Greg Molyneux Photography

Tag: pinelands

  • Ephemeral Paradise

    Ephemeral Paradise

    High key landscape snow photography of the New Jersey Pinelands
    Ephemeral Paradise — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/250

    The winds of change blew through the coastal Mid-Atlantic region turning 60 degree temperatures and rain on Thursday into a fleeting winter wonderland come Friday. The predawn hours saw a changeover to snow from west to east as an over-performing coastal low pressure developed along a stalled cold front just off the coast. While there were hints of this possible outcome, a mid-week fade from the models coupled with unseasonably warm temperatures sent this system to the farthest reaches of public consciousness. A trend to a northwest solution began in earnest on Wednesday and didn’t look back until widespread 3″–6″ fell upon an unsuspecting region. As as the alarms sounded many questioned whether 60 degrees and soaking wet ground could create an accumulating snow solution some 18 hours later? In hindsight such skepticism was put to bed.

    For my entire life I’ve watched the weather in awe. Captivated not just by its patterns and trends, but by its consistent penchant to surprise. There are no sure things in weather, and given a large enough sample size over a long enough period of time, and you’re bound to observe rare, if not entirely unique occurrences. In this case not only did the snow show up with much surprise and in the face of doubt, it also disappeared nearly as fast as it came. While making photos out in the Greenwood Forest Wildlife Management Area just after the snow had stopped the great thaw had begun immediately. A snow melt the likes of which I had never seen. With sun-kissed energy pine boughs began shedding their load as temperatures rose and some wind worked through to ease their weighted burden. Steady streams of snow, water, and ice were melting away at a rate I’ve never before witnessed. It was as if the Pinelands were insistent upon forging forward to spring in the blink of an eye. Despite clear skies working in, the forest looked and sounded as though a robust summer downpour was working through the thicket. You could watch and hear the earth take its snow back in real time. A symphony for the senses.

    Of course the immediacy of the melt brought on some needed expediency for making photographs. Matters were made a bit more tricky as softball sized snowballs were dive bombing the ground both readily and at random from the canopy. My camera and I took a few good hits before the lens and body were too overwhelmed with water, giving me just enough time to make this photograph and a few others. A brief moment in time captured before any remnant of our latest weather event fell into obscurity. A ghost storm if there ever was one.

    Oh, and there are a few storm signals looming to start next week. For now, we track.

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  • Weather Ahead

    Weather Ahead

    Monochrome photograph of light snow covered pygmy pines of the New Jersey Pinelands
    Weather Ahead — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/50

    Let’s talk about the weather, Mid-Atlantic. In case you hadn’t heard there’s a potential snow storm looming, turning its tentative gaze toward the weekend. But first, proceed with caution. It’s been a tough winter for snow lovers, and we would do well to consider the unreliable performance of operational models of late. Despite a conducive pattern for coastal storm development we’ve seen one promising event after another appear, disappear, only to reemerge late in the game sending cutter after cutter into the Great Lakes. Whereas today we saw a storm widely thought to be out to sea, hang close enough to the coast to bring a mostly unexpected 1–3″ of snow to southeastern New Jersey—with an even bigger hit along the Delmarva. Were it not for marginal temperatures just above freezing this would have been a major bust. Suffice to say, faith in the models has been tested, and we should all feel justified in our skepticism. Of course there’s a lesson in here: despite improving datasets, more powerful processing, and better defined atmospheric dynamics there’s still plenty to get wrong in forecasting. We’re still a ways from perfect and that’s perfectly okay.

    Tempered emotions aside, it’s tough not to get a least a wee bit excited for this weekend. Some factors driving our optimism? Consistent plotting of the storm on the major weather models for at least the past 48–72 hours; we’re now progressing well into mid-range forecasting (less than 120 hours out); and most importantly, the pattern at 500mb looks favorable. Tonight’s 00z runs will be huge, and weenies (a term for weather enthusiasts like me who know just enough about weather to be dangerous) will be staying up late on this Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend waiting for the Euro. While it’ll be fun to get caught up in the excitement, we should at least wait until Tuesday when this storm is properly sampled. Said sampling allows real data to be input into the model algorithms, ensuring much greater accuracy as the models will be relying on fewer unknowns/hypotheticals. By then if the trends still look good it’ll be game on and milk and bread memes will be in full effect. In the meantime, stay tuned to Weather NJ for the latest.

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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.

  • Heightwise

    Portrait orientation HDR photograph of NJ Pinelands pygmy pine trees at blue hour
    Heightwise — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    With evening onshore flow winning the atmospheric battle for the second day in a row heading west was the lone option for sunset photos. To the Top of the World we go.

    Upon reaching said destination I began mentally framing my shot. Take a few 360° head scans across the pygmy pines. Look up. Kneel down. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Let’s hear it for #process. From this vantage point there are two pitch pines that always command my attention. Each standing twice the height of the almost comically small pitch pines running out the entire landscape in all directions. It’s a neat place. A place Gulliver might recognize.

    As far as the photo making goes—I want to work more on portrait (vertical) orientation photographs. I have always found them difficult to make, fortunately there are others who produce the most wonderful images from this perspective. While I’ve had a few successes it’s a blindspot in my wide angle landscape game I hope to address with time and practice. Failure and success.

  • Evenfall

    Wide angle HDR photograph taken at sunset over a snowy and frozen Stafford Forge Wildlife Management Area in the New Jersey Pinelands
    Evenfall — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    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

    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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  • It’s a kind of magic

    It’s a kind of magic

    World class golden hour is magnified by the fresh fallen snow in this HDR photograph taken in the New Jersey Pinelands
    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.

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  • Let’s do this again sometime

    Snow covered trails and Pygmy Pines photographed from the Top of the World during blue hour
    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.

  • Standing with the Treetops

    HDR sunset photograph of the New Jersey Pinelands' Pygmy Pine Plains taken from the Top of the World
    Standing with the Treetops — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    Yesterday I waxed poetic about this great new spot locals call Top of the World. New is of course in the relative sense insofar as it is new to me. This is the second in what will most likely amount to three fully produced photographs from this nascent shoot from this clandestine (not really) Pinelands’ locale. It’s tough enough to come home with one satisfying photo so it’s always a happy dance bonus when that number turns crooked.

    As more of a technician than an artist this selected sunset is by no means perfect. And I’m OK with that. I’ve got an undesirable lens flare on the right edge to the center; my tripod was positioned a little too close to the pygmy pitch pines in the foreground, yielding unnecessary blur just outside my hyperfocal distance; and I’ve got real soft focus and some flare going on in the very bottom left corner. But somehow? It works for me. I purposefully placed my tripod dead smack in the middle of this micro pine canopy to help bring the viewer into the photograph. I wanted your face to by right where mine was—about six feet off the ground overlooking a gradual plain of the smallest fully-grown pine trees you’re never like to see. Through all that, the imperfections work for me. I’d like to say this was entirely premeditated, but other than looking at my bulbous lens glass and noting its closeness to the pines in the immediate foreground, did I notice much at all.

    Here’s an Instagram—gasp a selfie!—of me making this shot.