I can still see clear but I dare not feel — 14mm | f/8 | ISO | 7 Bracketed Exposures
I’ve been sitting on this photograph for a few hours now reluctant to process. With my mind getting the better of me these past two days I was keen to not turn this picture and its subsequent post into one giant window to my struggle. So I’ll just leave it here with the statement that I wasn’t occupying the best headspace out on the Dock Road marsh in spite of this beautiful sunset Mother Nature brought before me. Most always picture making lifts my spirit. Today I was tied down in chains.
Frankly all credit for this shot goes to the fellas at SunsetWx. They nailed today’s forecast. Under a dome of clear skies and seasonally warm temperatures all day I put zero thought toward any kind of photography today. But then during another tedious experience watching football I saw this tweet roll through my stream and if nothing else was at least offered an escape from witnessing another Giants’ loss. Once again their model was right on the money.
Compositionally I played it safe tonight, unabashedly borrowing the setup from Look Down On It. Chalk it up to moodiness, lack of inspiration, or the simple fact that I think well of the meandering run of water that carries the eye in a slight switchback up the middle of the photograph and out into the sky.
Good evening everyone, welcome to December. A bit of housekeeping: despite being up and running for almost a year now I’m officially announcing my online SmugMug shop. Finally. Having had the opportunity to sell a few prints, get comfortable with the platform, and see the end result with my own eyes I think I’m ready to go public—fingers crossed—just in time for the holidays. So if you’re looking for gift ideas and you’re keen to share some artistic work with friends and family, please take a look. You’ll quickly notice I haven’t populated the shop with all my shots—some 226 photographs a the time of this post—so if there’s something you’d like to have printed and shipped drop me an e-mail at greg [dot] molyneux [at] gmail [dot] com, and I’ll have it added to the store page at my earliest convenience.
At launch (that’s today) my store features about a couple dozen of my photographs available in an array of sizes and price points. You’ll find product options for Paper Prints with glossy, lustre, and metallic finishes. Or you can really step up the archival quality with Giclée watercolor paper. Additionally there’s an option under Wall Art for actual metal prints where you can have most of my photographs printed, mounted, and ready to hang directly onto a sheet of aluminum. This is the way to go if you’re looking for something a little less traditional and a little more modern where vibrant colors really pop. This is a great option for a bathroom where it will keep any kind of shower steam from wrinkling a more traditional, albeit vulnerable paper print. With its weatherproofed and scratch resistant surface it makes a great option for outdoor hanging as well.
The Coupon
Don’t miss out on this limited time launch offer. To help break the ice and ease the pain on the wallets and purses during the where did all my money go? part of the calendar, I’m offering a 20% off coupon valid through the end of the year—31 December 2015. Be sure to enter in coupon code: TheLaunch when prompted and 20% will be lifted like magic from your bill at check out—note the price break doesn’t go in effect until the very last step.
On Second Thought — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 0.6 sec
Sometimes your shoot won’t go exactly as planned. This is OK. This afternoon my buddy Jon and I were hoping for some sunset drama. As it does the big time boom or bust sunsets ride a razor’s edge of yay or nay. Today it missed. It happens.
Walking back to the car and at peace with said miss, my eyes quickly looked north to find sweeping blue clouds. Then downward to the illuminated houses out on the horizon; finally setting on the phragmites up in the foreground. The blue hour tones were soothing and the contour line of the jetty rock perfectly aligned with the left to right swoop up in the clouds. With a few clicks of the tripod this entire process was over and done with within a span of 20 seconds. Sometimes shots happen fast. At home in post processing I opted on the square format display ratio, deciding it tightened the overall composition.
In their own way I hold a fondness for shoots like tonight. It’s a good test for the eye to come up with something else when your plan falls through. It’s a useful exercise in staying open to new possibilities, and as an added benefit the time crunch of fading light gets you to work fast relying on instinct.
Lines in the Pine — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 250 | EXP 1/30
Before settling in to make yesterday’s sunset photo I took a few minutes in admiration of the Pinelands of Stafford Forge set aglow by some pretty serious golden hour light. It’s an open secret that I want more forest shots in my photo stockpile, and considering I live on the southeastern border of the great, albeit unheralded Pinelands National Reserve I have little excuse. Coincidentally the bulk of woods shots I’ve managed to produce have come from right here at the Forge, where I’ve already professed my childhood love of the trees.
Keeping it casual—which is to say making single exposure handheld shots—I’m able to get my eye in tight to the viewfinder focusing my wandering brain right on the action. Creatively intent on accentuating the vivid golden glow infusing life, warmth, and energy into the millions of felled pine needles; compositionally intent to play off the strong leading lines cast by the scrubby pine tree shadows—the angled left to right action lending a nice touch of directional movement drawing the eye toward the ridgeline up on the right, away from the left side path. Much of photography is about balance, distributing the weight of your subjects until you find equilibrium. Of course like all the rules this too can be broken.
Information is good. Good information is better. Recently a significant offering was made to the information toolkit of sunset chasers plying their craft in the continental U.S.—or CONUS as you’ll see on their website. Little more than a week ago three meteorologists, inspired to pull together a ‘Sunset Model,’ unleashed maps output from a proprietary algorithm churning out regular reports to the general public based on data populated by the 4 km NAM weather model. In their own words factoring (emphasis my own):
The model itself takes primary elements into account: Moisture, pressure, and cloud cover. Using our knowledge of the atmosphere, we started with a basic idea of what variables are important, and their relative importance to one another. . . We quickly realized that some things were more important than others, and decided on a weighting scheme. After many trial runs and verifications, we weighted moisture the most.
Quick to buy in I didn’t even need to be shown proof of its accuracy, but after verifying sunsets the country over, including the two standout waves that hit the PHL-NYC corridor over the past two weeks, I was all in. So now when I see @sunset_wx tweets like the one below my sunset battle plan is armed with better, more scientific information than ever before; strengthening my decision making process on sunset spots to seek. Tonight, knowing the middle section of southern New Jersey was in the sweet spot, made choosing the western exposure of Stafford Forge the obvious choice.
Sunset Forecast (Valid: 5pm EST): Heads up DC -> NYC, could be a vivid sunset tonight! pic.twitter.com/Vsp21fl3pG
Sure enough the forecast verified with a solid to good sunset, let’s call it a B- and aligned with SunsetWx’s scale; and I, in turn, went home with some good exposures in the hopper to share with all of you. There’s no doubt I’ll be talking up the boon gifted to us by SunsetWx in the future, but for now you can find them on Facebook and Twitter. Slate’s already done a write-up. And as tweaks continue to hone their algorithm may we all someday benefit from a future ‘Sunrise Model’ soon?
Immediately after I made yesterday’s sunset silhouette photograph I headed for the far east end of Cedar Run Dock Road. The benefits were two fold as it’s both a convenient vehicular turnaround and an ideal vantage point to look out on the whole of the bay. I’m glad I stopped.
Sure it’s starting to cool down here in the northern mid-Atlantic but that doesn’t mean the outdoors can’t be the respite a weary soul requires, if only for a few moments. Immediately out of my car the sublime calm of the bay washed over me. Gentle rolling waves more at home in your bathtub floated along the water’s skin. The glow of the clear blue hour cast a scene so calming it took a few minutes before I broke from my trance to document the sight. First I made a quick video for Instagram. Then I figured I may as well bust out the tripod and pop off a shot. Here it is, in all its simplicity. One basic composition highlighting the still plainness of it all. No dramatic cloud structure; no definable foreground or feature. Only the peace in the nothingness that was somehow anything but.
For some time now I’ve had my eye fixed upon a derelict patch of what I can only assume was once a functioning boat dock. Now this Dock Road quay long defunct presents a photographic opportunity; its still remains offering a henge of sorts for a silhouette sunset shot. The scene was aided by an astronomically low tide where all rows of wooden teeth were laid bare, enhanced still by the dead calm water. Just about all conditions were met to make this shot happen now. With that quick mental calculus I abandoned my more familiar spots and decided to ditch all my standard protocols. Instead of the tripod I went handheld. Instead of HDR I went single brackets. Instead of low I went lower than low. I shall explain—
Considering the near cloudless sky pumping in direct sunlight the contrast between the light and dark areas of the photograph would already be extreme—a desired backdrop for making a silhouette exposure. My standard protocol would have me make upward of seven brackets such that color, light, and detail of the overexposed brackets would fill in the otherwise blackened fore and middle ground during HDR post-processing. Because of this I would of course have to use a tripod to ensure perfect stillness throughout the brackets—note it’s generally good practice to shoot your landscapes on a tripod regardless of your number of brackets. But today day I needed to ditch my tripod altogether as I wanted to get lower than low. About two inches off the ground low. Shooting blind I go about this by feel, balancing my hands trying to keep the camera as level to the flat ground as possible such that the horizon will at least be mostly straight (whatever little corrections for getting fully level can also be handled in post processing, but you still want to get as level as possible so as not to crop out desired compositional elements in your photograph).
I’d be lying if I claimed to be 100% satisfied with this attempt, but it’s certainly a good starting point. A photograph to build on. Probably one of the most rewarding aspects of photography is that you don’t have to get it right the first time. Like anything else repetition, patience, and consistent effort over time afford the opportunities to capitalize on the shots we want to make. For this reason I’ve been kicking around the idea of putting together a personal photography bucket list of sorts. A place where I can get my thoughts down to bring focus on the future photographs I want to make, and maybe even some of the past ones I want to remake. It’ll never be a one and done, but it will at least be a real fine place to start.
Oh, one more thing, I made another shot after this one down at the end of Dock Road near Antoinetta’s that I will share tomorrow. I love it if only for its calm and simplicity. Cheers until then.
Eye to the Sky — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
In light of this afternoon’s smoldering sunset (and here’s a really great shot of all its fiery glory) this post seems anticlimactic at best and inappropriately titled at worst—what kind of eye to the sky worth its salt would miss out on first rate glow and a rainbow to boot? But that’s just what happened today and that’s just how it goes sometimes. The sliver lining? For once I’m not too bent out of shape. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and call this progress or maturity; on the contrary it’s solace in knowing the fat, wet raindrops intermittently falling would not have kept my lens dry. So even if I was out there, shooting would have probably led to more frustration.
Rewinding back to yesterday I was finally able to get back on the marsh, camera in hand. It had been over two weeks since I last partook of the photography, and as soon as I cleared the woods on the east end of Dock Road the marsh opened up and the whole world seemed a little brighter, problems a little lighter. Golden light sprawled out upon the marsh touching all corners in its reach. Even in the marsh’s browning death throes spirited light did all it could to trick the eyes that winter in fact was not coming. This sight coupled with a morning spent with a big group of spirited volunteers was almost enough to warm even the most frozen of souls. Yes, mine included.
On site and out of the car my thoughts shifted to the contrails lining the sky. Immediately my cynical mind vacillated between gentle amusement and mild disappointment, as I knew this is the type of sky that makes the chemtrail crowd cry foul. Meanwhile all I’m trying to do is make a good shot. Find a good composition, make the frames, and call it a day. Here we can use the contrails to create strong leading lines in the photograph. Very simply the lines tell the eye where to look, operating as giant pointers for the viewer. And speaking of eyes, doesn’t that marsh tide pool look similar to our sight organ? It’s got a pupil and everything. Looking upward. The eye to the sky.
Grab Your Gear and Go Warmly — 50mm | f/1.8 | ISO 1000 | EXP 1/60
I don’t like mail. It’s antiquated, burdensome, and resource intensive. Last week I liked mail. My dear friend ifmidnight sent over a pair of bad ass fingerless gloves she knit custom made for me! Spoiled much? While I was out in California visiting this past September she took my measurements and set to work. Fast forward a few weeks as I finally bust open a burgeoning mailbox burdened with neglect, a large squishy manila envelope shone through the din. My gloves! Eager I ran inside, opened—gasp!—my mail in a timely fashion, and put on my new gloves. A perfect fit!
Taken with myself at the hands of this exceptional gift I grabbed my camera, popped on the fifty, made for the bathroom, and, and, . . . modeled? So yeah, that’s me up there trying to look cool in my newly acquired swag. In all seriousness, though these gloves will not go unused. My prime shooting season happens over winter, and having the gift of warmth as you’re staring in the teeth of a sea breeze while waiting on the sun in January is invaluable.
In the interest of full disclosure no gloves were worn in the typing of this post.
