softer than today's standard mirrorless lenses, but it has so much character built into it's glass that it is nearly impossible to replicate today using "new" lenses or creative editing techniques.

My only quarrel with this lens is that I don't take it out more often. In my mind I "don't have time to use it." You have to completely change your mindset in time spent and quantifiable results. You can't just do the spray and pray technique with this combination, you have to be intentional and slow.

Using a 10 year old DSLR and a 50 year old lens takes practice and patience. Somehow, it takes more of both now than it did when I was just shooting this setup every day. I have a list of Ai-S lenses I would like to find used some day, by then the patience required may not be achievable, but I love the results.

All White Tall Bearded Iris Blooms

The all white Iris blooms this year were absolutely amazing! I never really gave them much notice in years past because they tended to be a little weak looking, and of course the all white almost disappeared in a sunny photo. Not so this year. They had beautiful large blooms with wonderful texture, bright yellow tongues, and a little bit of the yellow and white tiger stripes in the back.

If there is one thing our most recent Lightroom updates have done is make it easier to work with the very edges of the histogram. Maybe it's always been that way and I just didn't notice until now, but I find working with dark blacks and bright whites to be much better now. The point is to see texture in the all white, not just a white wash out.

Mixed Colors and Wildflowers

One of the biggest surprises of the early spring flowers were the Sweet William wildflowers (the red ones below). These wildflowers came up in mass, and stayed, for the duration. They just came up and provided a swath of red in an area covered with purple and white, for weeks on end.

In case you were wondering where the hybrid Iris blooms are... stay tuned, they are coming up soon. Right now, current day, about 75% of of our bulbs from last year have bloomed and I can't wait to share them with everyone. See you again soon!

Auburn's Spring football game came and went in a blink of an eye. If you are unfamiliar with college football, (almost) every school plays a Spring game, which is basically a scrimmage game of offense vs defense or some variation of this.

I was trying to think back to how many Spring games I have been to over the years and I really couldn't figure that out, it's been a lot. I went back and took a look at the website for previous A-Day Games posts, and there are some interesting ones in there dating back to 2009. My favorite (that I actually posted about) was in 2024 when I decided to take a roll of film that day. I shot a roll of Portra 400 and then posted the entire roll of film at A-Day Auburn Spring Football 2024 good, bad, or ugly, without editing, straight from the developer. Some of those shots are my favorite and ended up in my book on Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Spring A-Day games are generally not the most exciting game day experience of the sports season, but it still has it's own traditions and kind of kicks off summer in these parts. This year was actually a way better experience than in the most recent years.

Alex Golesh's Debut

This was our first look at Alex Golesh's team. It did include an offense vs. defense format, but more importantly, for the fans, it was actually a format for the Spring game that went back to what we use to do years ago, say pre-2020. We played an actual full 4-quarter scrimmage, and the guys looked locked in and committed. Not polished, but focused.

In previous years we have had a very laxidasical approach to this game. We really almost just needed to cancel it. It either rained, or it was freezing cold (or both), or the coach decided we weren't going to play (after everyone got there), or the format was unknown and it just looked like chaos walking around on the field, or there was a national pandemic happening, and all kinds of other things. But this year, it was warm, sunny, focused, lasted longer than 30 minutes, and felt like an Auburn experience.

The improvements this year were great, the only thing I would love to see is for us to play an actual game against an actual team like Troy from down the road. But nobody wants to see anyone get hurt in a Spring game, so that seems unlikely at this given point in NIL history.

Additional Game Notes

• Coverage: Here’s everything that happened during Auburn’s 2026 A-Day Spring Game
• Scoring Notes: the scoring in this game was so complicated but the offense ended up getting the best of the defense on this day.

Game Photos

I did not take in a camera this time other than my iPhone, so I was stuck doing some photography on the phone, but when you have no other options, the iPhone makes for a great camera if it is the only one you have with you.

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After 20+ years in one online space, I finally flipped the switch yesterday. My new photography-focused website is now up to date and live at scottfillmer.xyz (xyz-as in "everything"). My entire online content library is now in one place. It has more than 50,000 images for you to flip through, and over 1,600 blog posts and pages. My .com site is now my main splash page, and my freelance business website has been moved off as well.

What is here now is a personal website, based around photography, written by a real person, with photos taken by a real human. As they say now, the mistakes are real, they're mine, not powered by AI. To me, I still think there is real value in content produced by an actual person, even if AI-content has surpassed human written content now.

Who Has an Ad-Free Website Today?

Plus, as a bonus, my website is still a completely ad-free experience! Deborah and I have always tried our best to intentionally create an experience that is ad-free. Those are the websites we like to read (if we can ever find them anymore), and I am a firm believer in producing something that you yourself would want to read or view. So this one remains ad-free!

Why Change Anything Now?

I went through a bit of the changes I was making to my website in my last post Bright Spring Colors Are Here. In case you missed that, I want to give my subscribers a quick update, because things will look different here.

One of the reasons for making such a big change was to create a new foundation for the next 20+ years. I also wanted a place where you could see new updates and have personal discussions, without having to log into a Wordpress account. And now you can.

If you received this in an email, you are already subscribed because you were subscribed to my old website. Now all you have to do to comment is click the login on the site and you'll receive an email with a link and that's it. If you aren't subscribed but want posts to arrive in your inbox, go here to subscribe with just your email address. Easy as that.

If you don't want any pesky emails, just unsubscribe below, or if you want to send me a private personal message (via email), just click reply on this email and it comes right back to me.

What is Coming Up Next?

Now that all of that is done, we get to the fun stuff. Deborah and I have been collecting a ton of new content to publish since the first of the year. This includes new updates on our travel website, Shanty Travelers, where we are working on our vanlife stuff, and our Iris Garden (DIG) is now putting out amazing blooms like I've never seen before.

Iris Blooms Everywhere!

We have about 60 different varieties blooming, or about to bloom, and the colors are just truly incredible. Here are two of the most recent blooms. Have you ever seen Iris Bulbs bloom in those colors before?

Auburn's A-Day Game

Of course it's Auburn in Spring, so the Auburn Tigers had their annual A-Day Game where they played each other. I actually really enjoyed going back to the traditional format this year, and I will have more photos of that game soon.

Gulf Shores to Dauphin Island

We also took a drive down to Gulf Shores and over to Dauphin Island recently. This was the first time we had taken Loki (our van) on a ferry ride (so fun), and the first time we had actually been to Dauphin Island. Spring Break season is probably not the best time to go down there for our tastes, but photos were taken. We spent one night in the van at the beach, and just one night smelling the ocean air is a glorious thing.

That's about it for this time. I hope you enjoy the new design and format. If you have any questions I would love to hear them. If this isn't your thing, I totally understand, the unsub button is right below this next photo! ⬇️ 🫡

I'm not hear to waste anyone's time, but I know there are more places on the Internet today to build community today than YouTube, so I am truly glad to have you right here at this point in time. Thank you. -Scott

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Spring has arrived in full force now. Down here that means in about a week, summer should be here and be baking us alive. At this point already have the air conditioning running, but it's nice to say goodbye to the cold.

This is a busy season in our area. Baseball is in mid-season form (NCAA Division I on the road to Omaha, maybe). Late March and early April is the most colorful time of year in our part of the world. Last year we finished building and planting a very large Iris garden and we have been waiting all winter to see what survived. The first one to arrive is a Tall Bearded Iris hybrid called Bernice's Legacy. This one is an incredible dark burgundy.

All together last year we planted at least 65 unique hybrid Iris bulbs, along with all the generic colors like purple, yellow, white, and so on. For this post, since I'm still working through my most recent edits, I just have this one Iris, Bernice's Legacy, to share with you today. In real time we have at least 3-4 more unique colors that are already in bloom, ones with ruffles, multi-colored, fragrant, all uniquely different.

Blogging Updates Are Coming

The colder days in January and February this year were spent working almost non-stop on my new blog(s) and websites. I'm making progress, but it's a slow burn with the size of this project. As far as I can tell I have almost 1700 blog posts, 100's of pages, countless notes, clips, snaps, and almost 800,000 images spanning more than 25 years of creating online content.

That means decades of making mistakes, transferring those mistakes to other places, and living through countless platform updates and code changes from Wordpress.

This change had been brewing for years with me. I have been ready to take control of my own content, get it organized, have all the photos viewable and easy to load, fix all those broken links... all the things I have always wanted to do with my online content but never wanted to take the time to do it.

Well, now I am deep into the abyss of doing it. I'm currently building scripts to get every detail worked out of exporting xml files and importing to markdown using Obsidian, designing out a specific theme ux, and pulling in all the content I have ever created. It's a huge project, and one I am also doing simultaneously with our travel site Shanty Travelers as well as Deborah's blog too.

My Biggest Online Project

I don't think I have ever taken on a project as comprehensive as this one. From the first computer I ever used I kept all the data it created, every college paper, every email, I stored all my work on countless hard drives over the years going back to the late 90's. I've kept everything, and now I'm using pieces and parts of all this data to build out my most ambitious website project I've ever made. If you are asking "why!"?

Well, I keep asking myself that too, and there are nearly countless reasons I can come up with at this point, but the most important one being my passion for photography and blogging. At this point this has become a lifelong project for me, and I want to see what I can produce when I really put some effort into the work. When you go to websites today you are inundated with ads, or the websites look sloppily built, bugs everywhere, no organization, so I do think people can still appreciate an experience online that is well thought out, organized, free from ads and sales pitches, and this is what I have always wanted to build.

New Websites

I did not envision having to gain a skillset as a data scientist or systems administrator, and all the other technical aspects of website design, hosting, storage, and so on, but here I am. It's a skillset I'm glad I now have.

If you want to see the work in progress, I'm building it live instead of just working until it's "finished" and then publishing it, mainly because it's such a huge project, but eventually this blog will move over there to scottfillmer.xyz and this one will be repurposed. I've also been able to setup static sites now for my media at slf.media where it holds 100,000 images that feed my websites content, and my company website, Fillmer Services Co as well.

I'm as excited about this project as any one I've ever done online and exhausted at the same time. I'm no longer constrained by what a platform says I have to do, but with that freedom comes a lot of decisions and work.

While I work on that I'll leave you with more spring photos from our garden. I hope you get to see some spring colors where you are.

Our Current Spring Colors

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Old sayings often ring true throughout history and Lord Acton's words about power are still alive and well a long time after he penned those famous words. I've been thinking through a slight variation on his take for a while, years now actually, adding "weakness" (mainly here referring to weak leadership), which accomplishes the same thing.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. ~Lord Acton

These two words placed together, weakness and corruption, aid each other in their own development, but ultimately it is the classic struggle for power.

Organizations Suffer

I'm mainly writing about weak leadership in the church because this is the area I have the most experience with, but it applies to countless other areas and organizations. The church, over the last say 20-30 years, has eroded trust and theological authority to the point where infighting among denominations and lawsuits between churches and conferences is the norm in our world. And I think weakness in leadership has a lot to do with our current day issues (or mess).

It isn't that I witnessed flat out corruption in the church, at least not at the highest level¹, but weakness in leadership, or the unwillingness to make necessary changes, difficult changes to strengthen the organization, is the root cause of so many issues.

In my experience, this continues to be the downfall of so many churches. Unfortunately, the result is these churches make the news, air their dirty laundry on social media, and then pretend like nothing happened, often changing their name (because that helps people forget), and then they move on.

Whether it is a moral failing in leadership, or strong differences in theological issues, weak leadership, directly leads to a corruption of trust an individual has in the church itself, large or small. This directly affects the decline in church attendance of that person, many times, for life. People ultimately move to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, outside the church, and who can blame them.

There are countless examples of this from small indecencies of individual moral failures, to the mega-large where weak leadership inside an entire denomination can damage the small local organizations trying to help those seeking a Godly relationship.²

There Are No Perfect People

Unfortunately, in the end, one has to conclude, there are no perfect people, and people run organizations, and therefore, people will bring their faults and issues into any organization they lead. But the church should rise above these, hold their leadership to a higher standard, let iron sharpen iron, and make hard but strong decisions for the strength of the future church and the people they lead.

People over the years have approached me with questions they had about leaving this church or that church, or leaving the overall big-C church in general. My standard response was... there is no perfect church because there are no perfect people. But at some point, we (Believers) have to recognize the problems, stand up to those in power, and make changes that matter. Doing so will make the church stronger, not weaker. Otherwise, the only option left is to just leave.³

I wish this wasn't the case. I tried to change it. But, eventually, I took the only option I had left instead.⁴

A small sub-note about this article: this was actually written over a period of many years. And it wasn't intended to be just a long rant about the weakness in the church. At the time it was meant as more of an encouragement to those of us in the church who could make a difference. Unfortunately in the years from, say, 2016-2026 things, to me, got even worse. The split of the United Methodist Denomination, a broader organization I have been part of most of my entire life, is now the pinnacle of my thoughts here. The weakness in leadership that attributed to this broad shift has had, and will continue to have a generational affect on the regular ordinary person who just wanted to seek out a relationship with God. I think the opposite could be true as well. Strong, Godly, leadership, could reverse trends, and bring hope to many.

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1. Mid-level outright mis-management of church funds seems to be the most overwhelming sin in the church, beyond that of even sexual scandals or doctrinal theological disagreements. I personally witnessed this many of my previous churches and also in the ones I visited or worked (partnered) with as well. These organizations were either totally inept at managing money properly or outright spent money in countless ways that never should have been spent. I feel new arriving pastors can do this at an overwhelming level when they first arrived to either make new changes or set a tone for who is in charge. ↩︎
2. My experience does not come from the news, or from social media gossip, but from personal life experiences over a long period of time, decades. I believe those reasons are the hardest to dispute in my own mind. So these thoughts are not based on anything other than my own experience. ↩︎
3. I do not write this because I have some hate for the church, just the opposite. The Church is the Bride of Christ and I want to see it do well, spread, and grow. So if you can change it for the better do so, if you can't, go somewhere where you can. ↩︎
4. This is not a pandemic concern about every church in existence, but a warning to the naive (as I was for a long time), that weak leadership can damage a small local church beyond repair, and therefore damage individuals who look to the local church for love, guidance, discipleship, and community. If recognized, do something about it before it's too late. ↩︎

The first official Iris blooms of Spring have arrived in our garden! Winter here always feels too cold and too long for how far south we live. But every year about this time we remember how quickly things start to bloom and warm up. If you were to look at the hardiness zones for gardens for very far South East Alabama, we happen to live just north of the line where the weather still gets a good freeze. South of us in Florida, around Tampa, they get to a point where a freeze is a rare event.

Iris bulbs actually do need a freeze period to put them into hibernation for a least a few weeks. Gardens in Orlando and Miami have a hard time growing Tall Bearded Iris bulbs because they just don't get the cold freeze in winter needed to keep their bulbs healthy. We do. So while winter isn't our favorite time of year, the Iris need it to survive.

Last year we finished off planting over 60 raised beds in our Iris Garden so this year we get to watch them grow and hopefully bloom. The first unique Iris Bulbs in the garden to bloom this year looks like it will be Bernice's Legacy Tall Bearded Iris (see below), which are a super dark red burgundy color.

Bernice's Legacy Iris

Edgar the Papillon

Once things really get blooming here my camera will be out and shooting almost every day. When does it warm up enough for the flowers to bloom where you are?

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It is finally starting to warm back up in the Deep South. And never a minute too soon either. Every time we think cooler weather might be nice and it goes below 60°F we remember that cold is not our thing. This week baseball is back and temps are in the 80°s so it's getting better.

I finally make it back here to the blog after spending the month of February buried deep in a rabbit hole called Claude. And if you are a photographer and have never used Claude, just stop reading this post right now, go get an account and start using it. You can thank me later.

I've been through a few technology or Internet revolutions in the past few decades, like the .com bubble, that was fun, but now we are firmly in the AI time in history, and it is just barely getting started. As a photographer talking about AI just let me clarify there is a big difference between using AI to accomplish tasks, using it to build things, and using AI to create photos that then get passed off as, well, photos. I still want my photographs to be taken by a human pushing a button capturing a slice of history.

I'm talking about the part of AI you use to build things, create things, like photographers have done for a hundred years, creating images. The things that can be done using these tools are astounding. I wrote a post back in 2022 called ChatGPT Will Be an Incredible Productivity Tool thinking like we all did, or still do, that these tools will be a nice way to Google search without going to Google, but that is long gone now.

Lightroom and Claude

Think about your Lightroom library and how many images you have in there. Think about all the data stored away, stored away potential, waiting to be utilized properly. If you take a peek at my Lightroom library above you can see I have 813,060 photos in there. When I started messing around with Claude it was pretty obvious that the possibilities became literally endless in what it could do (and woah, Claude Code is only a few months old!).

If you are wondering what it could do, that is up to your imagination, but I started looking at big issues, like can it take my entire catalog, create a thumbnail of each file, then take that data and make it into a website that could be browsed. Turns out, no problem. Sure it takes some time, and a lot of brain-pain learning, but it's certainly possible.

What I have been doing with Claude in conjunction with my photography is to get a wholistic plan for my online content and find a way to build out a future for all my websites, storage, domains, and the like. I finally got around to building a website for my tech services at Fillmer.co and another one for a media repository at slf.media to house my online images, starting a new blog build at scottfillmer.xyz that runs on markdown files, and a huge number of other things that are still in the works.

A Walk in the Park

I am not going to say any of this is "easy" in the way that we think things are easy today. Nothing worth doing today is truly a one click, pre-made, instant gratification result item. And neither is creating... anything. Things like ChatGPT and Claude can give you some super powers you don't already posses, but you still have to have do the work, have the motivation, time, effort, drive and creativity to accomplish new things.

In case you were wondering, yes we did actually go take a walk in the park, with Edgar. Time out in Loki in the peace and quiet of nature, away from the computer, is always so amazing. We drove out to a state park nearby at Lake Martin and had lunch and tested out some video stuff for YouTube. There was still work going on since we were working on a video, but just being out among the trees was so nice. Here are a few photos from that day. We also have a post over on our travel blog if you want to see the whole gallery.

As far as my plans for Claude... I'm creating, building, and dreaming. I have always wanted a way to own my own content (all of it... email, text, photos, blog posts, essays, notes), to not be at the whim of any one platform or company. To become platform agnostic is a fight worth fighting. Starting with the launch of Facebook and continuing to present day, our content has been used, scraped, violated (copyright), sold, and manipulated to the benefit of those who control the platform it's on. To take back the ownership aspect is a battle, but one I'm willing to fight for, starting with my websites, photos, and any other online content. Before Claude and other AI tools I'm not sure this was even remotely possible other than just throwing your hands up in the air and quitting. Now anything seems possible.

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Our last day of driving got us to a great lunch spot at Lake Eufaula's Lakepoint State Park Marina. It took me a lot longer to get to the edit for the last day than all the other days combined, but that's how it goes sometimes. Here are a few of the shots from that driving day from Valdosta, GA to Lakepoint Marina, AL.

If you are new here, as I mentioned in my previous post in Driving Around Florida Day 1, I’m posting a short recap of some of my favorite images on a trip we took to Florida a few weeks ago. If you would like to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 8” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Valdosta to Eufaula Day 8.

From Valdosta to Eufaula

It wasn't really planned out this way, but we ended up finishing our trip at almost the very same place we started. We usually like to go in more of a circular route, but this time the road just took us back to where we started, in Eufaula, AL.

Generally speaking fog is one of my favorite weather events to take out the camera and shoot. Driving, not so much. We started the day in super heavy fog as you can see from the shot below. We were driving on the deserted back country roads so traffic wasn't that big of a deal, but visibility of animals was. We had no altercations with wandering deer and the fog lifted mid-morning.

Once we reached Eufaula we pretty much felt like we were home so we took the time to stop at the Marina to eat lunch in the massive and empty parking lot. The good thing about traveling during this time of year is how empty all the parks are, and the bad part of course is the cold.

Everything changes when it's cold. Living in the southeast, I know cold is relative to what you're use to and me calling it "cold" is relative, but cold is cold to us. People up north would find the winters down here pleasant. But anything below about 60°F and less than 50% humidity down here is pretty much unacceptable in the life sustaining category.

Somehow, in the winter, I tend to edit differently than I do in the summer. The white balance is always doing weird things with the sun. It's not Alaska weird, but with the sun so far over in the southern sky, and always lower on the horizon than what seems normal, I always find these teal-blue-greens in my edits. I do like the cool tones to reflect the cool air, so there are a lot less reds, orange, pinks, and a lot more blues, greens, and what I consider the cold colors. Shooting literally at mid-day doesn't help warm things up either.

The marina on this day was cold and dry. It always amazes me how the air can be so dry when surrounded by so much water. But today, no moisture, no clouds, just clear, still, and cold. After lunch we walked through all the boat docks to check out some of the houseboats stored here over the winter. There are some real creative builds floating on these docks. We put more photos of those on our travel post if you are interested.

A Week in Florida Series

This has been a series of travel posts originating from our travel site, Shanty Travelers. As I mentioned above, to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 8” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Valdosta to Eufaula Day 8.

This was the last post in this series, I hope you enjoyed following along with us. We have moved a lot of content over to our travel blog so if you want an email when we post over there we would love for you to subscribe to our travel blog it's free and we only send updates with new posts.

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I'm taking a brief interlude to my posts around Florida today to remember a brief moment on a normal routine day. Last week, on the way to the store, I passed a boat ramp parking lot I've been to many times before that runs along the Chattahoochee River. As I drove by I briefly thought about how nice it would be to stop over there and take a walk in the middle of the day... even thought it's cold, the wind is blowing, I didn't bring a jacket, I didn't bring my "good" camera, I was busy and had things to do... I had all the excuses already lined up in my head for my return back home.

But then, the brain does what it does, and I thought "how many times do I think this way and never stop?" This time I'm going to stop and take a walk down the Chattahoochee River, even if it's just for 15 minutes. So that's what I did, 7 minutes down and 7 minutes back.

It was the most peaceful 15 minutes of my day that day, and it reminded me how difficult it is to break out of our normal daily routines? Not big epic things, just small, seemingly easy, things, some spontaneous exercise, or to just stop to breathe in the air. It may sound trite, or even obvious, but it often takes a lot of effort, energy, determination, boldness, and sometimes a willingness to overcome fear in all its various forms and disguises. What you get in return is nearly priceless.

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On Day 7 we were greeted with the rudest change in weather from the most beautiful 76° just 12 hours earlier to something near 30-40 mph winds and cold in the 45° range. No matter, I decided I wasn't going to let a little wind deter me from my morning walk with a cup of coffee down the beach.

If you are new here, as I mentioned in my previous post in Driving Around Florida Day 1, I’m posting a short recap of some of my favorite images on a trip we took to Florida a few weeks ago. If you would like to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 7” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: St. Augustine to Valdosta Day 7.

The wind turned out to be a little more difficult to deal with than I had ever imagined when I started out. On the one hand, it had turned the tranquil pool-like Atlantic from yesterday evening into a raging mist of blowing foam and water (see my Instagram video).

In fact the wind was blowing so hard I literally had to walk backwards from my turnaround point all the way back to Loki. What I was hoping for was to get to watch the sunrise over the ocean while I calmly walked down the beach with my morning coffee.

I did get the sunrise part. It was beautiful. Once again I only had my iPhone with me, so the images I got were from my phone not my Nikon, but in case you were wondering, the RAW file 48mp image from an iPhone creates a pretty decent DNG RAW file that leaves you a bit of room to work with that JPG files just don't do. So any time I'm out with just my phone I always hit that RAW file button and shoot away.

St. Augustine Lighthouse

We briefly stopped at the St. Augustine Lighthouse on the way out. I say briefly because it's buried in a neighborhood and they charge you $18 to walk up to it, so I was only willing to get shots through the bushes like a creepy stalker. There are other shots of the lighthouse on our travel post for this day but my photography rule for lighthouses is, if you can't get an open shot without a huge amount of distortion (caused from looking straight up at it), just get in close and tight and focus on the bricks or surrounding area.

Suwannee River Visitor Center

We came across this abandoned welcome center when we entered Fargo, Georgia. It was one of the coolest finds on our trip and I posted a bunch of photos of this on the full length post if you want to see those shots. I do really love taking photos of abandoned places. There is so much history involved in what presents itself to you at the time you arrive. I'm not nearly as good at capturing these locations as a lot of people are that do mostly that kind of photography, but an attempt is always made.

To do those types of shots well you really need a strong subject, super high contrast lighting, a lot of shading, and a bit of boldness (depending on the location). When done well, the shots look apocalyptically cool. The Suwannee River Visitor Center was a total surprise to us. I went into much more detail in the other post, along with the history of the building and why it closed.

Valdosta Murals

This was also a surprise. I can't remember the last time we had been through Valdosta, and we had no idea that this mural was in the downtown area. This shot ended up being one of my favorite shots of the day because of all the vibrant colors. We happened to be there at the perfect time of day, late in the day, almost golden hour, and it made the bricks at the top of the image glow while the mural itself looked almost backlit.

Murals are becoming one of my favorite things to photograph. We started making a list of Murals by State, but there are so many of them spread around all over the place, a lot of them in very rural locations like The Murals in Bonifay Florida, that making a comprehensive list is pretty difficult.

A Week in Florida Series

This is series of travel posts originating from our travel site, Shanty Travelers. As I mentioned above, to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 7” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: St. Augustine to Valdosta Day 7.

See you for the last post from this series, Day 8 sometimes soon. I was hoping to get these out one every day but I'm still in the process of editing Day 8.

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The Florida Turnpike was the bulk of our driving on Day 6, and there is a lot of Turnpike toll roads throughout Central Florida. This day we drove the bulk of Central Florida all the way to St. Augustine, which is just south of the big city of Jacksonville. Interestingly, St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish in 1565, which means it holds the title of the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the continental United States, predating Jamestown and Plymouth.

If you are new here, as I mentioned in my previous post in Driving Around Florida Day 1, I’m posting a short recap of some of my favorite images on a trip we took to Florida a few weeks ago. If you would like to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 6” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Istokpoga to St. Augustine Day 6.

Driving to St. Augustine

One of my favorites photos of the drive that day was our breakfast stop at one of the travel plazas. This particular day was a Sunday, and because we installed Starlink into the roof of Loki, we were able to watch our Sunday Morning Church service at our normal time, streamed from home.

There is a lot going on in that photo between the choir bells and the cinnamon rolls, but I think it's a really cool snapshot of life in 2025-2026.

Driving through Orlando, even on a Sunday had some serious traffic to contend with. But, we ended up just getting on the express lane to Daytona Beach and on our side of the divide there was virtually no traffic at all. Road shots may not be all that photographically interesting, but I love the different architecture of the bridges, skyways, and light and dark contrasts, even deep shadows, that cover roadways.

Anastasia State Park

Finally, we made it to the north with one afternoon to enjoy before the cold and super blustery air was supposed to show up. We stayed at Anastasia State Park with these typical wide open huge beaches they have over on the Atlantic side.

The difference between the Gulf and the Atlantic is amazing. This is especially true between our local beaches at the Alabama Gulf Coast, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach etc., where you have this super pure bright white sand, but a more narrow beach. On the Atlantic side you have darker sand (which is actually much easier on the eyes and skin), and these massive wide open beaches (although still no dogs allowed at all... the Alabama-Florida coast is just not dog-friendly, period). Everything was still super high sun high contrast on this day. Tomorrow would be different.

A Week in Florida Series

This is series of travel posts originating from our travel site, Shanty Travelers. As I mentioned above, to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 6” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Istokpoga to St. Augustine Day 6.

See you for Day 7 soon (there are 8 days in this series in case you were wondering).

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Today I'm on to Day 5 of our trip around Florida, which took us from nearby Homestead up the central part of the state to Lake Okeechobee. If you have never seen Lake Okeechobee, it is the closest thing there is to one of the Great Lakes only in the Southern U.S., meaning it is huge. But, it is not very deep and it has a levy-like berm built all the way around it, so it's nearly impossible to see from the road.

If you are new here, as I mentioned in my previous post in Driving Around Florida Day 1, I’m posting a short recap of some of my favorite images on a trip we took to Florida a few weeks ago. If you would like to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 5” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Homestead to Okeechobee Day 5.

Driving Lake Okeechobee

We had to keep reminding ourselves this was the Christmas season. Walking around in 78° weather made it feel like anything other than late December, except for all the Christmas lights and decorations everywhere. This impressive tree was in the lobby of our overnight parking space, and I wanted to get the photo to remind me, yes, it was Christmas in South Florida.

It had been a long time since we had driven this part of Florida. All the citrus trees are gone and have been replaced with miles and miles of sugar cane and high tension power lines. These power lines went on, on both sides of the road, for what seemed like over 100 miles. Photographically, I always tend to get those pesky power lines out of the photos, but this was the view for hours.

Some of my other favorite photos of the day included our parking spot for lunch. We stopped at one of the locks along the lake where we were able to drive up on the ridge overlooking the lake. The view was spectacular, but it was basically high-noon so the colors and contrast were harsh for photos.

There was a paraglider doing takeoffs and landings over the lake, and the contrast of his red parachute wing was great since there was not a hint of red anywhere in the frame of the shots.

The next stop was through Orlando and up near Jacksonville where the warm weather ended, abruptly.

A Week in Florida Series

This is series of travel posts originating from our travel site, Shanty Travelers. As I mentioned above, to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 5” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Homestead to Okeechobee Day 5.

See you for Day 6 soon (there are 8 days in this series in case you were wondering).

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Our Day 4 in the Florida Keys started as a nearly magical morning, to use an overused phrase. We woke up on the ocean, in an incredible 72° humid-air breeze coming in through our vent fan. Silent except for the lapping water on the shore. I grabbed a cup of coffee and headed out to walk the beach as the sun rose over the Atlantic Ocean.

If you are new here, as I mentioned in my previous post in Driving Around Florida Day 1, I’m posting a short recap of some of my favorite images on a trip we took to Florida a few weeks ago. If you would like to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 4” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Key West to Homestead Day 4.

Driving the Keys

The photo of our van below is where we woke up, and I took about a 30 second walk over to the beach and started a slow walk down to the cut. It was maybe 72° in December, literally a picture perfect morning. I honestly can't quite remember a more peaceful morning walk than that hour. The crazy part was photographically, I didn't want to be weighed down by my camera, so all I had with me was my phone, but it did an adequate job to capture the moment and I was glad I left the Nikon in the van, sorta.

There is just something incredible about capturing the sunrise, or sunset, no matter the location. The sky and everything around it transforms into something totally different. Deep shadows, high contrast... it's of course why they call it "golden hour," and some are more golden than others.

Driving A1A

We had a time crunch to get out of the Keys, so there wasn't a whole lot of time to stop and take photos on the drive part of the day. One of the fascinating visuals in the Keys are the abandoned bridges left over from when either the railroad was active, or the old roadway bridges. Some are fishing piers, some are just dropping into the sea. It would have been great to stop and take some proper photos of all of those bridges, but you can still see quite a bit right from US 1/A1A.

It was really cool to get to see the very beginning of A1A again. It had been a really long time since we had been down here to this very spot. In two more days we would reconnect with A1A in Jacksonville, going almost from one end of the famous highway to the other (except we skipped from Miami to Jacksonville and went through Orlando). It was a long drive on this day but it is still one of the most beautiful drives in the country.

A Week in Florida Series

This is series of travel posts originating from our travel site, Shanty Travelers. As I mentioned above, to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 4” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Key West to Homestead Day 4.

See you for Day 5 soon (there are 8 days in this series in case you were wondering). Happy New Year to everyone, I hope your 2026 is a blessed year for you and your family.

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Welcome to my newest website and blog! As i have done with all my website projects, my focus is on creating an ad-free and independent community experience. This is Scott Fillmer XYZ, a brand new site I've created to collect all my various pieces of content from around the internet into one place. This will eventually include everything from photography portfolios to poetry to my shorter notes, posts of faith, and everything in between.

This is my Hello World post for this site, to introduce this website. Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe) in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published! I am also creating a monthly newsletter which will be included in the free subscription.

Choosing Independent Publishing

Creating a completely new website under the brand scottfillmer.xyz was meant to be a place where I could post and write about the things I'm passionate about, not just the things that Google wanted to index. A place with more personal freedom than my long time platform Wordpress can provide, and free from the stress of the Google algorithm, constant stat updates, and where I was the owner of the files.

I wanted a place where I determined how to present the files, where I could write the content. I have thousands of posts, and most of them are buried in a wordpress theme somewhere, and this website, or any that follow, will no longer be platform dependent but will operate with a different mindset.

There will soon be a lot more info here on my new XYZ space. I am moving 25+ years of content, photos, posts, papers, essays, in a one time arduous task to hopefully come out on the other side less dependent on platforms and more on the content I create.

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