by | April 16, 2026
A Wild Florida Childhood Captured on Camera
Nokomis local and photographer Cavin Brothers captures the untamable spirit of a Floridian childhood in this photo essay.
I grew up fishing, surfing and running around Sarasota. Now, my wife Jackie and I have four kids between the ages of 2 and 10, and we split our time between the beach and a semirural zone in the Myakka River valley. They are just 10 minutes apart from each other, on opposite ends of the bulging—yet once small—town of Nokomis, which has become victim to its own charm and beauty. I’m lucky that I found a passion that I could make a living with early in life. Commercial and editorial photography, as well as directing and shooting short films and commercials, is my profession. But it goes far beyond a job—it’s an unwavering urge to create. I create still images of subjects that I’m curious about, and oftentimes these are images of the people, places and things I’m around daily, like my family. The following photographs reflect the fleetingness of childhood alongside a rapidly changing environment. In a lot of ways, they reflect my childhood, too.
Nokomis Beach 2022
Surfing came from my dad who, at 72, is still a dogged surfer, never missing any of our puny Gulf Coast swells. My brother and I picked up surfing young and were quickly obsessed. As we got older, our pursuit for better waves took us to far-off places. Many of those surf trips were with our family and I’m thankful. In a way, surfing and traveling started my career in photography. I still surf, often with my dad, so it’s naturally been introduced to my kids. This photo shows my son Cyrus lying on his board during a summer rain shower. Spending so much of my childhood surfing here, it’s one of those photos that I can smell and feel. It reminds me of when I was a kid.
Myakka River 2020
Cyrus with a fishing rod in a jon boat. Cy, who was about 5 years old in this photo, is our oldest boy and a certified fishing addict. I remember getting my boater’s license from the local Coast Guard Auxiliary station when I was 10 years old. My friends and I had little boats that we’d run everywhere—to the back of every bay, up the creeks and into the rivers. We fished and surfed the wake behind them by day and used them as mini barges to haul our camping gear and friends out to the mangrove islands by night. It made sitting around and playing video games a hard sell. Jackie and I not only hope that our kids have the desire, but we also gently push them to get out and explore by exposing them to the outdoors right away. So far, so good.
Venice 2021
Our Great Pyrenees, Ghost, mid-haircut. I’m not sure why our daughter Abby has her hands on her face and is seemingly upset. Perhaps my relentless pursuit to document these moments with my camera has something to do with it. We have free-range chickens, and the only way to protect these vulnerable morsels from bobcats and coyotes is the mighty guardian Ghost, who is hardwired to eliminate any possible threat to his flock 24/7. And that he does. We keep his coat trimmed because, well, this is Florida.
Nokomis Beach 2024
Mya and the ice cream boat. This boat goes up and down Nokomis Beach and the Intracoastal playing that same ice cream truck tune that we all remember from our childhoods. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing, and not always good. But damn, I wouldn’t mind going back and taking a break from my sandcastle or skim board to grab a screwball from the ice cream boat. I love seeing the kids lose their minds when this boat pulls up. Enjoy it for as long as you can.
Myakka River 2023
As a family, we split our time on the beach and the river. This is one of those spots where the black water and mangled tree roots give way to a scant white sand beach, an inevitable hangout spot made worthier by an overhanging limb for a rope swing. The river has become a beloved area for us. In a town that has seen unprecedented growth in recent years, getting out on the river is like hitting a reset button. It’s actually comforting when I see more alligators than people in a day—when I see people, it usually means a few minutes of conversation. It still seems extraordinary that a habitat can exist that is so visually and culturally different from that of the beach in such close proximity to each other.
Venice 2017
We also have a black Labrador retriever named Gus, pictured above with Cyrus. This dog has been there for every important moment of our lives, and he’s helped raise our four kids. He’s 13 years old now, but by land or sea, he still keeps up. I know everyone says their dog is the best, but how could a finer dog than this exist? A favorite photographer of mine, Sally Mann, wrote in one of her books, “Goddamn dogs. Heartbreak, every time.” That line alone is easily taken out of context, but I suppose it’s true. Gus will break our hearts someday, but right now he’s still playing with the kids and begging us for food—or, as I write this, lying in the sun with a watchful eye on his people.
Venice 2020
An eastern diamondback rattlesnake skin in the barn. This snake was hit by a car in front of our house, and I thought it would embellish the wall of our home better than the asphalt of our street. Skinning and tanning the skin was also an exceptional science experiment for the kids. Snakes can maintain their bite reflexes and fully functioning venom glands after death, so I can’t really endorse that everyone should do this at home. However, this opportunity gave the kids an up-close view of a dangerous beauty that they won’t forget.
Venice 2019
Cyrus feeding our bull in the backyard. This little bull was really more of a giant puppy dog. He’d walk up to you and try to lean on you the way a dog does to show affection. I say “little bull,” which is true by cattle standards, but he was huge. We sold him to our neighbor, and he lives down the street now, but we still see him every day when we drive in and out. There was just too much baby-making happening around here, and he was one of the leading offenders. Now we have steers, and the kids feed those too. What makes a steer is its inability to make babies. As farm life dwindles as a less common way of life around our town, we value the small exposure to it that we are able to give our kids. I didn’t grow up on a farm, and I certainly didn’t have cows to feed. Now our kids are helping to care for and grow the food that they eat, which is something that I didn’t pay much attention to until I was an adult.
Central Florida 2025
This was at one of Central Florida’s many springs. I had helped my friend (and longtime Flamingo contributor) Josh Letchworth with a photo shoot at this location the week prior and was blown away. I vowed to bring the family back, and here we are the following week. This particular oasis is different than most of the springs near Sarasota and looks more like a movie set of an exotic land that belongs in Disney World. It is just another example of Florida’s natural allure: an underground stream of impeccably clear water that penetrates the limestone and flows through dense woods into bigger rivers that eventually find the ocean. As the sun hammered the limestone, the kids were paralyzed in the warmth for just long enough for me to get this photo. I like to shoot with an old large-format film camera from the 1940s. Speed is not one of the camera’s attributes, and for me, capturing all four of our restless kids in this shot was a miracle.
