Greg Molyneux Photography

Tag: forests

  • The Forest and the Trees

    The Forest and the Trees

    14mm wide angle photograph of Pinelands pine trees and ferns.
    The Forest and the Trees — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/50

    On June 16, 2018, I had the opportunity to photograph Baker’s Acres Campground in Little Egg Harbor, NJ. A wooded, family forward establishment, Baker’s Acres offers a picturesque retreat for any and all campers. Nestled off Garden State Parkway exit 58, Baker’s Acres is a secluded getaway so good at maintaining a low profile I had never happened across it in my 25 years living down here. But don’t let its low key nature fool you, Baker’s is happening with plenty to do and fun for the whole family.

    I don’t exactly know how to photograph a place to make it look nice, but I spent about 90 minutes walking the premises, photographing its amenities. (They even have a dog park!) All the while passing tons of happy and friendly campers who did not seem to mind the guy milling about with the camera one bit. That was a relief.

    Ensconced in the Pinelands on all sides, at the far edge adjacent to said dog park sets a stand of beautiful pines beset by ferns. Transfixed my mind immediately drifted to the forest moon of Endor. I know those were sequoias but still that is where my brain went. I took it all in for five minutes are so and made my way back to exploring the friendly confines of Baker’s Acres.

    Full disclosure: this is an unpaid and unsolicited plug for Baker’s Acres Campground. It’s personal commentary on an impressive little place to hang your hat.

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  • Lines in the Pines

    Wide angle landscape photograph of the Pinelands forest casting leading lines shadows during golden hour
    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.

  • Fall in love with the forest over and over again

    Fall in love with the forest over and over again

    An HDR photograph of winter in the Pinelands: fresh fallen snow, numerous pitch pines, footprints and lively golden light make the scene
    Fall in love with the forest over and over again — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    I grew up in the woods. Spending my earliest years in East Brunswick, New Jersey—a municipal casualty of suburban sprawl—I was lucky enough to live in a sleepy little neighborhood of roughly 52 houses on a small dead-end buttressed by The Woods. And while it wasn’t a tree strewn vista of thousands, or even hundreds of acres, it was a relatively small plot of naturalish habitat that was as big as the whole of the world to an excitable 7 year old with an overcharged imagination and a great group of friends equally inclined. It had a creek, railroad tracks, old abandoned warehouses and a secret path to McDonald’s. Spending our summer vacations equipped with everything a group a friends would ever need to replicate life as depicted in Stand By Me; roaming the woods and railroad tracks hoping to someday come across something so adult as a dead body—or worse.

    Days on end were spent pew-pewing one another as we’d chase our chosen foe after lying in an ambush for the better part of an afternoon. Our game of Guns was how we exercised our wannabe existence, recreating the carnage we witnessed in Platoon—which I was of course watching without my parents’ permission. We’d go so far as to map out routes, tie off ropes and plant booby traps between trees using fishing wire for trip wires. Boom-boom you’re dead, [insert friend’s name here] being the adopted call for you’re out of the game.

    When we weren’t busy replicating violence we didn’t understand, we took a much more peaceful approach to The Woods: resting along the creek, trying to track deer (and failing), catching frogs or just walking and talking. We had our own paradise, free of parents, supervision and the boundaries of the outside world. We were the masters of our domain, free to build forts and pseudo-villages trying make out a life where Robin Hood, his Merry Men and the Ewoks would feel at home. The woods was our place to live out our fantasies, to flesh out the worlds of not just our minds, but of the movies, cartoons and video games that marked our formative years.

    Now I find myself spending more time than ever in that other forest that has been my home for the last 20 years. Gone are the large deciduous trees that stood sentry over my youth, exchanged for the smaller pitch pines and cedars of the New Jersey Pinelands. I’ve spend two decades living on the southeast edge of Pinelands National Preserve, at a whopping 1.1 million acres. If I’m ever to match the intimacy of the woods of my youth, I’ve got some serious exploration to do.

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