Greg Molyneux Photography

New Jersey landscape and nature photography

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Land Bridge

April 3, 2016 by Greg Molyneux

Long exposure photograph of Great Bay Boulevard's first bridge backlit by lightning.

Land Bridge — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 20 sec

Friday evening I hitched a ride with Jon Carr and we made our way to Great Bay Boulevard. The hope was twofold: 1) outside shot at a well timed break in the clouds for sunset ignition; and 2) with a segment of thunderstorms approaching from the west, lightning captures were on the table. While neither outcome panned out in the ideal the night wasn’t a total wash. Under the gun of days of stiff west by northwest winds, a blowout tide exposed a land bridge and thereby allowed me to shoot from a sand plain that’s far more often than not under the cover of brackish water. Advantage: Greg. This afforded me a rare angle on Great Bay Boulevard’s first bridge, and I did my best to exploit the opportunity.

Surely I wanted some high drama cloud to ground lightning from this vantage point, but considering we were about 20 miles south of the real action that simply wasn’t in the cards. Instead I tried to make the most of the cloud level flashes coupled with the low cloud deck that was bouncing the light pollution in a cool array of orange, pink, and purple hues. One of the reasons I added a 35mm lens to my bag was for some better lightning photography. More often than not the 14mm is just too wide, and unless you have the fortitude to let the lightning get right over your head the bolts are oft too far in the distance. My hope is the 35mm while bring in the right amount of intimacy while remaining wide enough to still capture a good piece of the sky.

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: 35mm bridges great bay boulevard landscape lightning long exposure night photography power lines weather

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Photos from the archives

Wide angle astrophotography from Stafford Forge Wildlife Management Area
Great Bay Boulevard sunset photo of Rand's Marina left in ruin.
14mm wide angle HDR sunset photo made over late summer salt marsh with a five distant homes in the background.
14mm photo of a burning red sunset smoldering over the winter salt marsh with sky reflections in the water.
Golden hour landscape photo over creek and wooden bridge.

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