Greg Molyneux Photography

Tag: golden hour

  • I’ve Been Searching for a Marsh of Gold

    I’ve Been Searching for a Marsh of Gold

    Golden hour photo from LBIF marsh featuring crepuscular rays.
    I’ve Been Searching for a Marsh of Gold — 35mm | f/5.6 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/800

    Vantage points matter. Not just in photography but in life as well. If we keep looking out at the Candy Land game board of human existence from the same height, the same level, we’re bound to miss out on new perspective and ostensibly new ideas. Our dice roles repeatedly coming up snake eyes and into the Molasses Swamp we sink. Ofttimes the same old thing may may breed new life when seen from a different visual plane. So get out there—look up, look down, get on your hands and knees and climb high to peer out over a sugar-fused world.

    Of course being a south Jersey flatlander the climb high bit is at times wee problematic. Especially if you’re not toting a 30 foot ladder in your back pocket. Enter Long Beach Island and its litany of rooftop decks. But please, no trespassing. More specific to this example is the top deck at the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences. Flanking the main building to the north is a wing of classrooms, and above said classrooms sits one of many rooftop deck devices. Here one is afforded a primetime view out over the bayside marsh to the west. Romance optional. From this vantage point viewers are treated to an unimpeded view of about 300 yards of pristine salt marsh. From there the marsh bleeds out to the bay—deep breath… ah! Better still is the view off to the distance of both an osprey platform and its subsequent osprey blind—perfect for up close and personal bird watching. (Alas they’re quite small in this photograph, but if you squint hard enough and tap your toes three times you’ll see them. Or you could just click the last two links to see the YouTube videos.)

    Interested in buying? Purchase

  • I Saw Red

    I Saw Red

    Shallow depth of field vertical orientation photograph of a blooming Japanese Maple at golden hour
    I Saw Red — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/320

    Nouns, can we talk about how hard pictures have been to come by lately? I can’t buy a photograph and it’s weighing on me. Desperate to make something out of nothing, tonight I tried to work with the quality golden hour light pouring over my currently in bloom Japanese Maple. A staple of my front yard for years now, this is certainly the best tree my humble property has to offer. While it’s been wide angle sunset goodness I’ve been craving for weeks this is just going to have to hold me over. In the meantime the drought continues. Peaks and valleys. Peaks and valleys.

    Interested in buying? Purchase

  • Putting in Work

    Putting in Work

    Golden hour landscape photograph made over a freshly cleared grove at Stafford Forge
    Putting in Work — 35mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/100

    Test work with the 35mm continues. Yes, obvious work in progress is obvious, but the fact I took this photograph within moments of yesterday’s dreamy grass shot speaks to the versatility in this lens. To go from shallow depth of field work—getting close enough to near macro conditions—out to a serviceable landscape lens without any change in focal length. Simply stop down to ensure maximum sharpness through your acceptable area of focus, and you are golden.

    In the photo above I stuck with a handheld, autofocus approach. I’ve yet to get this thing on the tripod where I’ll attempt to manually find the hyperfocal sweet spot for this lens and make multiple bracketed exposures. Once I figure that all out, I’ll be using this lens setup the same as when shooting landscapes on the 14mm. The big difference here will be a tighter image thanks to the extra focal length. For a theater of the mind comparison, look to the shot above—were I going with my 14mm rig the tree line would be pushed far back to the horizon leaving the trees still recognizable, though hardly discernible—they’d maybe be 1/3 as tall. Sure I would have been able to bring more sky and clouds into the frame, it just would have been at the expense of intimacy. With no interesting foreground subject, shooting ultra wide can get a bit boring. Of course not always, but in general.

    Back to the subject at had. Considering this was a single shot, handheld, with no mirror lock while using autofocus, I am satisfied with the sharpness over all. Perfect? Hardly. Yet with some more time in the field putting in work with this lens system on my tripod mount, and I am confident the 35mm will become a key piece to my landscape arsenal.

    Interested in buying? Purchase

  • Run Out the Tide

    Run Out the Tide

    Golden hour photo of dead low tide at the Great Bay Boulevard salt marsh
    Run Out the Tide — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    Friday evening, about 20 minutes before I made this, some primetime golden hour light was pouring over the salt marsh along Great Bay Boulevard. Better yet, the clouds were decent with the tide dead low and dead calm. All signs point to decent photo making when these conditions are met.

    Compositionally my goal was to key off the remnant bulkheads—the roughly 1 foot in diameter stumps of wood you see aligned at an angle about the foreground—while conveying the extent of the dead low tide. To do this I kept my tripod higher than usual, putting the camera body about 5 feet off the ground, giving me enough angle on the marsh. More often than not I tend to get low and close when shooting wide angle—this makes closer objects appear more dramatic (re: large), but limits your ability to push the viewers eye depth further out toward the horizon. In other words, if I was crunched down here as usual, the tidal exposed marsh and the still water to its right would appear as much thinner strips. However, the bulkheads would be given much more visual weight. These are the kinds of decisions you have to make when you approach a scene. What am I trying to convey? And then, perhaps more importantly, what concessions do I have to make to achieve said conveyance? This is where I cannot advocate trail and error experimentation enough in an era of digital.

    But it’s not all faeries and roses here. Due to the extreme angle I placed the sun—setting it to the outer sixth of the frame—chromatic aberration and lens flare marks the horizon from right to left in several spots. While I’m not sure if it’s a bad thing, I’m fairly certain it’s not a good thing. Ultimately I will leave this up to the subjectivity of the viewer. At the very least I should concede this effect was not intentional.

    Interested in buying? Purchase

  • 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.

  • Sweeping Skies

    Wide angle landscape HDR photograph of wind swept clouds over still water at Stafford Forge
    Sweeping Skies — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    Here’s a holdover from Sunday. I’ve gotta be honest: I dismissed this out of hand, and didn’t even bother loading my brackets into Lightroom until today—Wednesday. Related: immediate uploading of the compact flash card into Lightroom as soon as I’m home is my usual standard operating procedure. The reason for my tardiness? I was annoyed the sun never got below such a promising cloud deck to light up the skies that I didn’t even bother to make something of my exposures. It was two days of back-to-back sunset busts, and I figured these shots were trash. I was wrong.

    Buried in here somewhere is a lesson in expectations. In hindsight I’m pleased with how this looks. Backlight by golden hour, the plentiful and sweeping clouds bring movement and good lines into the composition. And while I was hoping for great color to bounce off the mirrored reflection on the lake at Stafford Forge, days later and now I’m happy to make do with the photograph posted here before you. Even if I was standing on a peninsula of muck and disappointment. And speaking of great expectations—particularly ones that go unfulfilled—did any of you New Jersey people see what Monday had to offer? Talk about a top five sunset. Of course I was driving home from work and unable to capture what was certifiably an A+ sky. If I’m honest this light chaser is still cringing over that missed opportunity.

    So here’s to next time, lessons learned, and not letting expectations get in the way. Yeah right.

  • A Toast to Autumn

    Wide angle HDR photograph of a vibrant golden hour over marsh
    A Toast to Autumn — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    This evening’s session along the marshes of Dock Road was a real treat. Cool yet comfortable temperatures made for ideal viewing of what was a perfect combination of rich golden light and piercingly clear autumn air. My vision seemed ten times better than usual the air was so pure. Everything was glowing. With the rich light pouring in and the sun setting fast, I popped the tripod into position and began making brackets. Fast forward another 40 minutes of shooting and a trip home to the computer only to realize that my first batch of bracketed exposures would wind up being the one. It’s always something when that winds up being the case.

    Compositionally I wanted to play off the main tidal pool and the cloud reflection therein. Tucking the near end of the pool off the edge to the bottom left allows the eye to enter the photo to then move up the clouds and over to the setting sun, finishing with the popcorn clouds in the sky. It’s good to have movement.

    Shooting tonight was tons of fun; would do it again. A strong reminder of why it’s worth getting out there and doing this. If nothing else it brings you closer to nature.

    Interested in buying? Purchase

  • Back Home in the Comfort Zone

    Back Home in the Comfort Zone

    Golden hour wide angle HDR landscape photograph of clouds and marsh
    Back Home in the Comfort Zone — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    First off I hope at least one intrepid New Jersey photographer was out making time lapse and/or long exposure photographs considering the most excellent cloudage we had on deck today. All day. Short on intervalometers and neutral density filters I did neither. But I did get out there to at least make this one photo—my first in a while.

    Having just returned from a 9-day left coast swing today marks my lone day in Manahawkin before I pivot to a weeklong jaunt at Walt Disney World. I spent the past week plus in California sans camera (not counting the cellphone, of course) so I wanted to get in one session of shooting in my old stomping grounds before I takeoff once again. Feeling good among the creature comforts of home it seemed only fitting that I make for Dock Road to fire off my first frames in weeks. For a creature of habit like myself I can’t express enough how much familiarity is important to me. There’s only so much external stimuli I can take before I must retreat to the physical and mental comfort zones that ease and normalize my body and mind.

    I look forward to more photo sessions upon my return. Be well.

  • Litter Knows No Bounds

    Golden hour photograph of guardrails, power lines, litter and the salt marsh
    Litter Knows No Bounds — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/320

    Travel anywhere in this world and you won’t have to look hard for the litter to find you. Not that I know this from experience, but so I’ve been told—I’m not really one for wanderlust. This is especially true for those of us living along the coast where our waterways turn into a de facto mass transit system for our discarded interests. Our refuse gets around easier than we do. I’m sure somewhere on the antarctic ice sheets emperor penguins are bee-bopping next to a transient piece of plastic. I just hope they’re not choking on it.

    As I was traipsing about Dock Road this past Sunday, basking in some serious golden hour light pouring over the salt marsh, I began popping off some handheld shots that differ from my more typical tripod only wide angle compositions. The twisted guardrail you see barrel rolling across the frame has caught my eye for years, but I’ve never put it to any kind of compositional use. It wasn’t until I was kneeling to frame up this shot I noticed the trash. For a moment I thought about removing the water bottle from the frame in order to capture a more pristine “natural” shot, but then thought, nah, I’m gonna keep this piece of garbage in my shot. Maybe I had a temporary moment of journalistic integrity and wanted to capture the shot as it really was? Who knows?

    In the interest of full disclosure I have never set the world on fire as some kind of environmentalist/conservationist, though my desire to protect our Spaceship Earth has grown stronger with age. I have to give credit to my good buddy Ben Wurst for setting a fine example for myself and the rest of our cohort to follow. He has certainly opened my eyes and caused me to think differently. Though I get a big fat ‘F’ for not picking up this here water bottle to bring it to its rightful place in the bottom of my recycle bin. I am ashamed.