“Just because you’ve got a camera in your hand and not a gun, deer, ducks and turkey will not stand still and pose for you.”
Joe Mac Hudspeth Jr. should know. A professional outdoors photographer, he has spent decades hunting for the perfect images of Mississippi’s flora and fauna.
In a talk to the McComb Lions Club last week, Hudspeth told tales of long periods of stealth, stalking and waiting to get his shot.
A native of Lafayette County — God’s Country, he calls it — he now lives in Brandon but travels far and wide in pursuit of the right light, scenery and wildlife.
Hudspeth’s photographic know-how is largely self- taught. With little more than a how-to book and some basic equipment, he began in the 1980s taking pictures around Ross Barnett Reservoir of plants, turtles, snakes, birds, scenery — anything outdoors that caught his eye. His skill and arsenal of lenses grew with time.
Hudspeth’s work has appeared in numerous regional and national publications, and for almost 20 years, his photographs have graced Mississippi’s duck stamps and sportsman’s licenses.
The wood duck, with its elegant coloration and ornate patterns, is a favorite subject. Hudspeth described building a blind of PVC pipe and Mossy Oak fabric under which he could sit in knee-deep water and wait for his quarry to arrive.
A cypress branch at an interesting angle gave him the background he wanted. He only needed the wood ducks to take the right position between tree and photographer, but they didn’t oblige.
“After a year of being there every weekend it wasn’t raining, before daylight ... I finally got smart,” he said. He moved his blind just a few yards, and within a couple of weeks he had his shots.
“I spend more time scouting and setting up blinds than actually photographing,” he said. “I have $10-15,000 of equipment over my shoulder, wading in water, with a flashlight in my mouth and a stick in my hand for balance, looking for a stump to sit on.”
And second chances are rare. The click of his camera’s shutter “might as well be a 12-gauge shotgun,” he said.
Hudspeth also shared the story of a bird hunt he was asked to join as photographer, on which one of the hunters happened to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice. The late Antonin Scalia, Hudspeth said, was an unpretentious man.
Hudspeth presented Scalia with one of his coffee table books and asked how he should inscribe it.
“To Nino!” Scalia replied.
The jurist was so taken with Hudspeth’s work that, a year later, he agreed to write the foreword for Hudspeth’s next book, “My Southern Wild.”
Hudspeth works primarily in film. He sees an overreliance on digital technology, especially among young or beginning photographers.
“Photoshop will help you tweak,” he said, “but it won’t fix broke, just like you can’t fix stupid.”
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Joe Mac Hudspeth Jr. sells his books and prints through his website southernfocus.com.
