Greg Molyneux Photography

Tag: roads

  • Double Down

    Double Down

    35mm photo of yogis Rose Dease and Adam Binder doing partner yoga atop Aperion Yoga's Twilight Blush yoga mat, astride the double yellow lines of Cedar Run Dock Road.
    Double Down — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/160

    Yoga, photography, and the sun all went down on Cedar Run Dock Road last night. I sprinkled in some comfort zone stretching people shooting with the familiar task of landscape marsh photography. In need of fresh content for a forthcoming issue of Bay Magazine, friend and entrepreneur, Adam Binder of Aperion Yoga, sought assistance from my girlfriend Rose and me. Rose would provide the modeling and yoga talent and I the camera.

    With good natural light, a fresh breeze, and warm temperatures we had ideal conditions for what amounted to a near 45 minute photo shoot. We wasted little time and worked through a dozen or so different partner poses, and I made a total of 162 frames all with my 35mm lens. I was shooting wide open at f/1.4 to shorten depth of field and bring the sharper focus to our yogis. I’m satisfied with how this strategy played out. Of course my inexperience was showing when Adam requested coaching and direction on posing, facial expressions, hand position, etc. Being a novice to photographing people I had little to offer, but things still worked out well enough.

    Adam’s basic requirements consisted of producing a vertical photograph with an 8.5 x 11 crop factor, his yoga mat visible—they are beautiful, by the way—and “pop.” With that, I did my best. Tonight, I am posting what is easily the most abstract of the poses photographed. All credit to Rose and her creative inclination to line the mat up along the double yellow road lines, where she entered an L shaped handstand while Adam was in downward facing dog behind her. While in the pose Rose rested her feet upon Adam’s hips. It is fascinating to look into this pose low to the ground and head on, it’s difficult to puzzle out the positioning. The presence of hands and feet leaves the viewer curious, wanting more. It brings interest into further exploring the photograph to piece together how their shared alignments works.

    Beyond the mystery of the partner pose there are things to discuss about composition. Dominating the frame, Rose’s asana creates a tall isosceles triangle. This mirrors the Aperion logo, an equilateral triangle, seen along her black waistband. More than that, however, is the sense of place framing our models. The road surface, its double yellow lines moving through the pose and jogging ever so gently to the left, flanked on each side by marsh grasses grounds the yogis in nature. Further backdropped by late day light moments before sunset. Rose’s pastel pants atop the frame make a perfect counterbalance to the well matched pastel yoga mat at the bottom of the picture. Rose’s array of tattoos build another layer, with the Sanskrit tattoo running vertical down her back connected to the top of the photo to the bottom. Despite everything going on here simplicity and balance still somehow win the day. This is the kind of paradox that makes art so fascinating and enigmatic.

  • Hit the Pavement

    Hit the Pavement

    14mm wide angle sunset photo made at street level on an asphalt road surface between double yellow lines.
    Hit the Pavement — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    Get low. You will come across this command often in your development as a shooter. It is especially common for us plying our trade in the landscape photography niche. Get low. Get the shot. Get the viewer in. Throwing a quick and dirty best guess out into the universe, I would ballpark I make some 75% of my landscape photos at a camera height around two feet. So yeah, I follow conventional wisdom to get low.

    Shooting on Dock Road a little over a week ago, about a minute or so after I made this shot, I decided to get low, all right. Hella low. The sunset was in max fire mode at a northwest exposure, which is in perfect perpendicular alignment with the west bound direction of the road itself. And so I used what my environment gave me—the asphalt. With careful placement of my camera on the road surface, spaced even between the yellow lines and using the road as a de facto tripod, I made seven brackets facing right into sunset supreme.

    The low as you can go orientation brings us to the literal ground floor. Terrapin turtle crossing level. This shrinks the viewer down, in turn amplifying the magnitude and prominence of the road surface. We are so close to the action in this shot, we encounter farsighted focus leaving our immediate contact with the road blurred. This allows the viewer to climb into the frame and scan down the road, ultimately finding sharp focus on what was a potent sunset burn.

    Leading lines help to further guide our vision. First and most obvious we have the center weighted double yellow lines. This sends us right down the frame. Added to that we have the converging lines of the two sides of the roads. Flanked by guardrails and power lines on the right side. This line work coupled with the smattering of houses along the horizon pulls everything to the vanishing point of the photograph. Here it all meets in the middle. Underneath the high drama of a sparkling sunset.

    Remember to get low to get down with great photography.

    Interested in buying? Purchase

  • 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.

  • Let’s Talk About the Weather

    Let’s Talk About the Weather

    Photograph of a double rainbow arching over power lines and Dock Road at sunset
    A Sign of the Times — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 0.8 sec

    I’ve been sitting on these two photos for days; sulking in my own prison, shackled by the nonsense sentencing of my own perfectionist imposition. In some kind of martyred protest for the way events unfolded this past Tuesday, June 23rd. In other words acting like a petulant child.

    I’ll spare the minutia but Tuesday started off all sorts of wrong thanks to an internet connectivity outage that interrupted much of coastal New Jersey for the better part of a day. A nightmare for Facebookers everywhere. This laid waste to my plans and sent me into the office on a day I was prepared to work from home. Just as importantly on a day I was prepared to shoot. Was prepared being the operative words here. You see, the best thunderstorm threat of 2015 thus far was becoming quite likely 24 hours out, and that the weather event would coincide with the golden and twilight hours. All the ingredients, man.

    Connectivity issues be damned I put on my big boy pants, packed my things, and went to work. Accepting fate through self-deprecating laughter it was at this time I struck storm chasing from the day’s to-do’s and instead shifted focus to my deliverables. Yadda, yadda, yadda a day’s work and hit fast forward to leaving the office: the line of storms was about 30 miles to my south and west, moving due east at roughly 45 MPH. Could it be true? A chance for a well-timed rendezvous? Based on RadarScope positioning, I estimated the clock would afford enough time to get to my house to grab my gear. Everything looked great until I hit the light at County Road 539 and NJ-70 (~23minutes from my house); the already impressive line was expanding from the middle out into a bonafide bow segment driving across Salem, Gloucester, Burlington, and into Ocean and Atlantic Counties at an accelerated rate. By the time I made it to NJ-72 and turned eastward, the veil of black dominating my rearview said it all: getting to Dock Road for photos in time for the storm was simply out of the question. At this point it was simply get home, Greg.

    Insert a rain, wind, and light show and you have what was a 15 minute raucous ride out at my house. Immediately afterwards text from friends and look to the west let me in on a little secret: the sun was going to get under these impressive cloud formations and roving lightning strikes just in time for sunset. Everything was in play—lightning, rainbows, a palette of intense color, dogs and cats living together? Without a second thought I loaded the car and made for Dock Road.

    Posted up at my usual spot the scene was something. Storm clouds rolling, strong wind shipping, thunder clapping mere seconds after spokes of lightning splayed across the sky, pouring rain, and one rapidly developing sunset. Car bound thanks to rain and lightning I was missing out. If I could have kept my lenses dry I would have said to hell with the lightning and risked it, but the rain was too strong to get more than one clear shot off at any one time. At this point I was lamenting (re: complaining) to Twitter that I was 5 miles too far to the south. A few minutes into my pity party the rapidly intensifying light at my back (to the west) mixed with falling rain put me on instant rainbow alert. Seconds later there it was: bold and beautiful straddling Dock Road in full double rainbow regalia. Thunder was booming, lightning was cracking, the sun was shining, and this rainbow was saying hey, what’s up armchair photographer man? It was glorious.

    It was then my mind downshifted into the hell with everything mode. I grabbed my tripod and set it up in the middle of a kaleidoscopic Dock Road. I fixed my camera, pressed the shutter, and proceeded to make a huge mistake. After the first shutter press I realized I didn’t have my two second timer enabled—I always use this to prevent any camera shake as the shutter is depressed and the mirror flips. Except this time it screwed me. Royally. I quickly enabled the timer, pressed said shutter, and immediately witnessed one very bad ass lightning strike sprawl throughout the sky, originating from dead smack in the middle of the rainbow. As the two second wait for eternity was up, the lightning was gone and the picture was taken. With nothing but the rainbow you see above. I blew my chance. I made a mistake and it was all www.nooooooooooooooo.com from there. Three and a half years into photography and I fold like a tent in the midst the best lighting/environment/sky conditions I’ve yet to encounter. Maybe next time I won’t choke so hard. Whenever that is.

    Photograph of stunning clouds, pastel skies and a rainbow appear over the marsh at sunset
    Kaleidoscopic — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/30

  • Keep Left

    Vibrant road signs photographed at sunrise
    Keep Left — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/30

    Mid-frenzy and flanked by powerful light during Sunday morning’s sunrise shoot I broke rank, disengaged camera from tripod, and went handheld to make some more spontaneous frames of my immediate surroundings. Rich golden light was pouring in from the northeast, and I wanted more than anything to capture the vibrant strength of the sun’s first light. Stronger than usual, just as I was experiencing it.

    The signs seen here sit right at my go-to Dock Road photo spot. They always draw my attention—especially the quirky homemade TURTLE X-ING sign. It gets serious points for character, and the turtles need our vigilance! Since I’m almost always at the spot for sunset, the change in light source direction illuminated the signs in a way I just don’t get to see on the regular. Enchanted, I kept creeping closer and closer and closer with my wide angle lens—bringing the scene tighter and tight together.

    I’m pleased with this vertical orientation photograph. I’m particularly pleased with the signage pointing off to all the sunrise light drama happening to the northeast (left) side of the photograph.

  • Today some snow happened

    Light snow falls on an empty roadway marked only by a lone set of tire tracks. Flanking the road are guardrails and pine trees to either side of this black and white photograph.
    Today some snow happened — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 800 | EXP 1/30

    Up until about 4 hours it was hardly the season for snow lovers. Not for those of us living in New Jersey, anyway. But with today’s Clipper and the threat of this weekend’s Nor’easter, times they are a changing. Being a photographer and a snow lover, stopping to take pictures on my way to dinner seemed the only sensible thing to do.

    I went toward my usual Dock Road jaunt but turned off onto Mayetta Landing Road just before things open up onto the marsh. There lie one single pair of tire tracks perfectly marking the road ahead. I quickly parked in the shoulder, threw on the hazards, and jogged off into position. With ISO set to auto and snow messing up my lens, I fired off a single handheld exposure and produced what would become the picture above.

    Here’s to more (and better!) snow photos coming in the days and weeks ahead.