Time Marches On — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/4 sec
2024 coming in hot! At this point years flip about as fast as single pages on a tear away calendar. It’s a gift to grow old. An opportunity to experience the relativity of time mounting years speed ever swifter.
Continuing my quest to rip through my 2023 backlog. I made this photograph at Dock Road on 30 November 2023. Happy to have another motion blur shot. I’m developing quite a gallery in this style, and it is a trend I will continue.
When the Night is Over — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
Familiar jaunts to familiar haunts. The road back to a place that shaped me. Long before photography was the marsh. Long after photography the marsh will be. Ever present, forever here unyielding. Soft sings the subtlety of change slow molding even the deepest firmament. Its work known only to the keenest eyes draped by long years put to the service in the knowing.
Can’t Fight the Light — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
Saturday night brought the goods. A smoldering burn presented as the centerpiece of a summer salt marsh bouquet. Things are not fine but the lighting is good. A moment of peace in the otherwise steady stream of turbulence that is our current times. My wish is only that the headwinds fade and the sunsets keep burning lest we all go to ash together.
The June Palette — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
That green. That blue. That pink. Total chef’s kiss bliss. I’ve written early and often about the June color palette that dials it up to 11 each June here in southern Ocean County. There is nothing quite like the way newborn marsh grasses radiate a fresh green far beyond anything I have the ability to articulate. I’m never sure what to call it; nor am I worthy to give it a name. It’s something of a perfect merger of chartreuse and emerald. The dance floor of life. It last but a few weeks and there is nothing like the way it plays at sunset. It dances in perfect step, leading the grooving blues and pulsing pastels to waltz in triumph at day’s end. May this look never get old.
Hello website, I am back. Back to autumn. Back to September 25, 2021. To the same Cedar Run Dock Road evening where I made another motion blurpan shot photograph, Peace Where We Can. In a trick of light, The Line is cast in the moody blue tones of the eponymous blue hour. Meanwhile Peace Where We Can smolders in the waning embers of sunset. Now you might be saying so what? Well so what is that I photographed The Line first. Depending on the direction you look the last light of day refracts different. More so it changes by the moment. These fluid transformations require the greatest focus of observation. Move your eyes across the whole ring of the horizon less you never see what colors behind you.
Let’s talk nuts and bolts. This is a stripped down, minimalist image. It’s monochrome color scheme and open space allows the mind to range free. Your mind wants to build a boat to paddle out over to the far horizon. A razor’s edge at the end of the world. Is it a barrier? A gateway? A threshold? Is it the last refuge or the first place of welcome? Or maybe it’s just a place where people eat french fries? Well, it’s sort of all of that. It’s Long Beach Island. The line at the edge of my world since 1993. A place I’ve long looked out upon but never quite understood. Somehow always feeling a touch too far out to sea. My very own Tol Eressëa.
Warning: Incoming middle aged Nintendo fanboy nerd alert post coming in hot. Metroid Dread launched a week ago today, and holy smokes I still can’t believe it. Mainline Metroid. In 2D. A new release. On a console. In the year of our Covid two thousand and twenty one?! Oh. My. God. I cannot.
I’ve been tearing through Planet ZDR each night ever since. Headphone cans fixed snug. Living room chair. Locked in. Side scrolling glory taking me from one power up to the next, with sinister bads set to destroy me at every turn. Metroid at its best is a masterclass in environmental storytelling. The visual design signaling desolation where the native flora and fauna make it clear you stand alone. Isolation and hostility are the only constants. The entirety of the world wants to see you dead, drawn and quartered, wholly unworthy of the vacuum of space. And damn is it so good, and so hard, and so good. Samus never controlled anywhere near this good. The developers at MercurySteam crushed it. The game is hard, yet fair, and over time Samus romps to such power and heights, a triumphant reward for all the tribulations and Game Over screens. Clack-clack, here comes an E.M.M.I. Did I mention this game is good?
So what in the hell does that have to do with this post, photograph, or website? I’m here for the pretty stuff not this geekspeak worth at least 12 noogies and 20 minutes in a locker. Well one of the moves legendary intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran acquires in her serial planet storming romps is the speed booster. Along with said speed booster comes the ultimate boon to Metroid speed runners the world over: Shinespark. Speed boost to shinespark sends Samus hurtling at meteoric speeds, turning her into a literal tunnel busting speed bullet. Glowing like a comet streaking across the sky all you see is a luminous blur of pure energy and awe. And that’s this photo. Samus streaking across the horizon left to right. A sunset shinespark blazing into night.
Peace Where We Can — 35mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/4 sec
Sitting here on a Thursday evening staring October in the face. Touching up some photographs. Typing up a blog post. Trying to relax.
At a MacBook Pro I make words, build phrases, and complete sentences. Backlit and soundtracked by the baseball game, moody blue lounge light painting the walls. Baseball game only ever means one thing in my world: Yanks vs. Whomever. Tonight’s Whomever being the young, powerful, and surging, Toronto Blue Jays. Locked in a late season struggle with a playoff berth on the line, this series finale has a season at stake. I can only hope the Bombers come out on top.
In my mind I think it feels nice to have a new photograph to share. I’ve favored a simpler process and minimalist composition of late. These motion blur style photographs in particular. Bringing movement into my presentation of the New Jersey coast gives me a different kind of voice. Softer, and less heavy-handed. A little less tyranny by the artist. I’m producing imagers distilled to more basic form, leaving the viewer with more space to imprint their own emotions, feelings, and memories onto their scene. This makes it simpler for everybody, and I like that.
Moments of respite have proven elusive, and we’d all do well to come together, embrace more humility, and find peace where we can.
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.
