"I usually don't miss a shot," Southwest Florida photographer Clyde Butcher said. "If there's a shot I've missed, I usually come back."
Butcher sees life through a different lens.
"I'll try to explain," Butcher said. "The angle of view I like to shoot is a little, 8-by-10 camera with a 120-millimeter lens at a 128-degree angle view. The sun is a 1-second exposure. Grass can't even move when you shoot that."
Clyde's curiosity for the perfect shot clicked in 1961. That's when this former architect fell in love with nature.
"I found a spot up on the hills of San Luis Obispo. I built the model to scale the trees," Butcher said. "I saw someone work in Yosemite in 1961, and I said, 'Why would you photograph a tree?'"
Butcher traded oaks for mangroves in 1979, moving to Southern Florida. He now lives in Big Cypress National Preserve, surrounded by the millions of acres of wilderness he loves to capture with his camera.
While shooting in color is popular, he feels that his dream of best capturing the beauty of the environment is achieved in a different tone.
"White creates oneness," Butcher said. "What's the most important thing in the environment? There is no one thing. Everything has to work together."
He's taken countless black-and-white photos to inspire others to preserve our rich natural heritage.
But it's a photo someone else took that presents his proudest moment.
For the Ansel Adams of the Everglades, the Oval Office is a long way from the swamp.
In October 2024, Clyde accepted the National Medal of the Arts, which had been received by Georgia O'Keefe in 1985, Ray Charles in 1993, and Steven Spielberg in 2023.
"Am I really here? Is this really happening to me?" Butcher said.
It's an unforgettable honor for any artist.
"He [President Joe Biden] bucked the thing around my neck," Butcher said. "He didn't have some guy do it; he actually put the medal on himself. I told him to come down and do a swamp walk with us. He laughed."
Even after the award of a lifetime, you'll still find Butcher dodging more than just alligators during his shoots.
"I was about 30 feet from a tree that big. It fell right in front of me, 330-foot tree. It was noisy," Butcher said.
From one of the nation's most creative minds, if you have a dream, it's worth more than just one shot.
"People ask me, 'How did you get this far?'" Butcher said. "I just kept going."