The old homestead was built around the turn of the century but hasn't been occupied or kept in repair for over sixty years.

Nick Iltsopoulos headshots for Forbes on short notice. I have a model release.

Nick Iltsopoulos headshots for Forbes on short notice. I have a model release.

Nick Iltsopoulos headshots for Forbes on short notice. I have a model release.

Florida's wetlands are seen by residents and visitors alike as a unique attribute that the state possesses, being home to a wide variety of plants and animals that need this climate to survive. However, because Florida is also seen as such a profitable area for land development and tourism in the summer, these wetlands may be in danger from real estate developers. This fundamental problem is being taken care of with a system of wetland mitigation, which seeks to make up for any destruction of the wetland areas, by requiring them to sponsor projects that restore or create new wetland areas.

After World War II, Florida wanted to increase both its truck farming and its cattle business. Already it was the second largest cattle state after Texas, but they wanted more land. More than a million acres of Florida wetlands were drained with long canals such as in this scene where they did so though many ranches into rivers like the Peace River and the Myakka River. Today, through wetland programs much of this land is being converted by to natural wetlands by selling wetland mitigation credits to developers. Less and less water is flowing through these projects especially during the Spring dry period. In the Summer, this canal will deepen many feet with fast flowing water and silt into the Myakka River system. Little is drained from the Longino Ranch these days, though.

Longino Ranch Barn with Tractors and rolled hay

During the late 1940s and early 1950s much of Southwest Central Florida's wetlands was drained for cattle pasture land. The Slough Project where over a million acres were drained into the Myakka and Peace Rivers was born. Because of Wetland mitigation projects today, some of this land is being reclaimed as wetland. Here the channel is during the dry season and with less water than in prior years.

Longino Ranch wetlands in the morning. This is the early spring dry season with about three inches of water in the center of the pond. No fauna other than some small birds were detected in the center area. Coyotes are known to predate these type ponds this early in the season though known were spotted today. The Longino Ranch is 9,000 acres of ranch and woodlands located near the Peace River between Arcadia and Sarasota in the Southwestern part of Florida next to the Myakka River State Park. Much of the wetlands were drained in 1953 with the water sent to the Peace River or the Myakka River.

Juvenile Green Heron foraging in a marsh in Tampa, Florida, USA.

DeLand, Florida

DeLand, Florida

Sigma 10-20 DX at f/8 on an FX D800 to show the small image circle on a full frame camera.

Maximum correction using Photoshop CS6 and manual lens profiles. I didn't see a preset profile for this use, obviously. Midpoint moved up and slider all the way to the right.

No correction applied. RAW file converted at defaults and profiles not applied. Camera in FX mode at f/1.8

Lens at f/8 with no corrections. I used RAW defaults with profiles turned off.

DeLand, Florida

Sigma 10-20 f/4-5.6 DX Superwide sells for only around $450 USD. It is one of the few very sharp and very contrasty DX zoom and at that price, really is a real bargain. Sigma also makes an f/3.5 version which is not nearly as good. It does not do well on FX at any focal length.