An American Brushstroke was a continuation of the Evanescent Trawlers of the South photography study of the disappearing beautiful hand crafted wooden Shrimp Fishing Trawlers of the South. Now as it was then with each week that passes so does another one of these magnificent working vessels that lined the Southern Harbors of the United States for over 100 years.

The project was partially crowd funded through donations on the Kickstarter Website and the rest was an out of pocket investment. The first goal of this project was to capture images of as many of the remaining wooden trawlers on one trip, hitting as many of the small ports between Pensacola, Florida and Brownsville, Texas. The second was to produce this book and the 3rd to produce a set of Fine Art Canvas Prints to display at local Galleries in Northeast Florida.

During my travels in August 2017 I covered over 3,300 miles, shot over 10,000 images in 5 different States at 21 different locations and the final 395 images for this project represent over 200 hours of post processing work time.

While viewing the work you will notice with this project I also expanded the vision to the community as a whole and shot and included many of the steel hulled vessels that I came across. They are part of the story and with many of them nearing the end of their service life they are also becoming part of the industry’s history.