Nap time was interrupted by the threat of sunset. With the last line of storm clouds racing east it was a run against the clock to see if the back edge of clearing would make it over the horizon. It did. Only the cloud deck was too low and the post sundown coloration that makes a sunset so great never materialized. Instead I have this one—not a bad shot per se but littered with lens flares and water droplets on my lens. Regardless, I’m just going to work with what I’ve got and move onto next time.
Work with what you got — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
You’re always rolling the dice when the time comes to pick your sunset photo spot; balancing time, travel distance, cloud cover/formation and the look you’re trying to achieve. Some days the decision is clear. Others? Not so much.
This day I decided on Sunset Park in Surf City with no hesitation. I opted to head to LBI’s bayside to enjoy both the views and the warming weather. Freshly full of chicken parmesan I was as sated as I was ready. Or so I thought.
From the get-go I had an uneasy time finding a composition would inspire. This coupled with paranoia that this sky, like so many skies before it, was not going to color up had me ready to throw in the towel. But since I seem to have a thing for foreground rocks from this location, I locked in my tripod and began to wait (re: hope).
With an about face I took a look eastward; out over the houses and toward the ocean. What I watched unfold over the next 10 minutes was equal parts excitement and misery. The evening sky to the east, running against even the most sound intuition, exploded in array of pastel color that sets light chasers like me into a tizzy. And there was nothing I could do about it. Here I was locked in, laying in the bed I made. And while the sky still colored up nicely in its more traditional westward direction, it didn’t come close to drama that happened right behind by back.
Break the Cycle — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
I’ll try to keep the whining to a minimum lest we call the wambulance. But man! It feels like forever since I’ve managed to catch up with some potent light come sundown. Between life, cloud-outs, a protracted winter and just a whole bunch of bad timing this has to be the longest photo drought in my three plus years of shooting. The last six weeks have been rough, man.
Fighting the temptation to nap it out I opted to roll the dice on the still cloudy skies and head south toward Great Bay Boulevard. This decision paid off in spades. I had parting clouds, low tide with dead calm water and plenty of pretty pastels. Everything was ideal. I was back in my element. Me, my camera and the sky.
Biding my time — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
Shooting has been at a premium of late. More so it seems the few opportunities I’ve had to make photographs have been either clouded out or entirely uninteresting. Neither of which cultivate and atmosphere for good and/or interesting landscape photographs.
Despite today’s near totally cloudless sky, my buddy Jon had the good notion to venture to Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island. He figured at the very least we could maybe make some golden hour frames of the fishing boats at Viking Village. No trespassing signs be damned, we couldn’t get anywhere that would produce a good shot with violating someone’s well-earned property rights. We made for the secluded High Bar Harbor as a timing killing Plan B.
Upon reaching our destination the draw of pictures became little more than an afterthought. We killed the bulk of two hours talking through the world’s problems, making them worse, and watching the sun go down. Between the serpentine sand patterns sprinkled with a hint of cloudage that began marking the westward horizon, I figured I might as well grab my camera and tripod and make something out of nothing.
Just sit back, take in this photo, listen to The Passing of the Elves and it’s Calgon, take me away!
I know many of us have had it with the snow, but please indulge me this third and final photograph from my serendipitous photo foray at Stafford Forge Wildlife Management Area this past Friday, March 6th in the two thousand and fifteenth year of the common era.
This, the third picture in this series, continues with the fantastical visual theme of snow, woods, ice and light arranged in an array untouched by man. Our environment is one of the few cherished gifts we can pass on to our future generations, and there’s no reason for these places of wonder to only live on in memory and photographs alone.
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.
It’s a kind of magic — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
It all came together tonight, folks. The snow. The light. The setting. Many of my favorite things came out to play, and other than to remark on how humbled I felt just to bear witness, I’m not sure what to say. At the very least, this will be the first of three photographs from this evening’s Session with Chance I’ll share with you over the next few days (photo number two; photo number three). Each bears a strong resemblance to the other, capturing the magic and sense of place that made day’s end at The Forge so special.
Reflecting on where I was, and what I saw, my mind drifted toward my first true love affair: The Snow. For as long as I can remember little has stirred my soul quite like Winter’s weather. I could spend a lifetime watching snow. Forever falling and quieting the world; anticipating the finite wonder left in its wake. All of this—the feeling, the memory, the romance—comes rushing back every time the first flakes fly. In a few brief moments tonight, the culmination of my lifetime’s dalliance came to bear.
These are the times that revive men’s souls — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
Or maybe it’s just the polar infused westerlies smacking me in the face doing the reviving?
It was cold tonight. Anyone stuck in the Mid-Atlantic to Northeast knows this—and has for sometime if you discount yesterday’s false spring. But when it produces this kind of light the biting cold can just keep on riding that polar express right over my head (and in the face).
Come 4 p.m. a fairly unusual cloud pattern began setting up across the sky, funneling a unique set of undulating clouds from the southwest horizon. Earnestly marching from a single point of origin, a quick visual scan showed just how this active air was roiling and distorting the clouds with the polar jet’s turbulence rendering a captivating visual result. It was clear in an instant this cloudage coupled with the reinforcing shot of arctic air was cooking up a recipe of near guaranteed sunset success. And when that happens, it doesn’t matter how cold it is—the blood starts pumping, the pulse starts to quicken and the time dilation exacerbates as the excitement of a total payoff washes over you.
Let’s do this again sometime — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
You’ve already seen the golden hour and sunset renditions, so here is the third and final photograph from my first ever visit to the Top of the World: a blazoned trail through snow covered Pygmy Pines at blue hour.
There’s little need to burden you with more typed words about this locale as I think I’ve sufficiently covered that in the previous two posts; but as for this particular photograph, it’s a toss up between this and the first for which shot I like best. And while Fresh Tracks, Fresh Places probably sits in this series’ top spot, this one is just sets my mind at ease.
Reflecting on the three photographs, it was a real treat to watch the late day light evolve with such drama over little more than a 60 minute span. Three shots: a potent golden hour, an ideal sunset, and a subdued blue hour conveyed the story just as my eyes and brain interpreted the surroundings upon which I found myself. A place I hope to surround myself again soon.
