I'm Matt Benson, a Florida-based graphic designer and photographer who enjoys going outside and writing about it. This is where I document those adventures.
My plan to visit Ray Wayside Park was a failure. Instead I became enchanted by the Eureka Bridge, lost in its many kept secrets and stories available only to those who pause and listen. This post is a reflection on the Eureka Bridge and the many structures of the Ocklawaha River.
Read MoreI followed the Ocklawaha River from State Road 19 in Palatka, Florida, to the County Road 316 Bridge in Eureka, tracing the route of the long abandoned Cross Florida Barge Canal project. This is the first in what I hope becomes a series dedicated to the Ocklawaha River.
Read MoreThe Ocala National Forest was recently listed on National Geographic’s Best of the World 2025, a list compiling the 25 best places in the world to visit. Jenny and I drove our Kayaks to Silver Springs State Park, located in the Ocala National Forest, and paddled the Silver River.
Read MoreI spent the summer shooting exclusively on Kodak Gold 200 and my Hasselblad 500cm.
Read MoreI spent two days camping in the Florida Everglades with my Fuji X100V.
Read MoreWe kayak camped along the Ocklawaha River in a storm while sick.
Read MoreI made a video about being present, Alex and I went camping for the first time since 2019, and Zion turned one year old!
Read MoreEverything you need to know to camp in the Juniper Prairie Wilderness area of the Ocala National Forest, including parking information and trailheads, camping locations and helpful resources.
Read MoreWith a rare morning to myself, I kayaked a section of the Ocklawaha River and created a video of the adventure.
Read MoreAlex and I kayaked to the La Chua Trail observation deck in Paynes Prairie Preserve and camped in a storm.
Read MoreIt was midday and 95 degrees with scattered thunderstorms forecasted throughout the afternoon. The conditions were perfect for a lot to go wrong.
Read MoreI have a love-hate relationship with light painting. It never goes as planned, and although my ideas are tactful, the execution is consistently inadequate. This past weekend I took to the woods to explore the role the physical process plays in art and how that affects our perception of it.
Read MoreWe drove to the Juniper Prairie Wilderness Friday evening with the goal of photographing white pond lilies beneath the glow of a rare “blue flower moon.”
Read MoreHere is a list of my top ten favorite things to bring into the woods. Some are practical, others just fun. There is no particular order. It’s just ten things. That I like. Out of order. Here we go.
Read MoreThere have been two trips that have definitively revolutionized our Juniper Prairie Wilderness project. The first was when we started bringing GPS devices to the woods. The second occurred this weekend.
Read MoreThis past weekend I did some time traveling. Not in the science fiction sense, where someone jumps into a DeLorean or a phone booth and leaps forward and backward in a dramatic attempt to rectify some injustice committed in an alternate timeline. No, my time travel was a little more tame than that.
Read MoreThey warn you about the bears. They warn you about the alligators. They warn you about the rattlesnakes and the water moccasins. But they never warn you about the two guys hauling an oversized bathroom mirror miles through the brush and the thicket into the wilderness. Probably best to stay clear of those two.
Read MoreIt was the 4:15 a.m. alarm that finally succeeded in yanking me from the silence. I rolled out of bed and onto my feet.
Read MoreI grew up in Florida. My family moved here from Cape Cod when I was seven. But I’ve always seen Florida as an unfortunate circumstance, a stain left in the carpet of my parents’ old dreams. This is the second post of my Contact Sheets series.
Read MoreOne of my goals for 2019 is to create a zine about the Juniper Prairie Wilderness area of the Ocala National Forest. In conjunction with this zine, I’m creating a blog series called Contact Sheets, where I post the entire contact sheet for each roll of film I shoot for this project. I spent yesterday developing and scanning three rolls from a recent Juniper Prairie Wilderness trip, so what better day to kick off this project than January 1?
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