- [Announcer 1] National Roofing Partners delivers single-source commercial roofing solutions in all 50 states through over 260 contractors nation-wide.

National Roofing Partners is a proud sponsor of "View Finders."

(gentle music) - [Announcer 2] Sigma is proud to support photographers and filmmakers around the world, and we believe creativity and sustainability go hand in hand.

(gentle music continues) (river water crashing) (dramatic music) - [Announcer 3] Every explorer seeks their own path and the promise of what's to come.

The truth lies west.

- [Announcer 4] Georgia College and State University provides over 40 graduate program offerings, including doctorates in nursing and education.

Learn more at gcsu.edu.

- [Announcer 5] Troncalli Subaru is a proud sponsor of "View Finders."

(waves crashing) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - Consisting of four barrier islands.

- And given their name by Sir Robert Montgomery in 1717.

- Featuring pristine beaches and ecologically significant marsh.

- These are the Golden Isles.

I'm Chris.

- I'm Paul.

- [Both] And we are the View Finders.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (lively music) ♪ When you grow up ♪ ♪ Live like a good boy oughta ♪ ♪ And your mama takes a shine to her best son ♪ ♪ Something different ♪ - Well, Paul, here we are again, driving to our destination.

- Yep, yep.

- You know, this season's been a little different.

This is our only episode driving.

We've been flying everywhere.

- [Paul] I'm spoiled now, man.

- I know, I know, so this is kinda like a throwback to last season where we kind of drove to every destination.

- [Paul] Yeah, and a familiar location too.

- [Chris] Familiar.

Very familiar.

- Yeah.

- So doing some Georgia Coast, but I'm not sure we've learned our lesson because- - Oh, I know what you're doing.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

- I think it's gonna be cold.

Why are we doing this in the winter time again?

(Paul chuckles) Maybe the cold's gonna be an issue, but beauty will not be an issue, for sure.

- [Paul] You can say that for sure.

South Georgia, definitely.

- [Chris] Yeah.

♪ When your mama heard the way that you'd been talking ♪ ♪ I tried to tell you ♪ ♪ That all she'd wanna do is cry ♪ - We got this bridge behind us right now, and it's pretty recognizable.

- Yes, it is.

- [Chris] What most people take when they go over to Jekyll Island, we're kind of surrounded by the Golden Isles right now, and it's just stunningly beautiful, but, man, that light is harsh.

- Very, very.

- We don't have any clouds helping us out yet.

The sun is not in a good spot.

It's the middle of the day.

- And this is a shot that you really want to get when you come here.

- Yeah.

- [Paul] When you're looking into this harsh light here, it kind of flattens out the color.

You don't see the color of the water, the color of the bridge, the color of the sky.

- [Chris] Yeah.

- [Paul] It kind of kills the image, but you could turn it into a black and white.

- Right.

I mean, in an ideal situation, we would just come back when the light is better, but we've got a lot of stuff lined up, a lot of places that we're gonna photograph, so this might be our only opportunity for this bridge.

So, much like a lot of things in life, and especially the world of landscape photography, you kind of get what you can get when you're there.

- [Paul] Yeah.

- [Chris] So we got a bit of a challenge, but maybe we'll walk away with something we like.

- That whole lemonade out of lemons thing.

- Yeah, we're gonna make some lemonade today, or at least we're gonna try to.

- Yeah, I'm thirsty.

Let's go, man.

- Let's do it.

(lively music continues) ♪ We're gonna do it, take your mama out all night ♪ ♪ You can stay up late 'cause, baby, you're a full-grown man ♪ - This, to me, is like the ultimate iteration of an aquatic habitat.

Some of it's hidden from the naked eye.

You wouldn't see it passing over our causeways.

I really do though hope that, one of the things that made me fall in love with it was when we vacationed here when I was a child, and we would pass over the causeways going to the beach, and I always wanted to stop here halfway across.

I never wanted to go all the way to the beach.

The beach is fine for some people, but for me, I wanted to be in the mud.

You know, I wanted to be where the critters are, and so that was the germ of it, really, for me.

It's seeing this back here and wondering, "You know, what's under that water?

What's out there?"

♪ I think I lost ♪ (gentle music) ♪ Something in the water ♪ ♪ I tried to swim to it ♪ ♪ I could not swim to it ♪ ♪ Sank down to search ♪ ♪ The bottom of the river ♪ - I grew up in North Georgia, and so I spent a lot of times in creeks and rivers and lakes and things like that, and I worked in those systems as a professional for some time, but, ultimately, I kept being drawn back to the sea.

(singer humming) ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ - Our project specifically is focused on some of the organisms that live in our estuary.

So all of the coastal Georgia is essentially a giant estuary.

We have a hundred miles of coastline and about 138,000 acres of salt marsh, and the salt marsh is a very unique habitat.

In some ways, it's difficult to sample because you can't just go out and count things, obviously.

It's not like terrestrial sand.

So one of the ways we do that is we pull what we call an otter trawl, and you can see the net behind us and the rigging.

That is a 40-foot wide net.

It's 40-foot wide at the mouth, and it's essentially a giant funnel.

So it goes to the bottom of the habitat along the seabed, and it pulls along the bottom.

Pull the net in, and we sort all of the species, everything down to species, everything we catch.

That happens every month.

We do that every month at 36 stations, 12 months a year.

Sometimes, we'll pull up 350, 400 pounds of critters.

So that means that this entire marsh produces a huge volume of biomass of life.

It's just life.

Life just teems in this area.

(singer humming) - Okay, so we are here for a sunset shot here on this pier, trying to shoot that bridge behind us there, and I already have my grand shot planned out.

I know where I'm gonna go for that, and I have time to get to that.

So, in between time, I wanted to get some shots of some wildlife out here, and I had a pelican that was out here just posing for me perfectly well.

I caught him from a distance, kept my distance, and he was just like a statue, just posing, just everything I wanted him to do.

- So the water has this, like, really rich blue look to it, and I think that that'll add a nice negative space.

I'm smoothing it out.

I've put an indie filter on so I can slow my exposure down, do like a two, three, four-second shutter speed.

I might end up even going longer than that, but the sun is dropping very, very quickly and I think it's actually gonna be a pretty good shot.

Very simple.

Sun, bridge, lots of negative space water, no texture to it.

Gonna smooth it out and just have that rich blue that I think will contrast really well with the orange-yellow sky.

(gentle music continues) ♪ I have the dream again ♪ ♪ I have the dream again ♪ ♪ My ego dies at the end ♪ ♪ It's ego death ♪ ♪ I live the dream like I still don't know what it meant ♪ ♪ Who am I, I've lost the thread ♪ ♪ My ego dies at the end ♪ (singer humming) (camera clicks) ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ - Yes, yes, yes, yes.

- Paul.

- I got more than I bargained for on this one.

- This was an unexpected treasure for us, because we had kind of come and scouted.

We're like, "Sunsets next to the bridge, that's gonna be great."

Done.

Go eat dinner.

- I saw a bunch of different compositions after that.

I saw wildlife.

- Stuff just presented itself.

- Yeah.

- So I saw you with the pelican.

- [Paul] Yeah.

- [Chris] Did you get a good pelican shot?

- Oh, man, did I ever.

I think I probably got my best wildlife shot that I've ever gotten.

(camera clicks) So, yeah, I'm happy about that one.

- Oh, man, and then, like, I got a long exposure, well after the sunset, of this pier and the reflection of the lights, and the way the water, it's very minimalist, but when I saw it on my screen, I'm like, "Oh, I really like that."

And then, of course, we got the lighthouse poking up above the trees.

- Yeah.

- [Chris] Got the, like Christmas lights on it.

It's very seasonal, so.

- And what I liked about this spot too is, immediately, you had that one grand shot, the bridge, and that was it.

It was good.

- It was good.

- But it gave us other shots, and sometimes that's what happens.

You think you got one big shot at the location, but you end up getting smaller shots once you check around and see what other compositions you can create, so.

- Great.

- Totally unexpected.

Totally unexpected.

- Great first day of photography here in the Golden Isles, and I don't know about you, but you know, we're on the Georgia Coast.

We need to eat some seafood.

- Chick-fil-A, or do they have seafood at Chick-fil-A?

- No, we're going seafood.

- Okay.

- We're going seafood, man.

(peaceful folk music) (peaceful folk music continues) ♪ I have heard the mother's tongue ♪ ♪ She said, "Baby, don't you come undone" ♪ ♪ I am so far from my home ♪ ♪ That heaven ♪ - [Scott] I think there are a lot of things that set this place apart.

I think that people are first drawn to the views, to the long marsh views like we're looking out across today.

♪ I am chasing shit beneath the haze ♪ - The Spanish moss to the huge oak trees, and then I think people soon realize what an incredibly rich culture and history we have, and it's a combination of these intact natural resources and the historical features and elements and culture that are intertwined here that set this place apart.

- The community wanted a school here for African American children.

All of the families from the south end of the island went to this school.

The schoolhouse was really built by hand by a lot of the craftsmen in the area at the time.

The school actually is finishing up celebrating the hundredth celebration.

- The overarching goal of the land trust is to protect land for future generations here on St. Simons, to protect the quality of life here on the island, to protect some of these landscapes, to protect some of the sites that have been important culturally and historically as well.

The conservation is sort of the guiding principle for land protection here.

- And we're still here, and we're doing some things, you know?

If you've seen any pictures of what it looked like compared to now, it's amazing.

♪ I was happy on my own ♪ ♪ I would call the days as they were known ♪ ♪ And in the guilt that I have found ♪ ♪ You know the one that sticks around ♪ ♪ I was so sure that I ♪ - So this has the makings of a really, really beautiful sunrise, and as soon as we walked out, we knew it, and so I'm just running around like crazy right now, shooting a lot of different stuff.

- So what I'm gonna do here, such a beautiful scene.

I wanna capture a little bit more than just what I think is gonna be the star of the show, the sky, of course, with the sunrise and the water.

Everyone likes to see a nice pretty sky with some nice blue water when you're at the beach.

What I'm gonna try to do though is also play around with these rocks here to give something else to the image besides just the sky and the water.

- I'm doing some abstract stuff using the water and just the color in the sky.

I used a boardwalk earlier that created a pretty strong leading line.

I'm about to go over and use some of maybe the sea oats as well.

Eventually, I might put on a zoom lens and kind of crop in really tight on certain little elements that start to pop as that sun comes up, but what it's doing as it's rising closer and closer to the horizon, it's slowly spreading color back behind us as well.

(gentle folk music) ♪ Feel the sea breeze ♪ ♪ Watch the bent trees ♪ ♪ Smell the salt, smell it all ♪ (singer humming) (gulls squawking) (singer humming) ♪ Run through forest ♪ ♪ Old and precious ♪ ♪ Stakes the gate ♪ ♪ Though we've changed ♪ ♪ We can't return again ♪ (camera clicks) ♪ Our brothers ♪ ♪ My love, my friend ♪ ♪ Oh, oh ♪ - On the Georgia Coast, we have 14 barrier islands, which is remarkable, and only four of those are reachable by car, which means that a lot of them are preserved, but they're not easily accessed, for the most part.

The land trust saw an opportunity to protect property and allow access, and so people can come to Cannon's Point Preserve or Guale Preserve, some of our smaller properties, and have an experience that's not unlike going to one of the more remote islands, and so it really gives people an opportunity to interface with our coastal environment and with nature and to kind of experience actually what most of the coast is like.

(gentle folk music continues) (gentle folk music continues) ♪ See your sweats all ♪ ♪ On burning my soul ♪ ♪ Wild hunt, we are but wild thieves ♪ ♪ Can't you hear it ring ♪ - The Jekyll Island Club Resort was founded by some of the most prominent names in the country.

J. P. Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Pulitzer, they were all the founding members of the club, so it was very exclusive, and those were the people that crafted America in the day.

The Federal Reserve was actually created in one of our meeting rooms just over here, and they also made the first transcontinental phone call from the Jekyll Island Club Resort to the West Coast.

So, pretty special history took place in this area.

(gentle folk music continues) (gentle folk music continues) One thing that Jekyll Island is, it's authentic.

The balance of the development and the preservation kind of will hold it for that forever.

(gentle folk music continues) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) - [Chris] Well, Paul, it's been a long day.

- Yes.

- We had an early alarm.

We had a beautiful sunrise, but it was pretty cold, and then, of course, lengthy, more production, traveling, scouting, all of that.

So I'm getting tired, but we get back to the hotel and we see this, like, winter wonderland around us.

- Yeah, it's spectacular.

- [Chris] I've photographed a lot of stuff.

I've never photographed Christmas lights.

Have you ever photographed- - [Paul] Yes, I've done.

- Have you?

- Yeah, I did it actually for the city of Atlanta.

- Okay.

- The campaign they had going on.

- Well, good.

So you got some experience.

You kind of know what you're up against.

- Yeah, I think so.

(upbeat festive music) ♪ Happiness is automatic ♪ ♪ There's music in the air ♪ ♪ Grab the boxes from the attic and haul 'em down the stairs ♪ ♪ Freezing weather's 'round the corner and everybody knows ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Soon the tree will be all lit up, sparkling as it glows ♪ - We're gonna use these for the "View Finders" Christmas special.

How about that?

- There we go.

I like the way you think.

- Who's singing?

Who's singing (indistinct)?

You?

- Oh my gosh.

Nobody wants to hear me sing.

I promise you that.

I promise.

That's how you get a show canceled is you put me on as a singer.

♪ It's not even Christmas yet, I got all the gifts I need ♪ ♪ I take a real quick look around and suddenly I see ♪ ♪ It's not even Christmas yet, I got all the gifts I need ♪ (waves crashing) (gulls squawking) - The island has amazing beaches.

So we're approximately eight miles long and the island is not very wide.

It's about a mile and a half wide.

So you'll find yourself on these pristine beaches that go on for miles and miles.

On the north end of the island is Driftwood Beach, and that is a really special place.

So, you know, the ecology there is that islands move.

You know, the sand shifts.

The ground shifts.

So there was a maritime forest up on that end of the island, and over the decades, the ocean sort of came in and washed away the soil, but the trees are oak trees and they're so large that they really don't get washed away very often.

So when you go up there, you have this really magnificent beach, but these massive oak trees that are sort of left there, you know, for forever or for a really long time, and it makes for some really cool scenery.

(gentle music) (singer vocalizing) (singer continues vocalizing) (birds squawking) So we're at Driftwood Beach and we got here about an hour before the sun came up, and if you don't know about Driftwood Beach, it is just a spectacular location for photography.

There's these old, old trees that have long since died, but they're still in the sand, and so decades of just waves washing over them, the wind and the sand battering them, it just gives them tremendous character, and so, with blue hour, you get this bluish hue across the landscape and it can be really, really stunning if you have a strong subject, which we do here.

- I got my big grand picture I think with that big dead tree there.

So, right now, I'm gonna play around with some of the smaller objects that I see out here, like some of the rocks into the water, the ridges in the sand.

I mean, some of those things, I'll play around with those for a little bit and see what I can get out of that, but as the sun gets higher in the sky and the sky changes color a little bit more, I'm gonna go back to that big tree because I think that, right now, that's my big focus is that tree.

Everything else here is like a supplementary shot that I could probably add to the collection, but that tree right there is the image that I'm really going for.

- I'm just walking around right now, finding different subjects and photographing them at very long shutter speeds, and by doing that, I'm making the ocean just flat, just a flat blue, colorful, expansive, you know, part of the picture, and that contrasts really well with the stark black silhouette of these trees, and then the pink sky that is getting more pink and more orange by each passing minute.

So we're still about 30 minutes from the actual sunrise, but there's lots of potential right now.

It's just a gorgeous place, and every direction I look, I'm seeing a composition.

(singers vocalizing) (gentle music continues) (singers continue vocalizing) (singers continue vocalizing) (camera clicks) (singers continue vocalizing) - [Expert] Georgia's coast be belongs to all of us.

It belongs to all Georgians.

Our salt marshes, our beaches, they belong to all of us, and it takes all of us caring about these places and to be able to protect them for future generations, and we feel strongly that it helps a lot when people can experience these places, to be able to fall in love with them and to really wanna care for them and to speak up for them when the time comes.

- You got anything good on there?

- You got some really good stuff, man.

I really, really liked the sunrises we got in here.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Lots of color.

- I tell you what.

We're spoiled nowadays, aren't we?

We can look at our images right away.

I remember the days of film where you're waiting a week or two.

- You had to send it off, yeah, and hope, you know?

- Now, we can see it right away.

The Golden Isles, I mean, that name just kind of gives a feel of beauty and warmth and sunlight, and we had a lot of all of that.

- We sure did.

We sure did.

- All of that, and you're right.

We got some great, great sunrises.

- [Paul] I think this is almost like a throwback episode for me to when we did a lot of shooting in the state of Georgia.

- Absolutely.

You think anything stand out to you?

- Yeah, the first sunrise we had out here at St. Simons, yeah.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I think, and you know, also, the sun set where we weren't expecting much because the sky didn't look like it was gonna cooperate, but I think I got that bridge, Sidney Lanier Bridge.

Yeah, I think I got a good shot with that.

- That's cool.

- Yeah.

- It's been a great time down here, but the wonderful thing about landscape photography is there's beautiful locations everywhere.

- There's always another shoot.

- And I think it's time to go find another spot.

- Let's do it, man.

- You ready?

Let's go.

♪ Hollows in the woods call out ♪ ♪ Trails up mountains climb ♪ (gentle folk music) ♪ Waves and sand keep beat and time ♪ ♪ Mossy blankets, swirling streams ♪ ♪ Over rocks and dirt ♪ ♪ Run at pace with all the earth ♪ ♪ Could we capture nature's wonder ♪ ♪ Find our way to getting lost ♪ ♪ Freeze a frame to save forever ♪ ♪ Adventure worth the cost ♪ ♪ Bees and dandelion grain ♪ ♪ Dance in sun-soaked fields ♪ ♪ Wind and gleam together yield ♪ ♪ Pocket worries fade to dim ♪ ♪ Wait on focus new ♪ - [Announcer 1] National Roofing Partners delivers single-source commercial roofing solutions in all 50 states through over 260 contractors nation-wide.

National Roofing Partners is a proud sponsor of "View Finders."

(gentle music) - [Announcer 2] Sigma is proud to support photographers and filmmakers around the world, and we believe creativity and sustainability go hand in hand.

(gentle music continues) (river water crashing) (dramatic music) - [Announcer 3] Every explorer seeks their own path and the promise of what's to come.

The truth lies west.

- [Announcer 4] Georgia College and State University provides over 40 graduate program offerings, including doctorates in nursing and education.

Learn more at gcsu.edu.

- [Announcer 5] Troncalli Subaru is a proud sponsor of "View Finders."

(upbeat music)