All photographs tagged here have been taken with a 14mm f/2.8 L II lens.
So, who else is completely shot? Roasted slow, spinning over open flame and then twice baked in an oven or three. I am spent ash, fiery embers long sent to dust. A charcoal remembrance scribbled upon ever darkening cave walls of a collapsing mind. Once there was life here.
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Minimalism with intentional hand made motion blur. I love executing this kind of photograph. Combining a handheld approach with a smooth, confident motion panning from left to right into the sunset. It is much more involved than my typical tripod landscape. The latter leaving me with the sole task of pressing the shutter once I have framed my shot. Meanwhile this technique is visceral, taking me much closer to my own work. Involving me the way a baker kneads the bread—the hands are in there. Kneading it. Working it. Making it. Body, mind, and skill all coming together to produce something personal, something special. This process alone creates an intimacy with the work, and it shows through in the result. Here I am actually creating a thing with my hands. The sea moves right here in my palms.
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All I see is the flat horizon. A flattened span of unfettered possibility. An openness to explore. It is within this expanse infinite paths lie hidden underfoot, below our gaze and in our hearts. How do we find them? Where do we first look? Sure footed confidence will keep us steady and stable atop firm ground, the knowing. While the wayward step finds us mired in muck, faltered and bound, the unknowing. Here we get up, set our eyes upon fired horizons and fan the flame of becoming within. We step up. We step out. The infinite becomes finite and the finite becomes one; and this is all I see.
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Motes
dance upon the sky floor
shimmering scales of light glittering iridescence
Lithe as the fish to water gliding gracious
Essence
turning she bends the light
prismatic luster scintillate all senses
Now you see how time does pass
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Tectonic forces do their work. Ploughing their inescapable hell slowly and without discrimination. They grind—hard. Such is their subtlety as to be motionless to the eye though with a power as immutable as gravity. It goes to work on you at all times. The all seeing eye. Without cease or respite it weighs heavy its jagged white-hot indiscriminate hand, wearing body and mind down to dust. It pulverizes all identity and form until it spits you out as something unrecognizable, something—else. Were you crushed and cast out or transformed and made whole in the friction?
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Two Zero Two One, let’s go. You’ve a very low bar to surpass your predecessor’s legacy of pandemics and problems. We’re counting on you for life and health this year.
Last year I was well into April before I shared my first photo on this website. A lapse I hope not to soon repeat. This evening’s banger of a sunset made for a smoldering debut and guaranteed such a slump would not happen this year. It was pure fire over the mirror still waters of Stafford Forge’s front lake. Absolute time well spent; 10 out of 10, would do it again. Skies Like This, let’s go.
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No two sunsets are the same. This we know to be true. Return to the same place over and over again and you’ll be chasing unicorns to hunt down a pure facsimile. It’s best to take each unique moment and capture its joyful light as best you can, while you can. It’s a welcome lesson in the natural function of impermanence. This doppelgänger is impossible to find.
Tonight, however, I came close. In what I can only describe as the spiritual successor to Ruinous Splendor—changed only by time. Made just over five years apart at near the same exact track of bulkhead I give you the best sunset photograph I have made in five years. Recognizing the subjectivity of such claims I defer gracefully if you disagree in preference to another sunset photograph I have made. These decisions belong to us.
Winter sunsets, man. In particular winter sunsets heralding oncoming winter weather near always produce. While tomorrow looks to be a nuisance event with rain in southern Ocean County, winter weather will hit New Jersey tomorrow in the form of a weak coastal low. This, of course, is merely an appetizer for a far larger and more powerful system poised to wreak havoc on the entire region Wednesday into Thursday. Jackpot zones will be measuring in feet. Buried cars, bread and milk in short supply. Still over 72 hours out, where the rain/snow line and axis of heaviest precipitation set up remains up in the air. Stay close to Weather NJ’s Facebook page to keep up with the latest. You can bet I’ll be back out shooting Tuesday to see the big storm’s harbinger sunset.
Shout out to the universe today for giving me exactly what I asked for. This morning, while thinking about my photographs this year, I envisioned how great it would be to have at least one more clear cut entry into my annual best of series for 2020. My output has been solid enough this year, though real standouts have been lacking. Well, my Christmas gift came early. Thank you.
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His is the path of solitude. It is a journey not idly traveled, with headwinds, endless thought, and self-critique his only companions. Like a looking glass life reflects back upon him, projecting moments of joy and pain, sunshine and rain, triumph and abject failure. Each and every one a lesson. Through it all he has himself to turn inward. To his fortress mind and hideaway heart, twin suns lighting an island of isolation impregnable to all and impossible to reach. This is a refuge of necessity, a way station of isolation constructed piece by piece through decades of disconnectedness. Except there are no train lines connecting it. It is both inaccessible to find and impossible to leave. It is from solitude to which all his comings and goings take place.
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COVID-19 has taken many things. Lives, livelihoods, lifestyles, and liberties all curtailed as we continue to confront an ongoing public health crisis. It’s been tough and there are few to argue otherwise. A lower tier robbery thieved by COVID is spontaneous fun. The need to social distance to keep group exposure minimized has taken away spontaneous fun. You know, the plans that didn’t exist until you get a text message from a friend like, yo, get here now because we’re all doing [insert cool fun thing here]. And boom, unexpected excitement dropped into your life; the best kind of fun. This tale has in no way told the COVID story. Homebound monotony has long held sway.
This changed for me on Thursday. Ben Wurst dropped a small group text to Jonathan Carr and me saying we should go out tonight for astrophotography. Initially I thought this was a nice sentiment, something fun in theory, but I did not expect it to shake out. I was pleasantly surprised to return from my run to see Jon was in and the game was on. Thursday night in the pines it would be.
Around 10:00 p.m. Thursday we all met up roadside on 539 south in Warren Grove to hike in about a quarter mile to the top of the world. The top of the world is a hyperbolic name given to a small hill outcrop on an otherwise flat bowl of pygmy pines. The pygmies are a unique set of stunted pines found in the southern part of the New Jersey Pinelands. Kept small by wildfire, these bonsai-esque pines stand low—most well under six feet tall. A small sea of mini trees standing sentry for centuries. It’s a cool sight, and this was my first trek out there since January 2016. It had been a while.
From here we tried our best at making astrophotography on a clear, moonless night. The visibility was excellent, and shooting stars dashed the night sky on regular intervals. Honestly, I didn’t even care about the photographs I was making, I was just happy to be out having unexpected fun with friends.
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