Everglades photographer Clyde Butcher (with beard) is interviewed for a film.

Wildlife photographer Clyde Butcher is known as the Ansel Adams of the Everglades for his evocative large-scale images in black and white. And now he has teamed up with filmmaker Elam Stoltzfus to produce a documentary titled Big Cypress Swamp: The Western Everglades. The film is being broadcast on WPBT2 in South Florida on Sept. 22 and 27 and on PBS stations throughout the country in September.

The documentary was originally produced for a welcome center in Big Cypress National Preserve on Tamiami Trail, four miles east of State Road 29.

According to an e-mail from Butcher to South Florida Adventures, “The Big Cypress Swamp is a mysterious and secretive environment. There are not many people who brave the difficult swamps and cypress strands in order to understand the beauty and peace found in more than a million acres of swamps and land located in the Everglades eco-system of South Florida. The natural world of Big Cypress Swamp is a richly diverse wilderness of subtropical flora and fauna found nowhere else in our country.”

It is this natural beauty that Butcher’s photographs and Stoltzfus’ film capture.

“Big Cypress and the Everglades have always been at the heart of my photography,” Butcher stated. “My first baptism in swamp water was in the Big Cypress where I felt a primeval presence I had never felt before. It was as though I was entering a time warp where the beginning and the ending of time were all combined together in the waters of the swamp and a feeling that we humans are part of a greater whole than we could ever imagine.”

The film reveals the stunning beauty of sawgrass and sunsets in the swamp, as well as a wide variety of plants and wildlife. It includes stories of the tireless efforts to preserve and manage the Big Cypress Swamp.

“It’s been a great adventure trekking through the Big Cypress Swamp with fine-art photographer Clyde Butcher,” Stoltzfus said. “Clyde’s backyard is the best outdoor studio you will find in the world. What an honor to capture images of nature, and to share these stories with others.”

To learn more visit BigCypressSwamp.org.

WPBT2 is also showing these Florida nature movies in upcoming weeks:

Into the Wild: An Everglades National Park Adventure (Sept. 24 at 7:30 p.m.)

Ken Burns’ The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (Sept. 27-Oct. 2 at 8 p.m.)

The Story of Florida’s State Parks (Sept. 28, 29 and 30 at 7:30 p.m.)