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Tag : NJ

28 Jul 2019

Fun at night in Somerville

Last night I did another version of a fun workshop, night photography. I love shooting at night, you can do it any night, it really doesn’t matter what the weather is as long as you aren’t doing astrophotography. And since New Jersey isn’t the best place to be for photographing stars I go for other things when in N.J. I took the group to Somerville where I did some light painting and showed them the tricks of long exposures. Photographing […]

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Classes & Workshops / Photo adventure / Scenic 0
09 May 2019

Admiring New Jersey’s gardens

New Jersey is the Garden State after all. And there are many public gardens that were previously large private estates that had elaborate gardens that are now either maintained by private foundations or local and state governments. I decided to load up my 12 passenger van and take a tour of three of them. It was a fun day and the group enjoyed going to Leonard J. Buck Garden in Far Hills, Cross Estate Gardens in nearby Bernardsville and then […]

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Classes & Workshops / Photo adventure / Scenic 0
06 May 2019

Being creative in Cape May

One of New Jersey’s many jewels is Cape May, a beautiful beach town at the southern tip of the state. Cape May has long been a tourist town, they claim to be America’s first beach town. It has a huge white sand beach on the Atlantic Ocean and nearby beaches on the Delaware Bay, although they tend to be not as white. The town is filled with historic, quaint and colorful Victorian houses that are great fun to view and […]

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Classes & Workshops / My life / Photo adventure / Travel 0
20 Oct 2018

Taking to the air over Far Hills

Each year there is a massive event in Central New Jersey called the Far Hills Race Meeting. It is officially steeplechase horse races on a beautiful property in the small rural and extremely upscale town of Far Hills. About 30,000 attend the event and some of them know there are horse races going on. The rest are there for other reasons, including being seen, seeing others, showing off their expensive cars, putting on the most lavish tail gate party possible […]

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My life / Photo adventure / Scenic 0
29 Sep 2018

Looking around The Ville at night

Last night I held a night photography workshop in Somerville, NJ. It is always a lot of fun to see how my hometown looks after dark. We started in a cemetery that has some large but rather eerie monuments. I tend to hang out in cemeteries probably more than I should and I’m always amazed by the tributes that have been built to the dead. At least they make for fun photographs. We got there before it was pitch dark […]

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Classes & Workshops / Photo adventure 1
27 Jul 2018

There’s lots of color in those balloons

I love to fly in hot air balloons and they are almost as much fun to photograph. If I had a lot more money and a lot more friends and a lot more time, I’d be a balloon pilot. You need lots of friends to help chase the balloon and pack it up. But then if I had lots of money I’d probably have more friends… But anyway, this weekend is the QuickChek Festival of Ballooning in New Jersey. Many […]

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Photo adventure
10 May 2018

A pretty evening on the Delaware

The weather was looking pretty stormy this afternoon so I decided to see if I could run down a thunder storm. I headed west from my Somerville, NJ, home looking for a fun rural storm shot. There wasn’t much going on as I drove so I thought I would go to the lovely burg of Frenchtown on the Delaware River bordering Pennsylvania. Frenchtown is quaint and pretty and it was getting pretty dark as I rolled into town. The sky […]

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My life / Photo adventure / Scenic 0
05 May 2018

Putting light on an old bunker

The last thing we did today during my Cape May Photographic Creativity Workshop was to break out my big flashlight again and illuminate an old WWII concrete bunker on one of Cape May’s beaches. The bunker is pretty cool but not pretty. Built right at the water’s edge to watch for German attacks, it is now well back from the water but surrounded by sand. There are no lights nearby which makes a perfect object for light painting. After the […]

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Classes & Workshops / Photo adventure / Travel 0
05 May 2018

Using exposure as a creative device

Workshops are just plain fun! It is great to get out with people, think only about making images and enjoying wherever I am. Today wasn’t the greatest weather for my Cape May Photographic Creative Workshop but that doesn’t matter. I started a the day before sunrise with a small group on the beach again. I decided to shoot the same pilings I did yesterday and try to see how I could make the same object look different. It was mostly […]

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Classes & Workshops / Photo adventure / Photo tip 0
04 May 2018

Thinking about creativity in Cape May

This afternoon was the start of my Cape May Photographic Creativity Workshop and I have a great group of people. We spent a couple of hours talking about creativity and pushing ourselves beyond the obvious. I found a great quote from Picasso that goes something like “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” I can’t say that I understand most of Picasso’s paintings but that is the point, I don’t need […]

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Classes & Workshops / Photo adventure / Travel 0
04 May 2018

A peaceful morning on Cape May beach

Today is the start of my Cape May Photographic Creativity Workshop and I started the day well before sunrise out on the beach right across from my hotel. It was a beautiful morning and one of the great things about being out at sunrise is there aren’t many other people, especially at this time of year. I love the way the world looks before the sun comes up but it is always hard to drag my butt out of bed. […]

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Classes & Workshops / Photo adventure / Scenic / Travel 0
03 May 2018

Using a long exposure to build up color

There is something special about a long exposure – especially when water is involved. A long exposure of moving water, leaving the camera’s shutter open more than two seconds, turns reality into a soft, surreal scene. After the sun set this evening and the other people left the Cape May, NJ, beach as darkness set it, I was able to shoot some of my favorite scenes, just the ocean, beach and sky. Over the years I have learned to stick […]

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Photo adventure / Photo tip / Travel 0
03 May 2018

In my mind there is always more to a pretty sunset

There are times when I’m shooting and big, heavy thoughts come into my head. I think about how the photo might be symbolism for the meaning of life or wonder how images alter the behavior of people. Fortunately that doesn’t happen often or I might be goofier than I already am. But there are times when I’m out enjoying the world while I have a camera in my hand and the scene is just classic pretty. This evening I was […]

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Humorous / People / Photo adventure 0
09 Feb 2016

Vintage cameras from a friend feel right at home

I don’t know how I got so lucky to have great family and friends. My wife Robin and I had dinner tonight with our friends Brian Horton and Marilyn Dillon. Marilyn was Robin’s editor back in the day and helped get Robin going in the right direction as a writer. Marilyn continues to be a strong inspiration for both of us. Brian was a longtime photographer and headed sports photography for the Associated Press. He set up AP’s coverage for […]

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equipment / My life
31 Oct 2015

The latest sunrise of the year and unexpected frost

Today is my favorite day of the year to shoot sunrise, the sun rises at its latest time of the year since tomorrow we switch back off Daylight Savings Time. So today’s 7:30 sunrise becomes 6:30 tomorrow. I can handle getting out before 7:30, but 6:30 is always more of a challenge. Even though I spent a lot of time in Vermont chasing fall foliage, I thought I would catch the end of the New Jersey version since the forecast […]

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Details / Scenic