A great photo can stand alone and tell a story without the help of the written word. But every once in a while, it is a special treat to know what happened just before or just after a photo was taken. Here, photographer Kendrick Brinson shares with us the enchanting story behind Ossabaw Island.

" Every kid wants to be a marine biologist at some point, right? Well, so did this kid. So it was more than a treat, it was two unforgettable adventures to cover a story about loggerhead sea turtles on the Georgia Coast for Atlanta Magazine. 

The first took me to Ossabaw Island, a barrier island on Georgia’s coast that is accessible only by water or boat. (I actually did a story there about the amazing elderly woman who owned it a couple years back and sold it to the state. It’s a magic place preserved by the lack of humans there–giant palms and ferns, wild donkeys, a coastline that butts up against ancient live oaks.) This time, I took a boat over to spend the afternoon, night and morning with a team of University of Georgia students and employees from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, as well as the department’s champion Mark Dodd who heads the State Sea Turtle Program.

I knew we’d be roaming up and down the beach all night on golf carts looking for female loggerhead turtles laying eggs, but somehow that didn’t register that I’d be up, all night, in pitch black dark, hunting turtles from dusk until dawn. As luck would have it, it was a moonless night (which is fine for the turtles, but not as good for photography). The golf cart headlights were covered with sheets of red gel so as not to distract the turtles and we went up and down along the dunes in darkness, looking for the turtle tracks that would be crossing over our own. It was a drowsy, red blur for hours, I got out of my chariot a time or two to walk and took this long exposure of the starlit beach.

And then, moments later, we spotted a loggerhead!I hadn't anticipated how absolutely enormous she would be. It was amazing to witness this mature beast as she laid egg after egg in a trance, while the human team worked."