Greg Molyneux Photography

Tag: salt marsh

  • Slow Way Round

    Slow Way Round

    14mm wide angle sunset photo facing east over the salt marsh under pastel colored cotton candy clouds.
    Slow Way Round — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 0.3 sec

    The pastel sunset theme carries on. Fitting I wrap September 2019’s photo bracket with one last cotton candy salt marsh burner. Here we are looking east over Cedar Run Dock Road marsh at sunset. Painted skies marked in all directions, coloring up in dashing pink tones any cloud floating about a fading blue sky. Not much to do except drift off and absorb the glow. Body, mind, and soul all lifted into righteous accord in the halls of nature.

    Musings:

    • From the video game font: Currently playing Link’s Awakening for Nintendo Switch. Outstanding. Never having played the original Game Boy nor its DX color version, this is a brand new Legend of Zelda experience for me. This coming on the heels of Hollow Knight, which was astounding. (Played on PS4.) Next up I plan to tackle Ori and the Blind Forest on Switch. Fun times.
    • Had my first real virtual reality headset test run this week. Spent about an arrow with Oculus. Something as simple as tossing paper airplanes in the opening tutorial was astounding. This was the most profound tech experience I have experienced in decades. Hard to imagine virtual reality becoming anything other than a dominating force in our daily lives. But at what cost to the human experience?
    • 2019 MLB Playoff baseball is here. The Yankees kick of the ALDS against the Twins on Friday, and I am pumped. Apologies in advance to my twitter feed. U feel good about this season though I have a gnawing worry about regression. The Yanks have handled their business against the Twins for the better part of two decades. If you believe in due, at some point the worm will turn. #YankeesOnly
    • Speaking of due: I want big snows at the New Jersey coast this year. Several blasts. I willing own this unpopular opinion. I’ll try to make good photographs at least.
    • A few days past I wrapped up 1984, and I am currently in the early stages of Catch-22. The former was a gut punch and so far the latter is cynicism dredged in sarcasm fried in satire and seasoned with irony at medium to high heat. I reckon this is Heller’s intention.

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  • Late September

    Late September

    14mm wide angle sunset photo of a salt marsh with cotton candy pastel clouds, deep blue sky, and rich sunset colors.
    Late September — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    Had you set about the salt marsh to draw up a sunset on a late September evening in the mid-Atlantic it ought look like this. Bronzed rust tones overtaking once green grasses in a slow, albeit determined race toward inevitability. Above you rainbow pastels are strewn and pulled into a never repeating gossamer stretched about the sky. All backlit by a rich clear blue heralding the return of stiff northern winds. Cold weather is coming, best to enjoy these last few weeks of comfortable temperatures before the drive toward darkness sets in anchored with the bitter bite of cold.

    As I was on Cedar Run Dock Road’s salt marsh last night making photographs some thoughts came to mind:

    • September is a solid month for sunsets. I hypothesize it has a higher degree of quality sunsets than most other months—the summer months at least. I have yet to verify with my own archives, but it feels this way. They all have this kind of color scheme and pastel cloud combination as photographed here. Of course, recency bias may be undermining better judgement since we are coming off about a week or so of this kind of sunset. If i am right, I wonder what drives this trend? Seasonal change? Angle and position of the sun? Something else entirely?
    • Despite temperatures a shade below room temperature while I was shooting, I could feel the wind driving colder air and drying out my face. A reminder winter approaches.
    • Seeing the marsh transition to brown always is bitter sweet. On the one hand the lush days of a vibrant green landscape are over, while on the other hand, the promise of superlative winter sunsets with a peculiar color palette draws near.
    • I was able to capture quality photographs three out of the last seven days. It has been a long while since I had a run like this. (See also recency bias in bullet one.)
    • I miss editing photos on a spacious 27″ iMac. Major first world problem, I know, but I do miss it. The added real estate brought me so much closer to my own work. Working on a laptop these past few years has left me feeling somehow disconnected to my art. A good craftsman ought not blame his tools but is it so wrong to miss them?

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  • Tranquility Tones

    Tranquility Tones

    14mm wide angle sunset photo with pastel clouds, salt marsh, and calm reflective water.
    Tranquility Tones — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    Stillness. Calm quiet. Pausing chaos. A tranquility tonic serving up restoration to all who imbibe. Bartender care to fix another?

    The evening approaches and cotton candy clouds thread across the sky. Pastels dance upon the strings. Stoic marsh grasses stand tall while glass calm waters reflect back the sunset tableau as would a mirror.

    When the marsh takes quiet my world slows down. My anxieties made void in the deadened wind; a resolved peace reflected back in still waters unmoved by nervous energy. Here I seek shelter. Here I find welcome. Here I learn amity. Set upon hushed grasses I hear silence surround me. Anxiety, outflanked by the power of tranquility, falls silent before the still tones of peace.

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  • Wisps of Fate

    Wisps of Fate

    14mm wide angle sunset photo with pastel colored clouds over a still salt marsh.
    Wisps of Fate — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    A rough seven days it has been. Long hours, careless mistakes, inattention, and stress all smothered in a shroud of anxiety addled uncertainty. A zero out of 10. Let us not do this again.

    Then I come to Dock Road, and I remember. Reminded of the beauty of the natural world I remember there is more to life than our failures and anxieties. We are not the embodiment of our worst selves. We are the light that burns manifold colors over the serene stillness of the life giving marsh.

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  • Late Summer

    Late Summer

    14mm wide angle HDR sunset photo made over late summer salt marsh with a five distant homes in the background.
    Late Summer — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    Hey, it’s me. The human tasked with running this website, a would-be content producer or something. Of course running is a loose term considering I’ve ghosted for about a month. Since launch in January 2014 I have never missed a month getting at least one post up. So here I am, getting in under the wire on August 31, 2019. For a while this year I was churning out of modicum of quality content but I slipped. Here’s hoping I can get back to regular posts and photographs.

    This photo, Late Summer, takes us back to a sparkling sunset that stunned the LBI Region with evening drama on Friday, August 23. I was out at dinner with my family and missed the best parts. Rainbows and mammatus clouds dominated the eastern vantage gracing any and all whom happened to be open on the beach at that hour. It must have been an absolute stunner.

    Chagrined and full of missing out anxiety we beelined for home. My toes tapping nervously from the passenger seat at each red light. Looking out the window handcuffed to inactivity, I could do nothing to arrest what I was missing. Finally home I made a mad dash into the house to grab my gear. The clock was ticking. From there it was a full tilt beeline—all while observing proper posted speed limits—to Cedar Run Dock Road.

    Once in position I had about 5-10 minutes to capture the remaining light. Nature at least begged my pardon with a sparkling second act. Sure I missed the rainbow infused mammatus, but at least I made out with a pleasing late summer sunset.

    With that I check the box for August 2019 posts. Let’s go September; let’s do this. Summer is late but I have no time for early fall.

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  • Hop, Skip, and a Jump

    Hop, Skip, and a Jump

    14mm wide angle sunset photo made over salt marsh and tide pools.
    Hop, Skip, and a Jump — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    I bring you the marsh. I bring you a sunset. I bring you an idiom. The salt marsh was lit last night, and I have the brackets to prove it. I am fortunate to have such a spot to photograph so close to home. Topping the list is Cedar Run Dock Road. A hop, skip, and a jump from my house is holds sway as a striking salt marsh. It is a classic example of a Mid-Atlantic marsh ecosystem primed to support substantial annual avian migrations. How lucky am I that I can be out there in 10 minutes?

    I want to critique myself here; not something I do often but it is nagging me enough to share. So out with it: I am not sold on this composition. My eyes and brain struggle with where to look. It’s not so much a balance thing, the weight seems right, as much as the multiple tide pools are somehow disjointed. It’s disrupting my usual ability to know where to look and how to get there as I move across a photograph. I am curious if others feel the same way.

    That said the awkward spread of brackish water pools and marsh grass tells a more complete story of the marshland. It lets the viewer in on the spread; the random array of water and green grass as it spans square miles of salt marsh. In this respect it better portrays the salt marsh as it is, a living complex of life and color.

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  • Placid

    Placid

    14mm wide angle sunset photo with pastel clouds and a glassy reflection on oxbow water feature at the salt marsh.
    Placid — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    Pastel and glass at sunset on the marsh. Cotton candy spun across the sky looking down upon its mirrored reflection. Serenity now, and to hell with the insanity later. Marsh grasses flex gently in the slightest of breeze, a hint of baby’s breath to complete the tableau. Exhale and smile—it is summer on the salt marsh.

    There was nothing too crazy in the execution of this photograph. Tripod and 14mm lens. The former set to a height of about four feet, and the latter dialed in to maximize hyperfocal distance with an aperture of f/8. From there a simple check to get leveled out and then popping off seven bracketed exposures, a one step separation between each. With the lazy shutter on the final bracket allowing more light to illuminate the marsh grass, giving the ghosting effect demonstrating movement. Bringing the baby’s breath breeze into the frame. It is the only hint of motion in an otherwise still scene.

    When Mother Nature shows up with a perfect mix of elements execution is simple. It’s a point and shoot situation, and your job is to know where to stand.

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  • You See

    You See

    14mm wide angle HDR sunset photo capturing pastel color skies over Cedar Run Dock Road salt marsh.
    You See — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

    You can visit the same place over and over for years, photograph it hundreds of times, and to quote the great Yogi Berra, “you can observe a lot by watching.” Which is to see one of my assumptions about the Cedar Run Dock Road salt marsh may be false. For years I operated, with certainty, the notion that come late June/early July the marsh grass would take on a special kind of green. A solid sea of newborn springtime green, uniform and lush. The marsh grass would grow long and the color it cast had such a lively glow that if you stared hard enough you’d think it breathing.

    Much of this notion stems from a single, formative photograph I made back in 2013. It was a pair of photographs, actually, yet I have but one posted here. South-facing, a summertime sun shower that to this day still holds a spot in my nine photo portfolio. Suggesting in and of itself I may be holding on to something too tight. This photo shows the marsh in all its green glory. From that point on, as the calendar flipped to June, I would hype on the great green return. Except it has turned more into the great green reckoning. Instead of a green shag carpet the marsh has taken on yellows and reds worked in among the green. I have also observed the grass has not grown quite as tall. Interesting.

    So what gives? Were I of a proper scientific mind it would be time to lay down a hypothesis, prepare an experiment, and record results. My observation, however late, as shown my years long hypothesis about greening to be wrong. Is there a way to demonstrate experimentally why? Can said experiment then be independently repeated by others and at other salt marshes? Of course I lack the skill and intellect to make any of this happen, but I will, as any laughable armchair scientist would, spitball the possibilities. I mean anti-intellectualism is en vogue no anyway, am I right?

    So here goes. Years of evidence suggests lush green is the exception and not the norm, at least over the past five years. Whatever happened prior is out of reach. So what happened back in the halcyon days of June 2013? I have a couple thoughts. One possibility is the presence of more fresh water in the salt marsh ecosystem. If not freshwater, then some kind of difference in the water table to facilitate lush growth and coloration. The second condition may have wholly been a factor of lighting. I made South-facing in late afternoon as a thunderstorm was pushing in over the marsh from west to east. Set against the darkened, rain filled clouds was a potent dose of golden sunlight. It is possible this let play affected the color of the grasses. I find this latter possibility more dubious, but for right now these two theories are all I have got. If any folks out there in the know what is actually up I would love you to take me to school.

    I will end this saunter through my mind’s eye with a quote by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “you see, but you do not observe.”

    Update [30 June 2019]: My smart and astute friend Staci dropped this clever insight on Facebook: “Hurricane Sandy, fall 2012. I posit that perhaps all of the detritus and chaos from that storm, toxic to the ecosystem or otherwise, could’ve had an impact.” This makes a lot of sense. Thanks, Staci.

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  • Marsh Moods

    Marsh Moods

    14mm wide angle landscape photo of wind swept salt marsh under cloudy gray skies.
    Marsh Moods — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1.3 sec

    The winds blew stiff and true; 20+ mph sustained if I had to guess. The bluster working over Cedar Run Dock Road salt marsh out of the northeast. Marsh grasses undulating southward in a great pulsing bow, unable to hold sway against the rushing tide of air. Ceaseless the weather worked; gray clouds building from south to north, fought back only by the winds intent upon a rearguard action.

    By June standards temperatures were brisk. The skies were dark and brooding, and yet observing I could help not but notice the life and energy present. The greening salt marsh juxtaposed a dose of color and lightness against a looming scene. The bending marsh grass, most noticeable in the foreground, shows movement—shows wind. It is a testament to air power. This movement, too, depicts the green of new life renewing the marsh in spite of darkened gray skies. It is a fist of defiance against a marsh mood full of ruination.

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