As a hunter and fishermen raised from an early age to respect wildlife and all of the outdoors, Frank Garacci of New Iberia has a sharp, clear and colorful focus on his immediate future.

The Franklin native, who as a boy enjoyed one week every year he spent with his maternal grandparents, who lived and worked in the lower Atchafalaya Basin, plans to devote his pending retirement days to outdoors photography. Less than three years after picking up a camera in earnest, Garacci has become an accomplished photographer with a passion for shooting animals, birds, insects and flowing plants.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it shows in the hundreds upon hundreds of photos he has taken since, with many of the images on display Saturday inside his booth during the 28th annual Festival des Fleurs de Louisiane, Lafayette’s premier garden show and sale from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Blackham Coliseum. His will be the lone photo booth at the festival.

Later, two of his framed outdoors photos will be displayed in July, August and September at the Community First Bank branch on Darby Lane, Garacci said while talking about his love for aiming a camera lens at some of the most photogenic subjects in the Sportsman’s Paradise.

The 67-year-old area sales manager for Palfinger Marine who began his career with Watercraft America in 1990 remembers the exact date he became an avid shutterbug — Dec. 28, 2016. While browsing Facebook he happened along a page entitled Wild Birds Unlimited. The avid duck hunter, squirrel hunter, etc., was enthralled by what he saw.

Two photos in particular caught his eye. Both were by Lafayette residents Gary Meyers and Danny Womack, he said.

“If it wasn’t for those two guys, I probably wouldn’t be shooting today. When I saw the work they posted, it really inspired me. I said it was something I think I could do and something I’d like to do. When they’re work caught me, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do it, but I’m going to give it a shot.’ When I caught the fever, I caught it full time as far as wildlife photography,” Garacci said.

“A couple months later, I bought my first camera. It wasn’t two weeks into shooting I realized the lens I had wouldn’t work,” he said about the 18-135 he initially put on the Canon. “About two weeks later I upgraded to a 70-300 lens. I shot with that for about five months.”

He had contacted Womack, who lent him a 100-400 lens. That super-telephoto lens was all he wanted and more and he eventually purchased one.

Much of his free time has been devoted to photographing wildlife in Iberia, St. Martin, Jefferson-Davis, Vermilion and Evangeline parishes, plus on business trips to and from New Orleans and Houston. Those outings usually are on weekends and, now that there is an extra daylight, late afternoons.

“If there’s an opportunity, I’ll shoot,” he said.

Eagles, egrets, ospreys, hawks, robins, ducks and more are fair game for Garacci.

His love for nature, he said, was instilled at an early age, much of it by Claire and Hilda Landry, his mother’s parents and a commercial fishing family that homesteaded on an island in the Duck Lake area. So many years later, he’s at home in the woods, marsh, swamp or, even, City Park.

Garacci and his wife, Ellen Viator Garacci, have three grown children and seven grandchildren. She is a master gardener whose inquiry got her husband a booth last year for the first time in the upcoming Festival des Fleurs.

That first show fueled his desire to devote all his time to outdoors photography after he retires.

“To be honest with you, they had bad weather that day and I sold beyond my expectations,” he said.