Caddo Lake Cypress Swamp

Caddo Lake State Park, Karnack, Texas

( Click on image to access high resolution virtual tour. Not for mobile devices.)

 

Caddo Lake is one of East Texas’s natural treasures. Bald cypress trees draped with Spanish moss rise above a maze of bayous, sloughs, and ponds, creating a landscape unlike almost anywhere else in the United States. The lake and its surrounding wetlands cover approximately 25,400 acres (10,300 hectares) along the Texas–Louisiana border, extending through northern Harrison and southern Marion counties in Texas and western Caddo Parish in Louisiana.

The lake takes its name from the Caddo people, who inhabited the region long before European settlement and were forcibly displaced during the nineteenth century. Today, Caddo Lake is an internationally recognized wetland protected under the Ramsar Convention and contains one of the largest flooded cypress forests in the United States.

Caddo Lake is among the relatively few naturally formed lakes in Texas and is often described as the second-largest natural lake in the southern United States. However, its water levels and extent were substantially altered by the construction of a dam in the early twentieth century.

I photographed this panorama using my Canon EOS R5 at f/13, 1/40 second, and ISO 100. To capture the intricate detail of the cypress trees, Spanish moss, and their reflections, I used focus bracketing to record 4,531 individual exposures. These were combined into 300 focus-stacked photographs arranged in six rows of 50 images.

The original stitched panorama measures approximately 4.51 gigapixels in an exceptionally wide 7:1 format. The 4:1 composition shown here is cropped from that original and retains approximately 2.57 gigapixels of native photographic detail.

The 4:1 panoramic image shown here is:

• 2.573 gigapixels
• 25,364 × 101,456 pixels
• 84.5″ × 338.2″ at 300 PPI
• 4:1 aspect ratio
• Available as fine art prints, plaque mounts, aluminum prints and PlexiPlaq.
• Wall murals up to approximately 7 ft 1 in × 28 ft 2 in at 300 PPI, or 14 ft 1 in × 56 ft 4 in at 150 PPI.
• The original uncropped panorama measures 25,364 × 177,803 pixels (4.51 gigapixels) in a 7:1 format and is available for custom architectural-scale installations.
• This image can be cropped to your desired dimensions.

Click here for information about purchasing a license for this image.