Natural Vs. Artificial: New Jersey Landscape Photography

I have long been interested/obsessed with lightning. As a kid, I used to love going out to the front stoop to watch storms. Living in a neighborhood with lots of trees didn’t exactly afford the best view of lightning or the sky – so the second I could drive, I began logging hours by the shore. At first, it was the bay beach a couple of miles away from my house. After a while, I began to feel comfortable creeping over to the Ocean Gate boardwalk.


I wasn’t doing photography seriously then, but I loved to take my first 35mm film camera with me to take the same 5 photos over and over again on different days. I never even attempted to get a photo of lightning, knowing that the combination of me being a seriously unlucky individual and also a rather cautious one created a cocktail that kept me from the experience. Once I got into photography seriously, I began to love long exposures, fireworks, and essentially any ‘light painting’ photo I could get.


I had not attempted getting shots of lightning until the other night. Having just finished shooting an event, on the way home, I noticed that there was some serious storm going on. It wasn’t raining, the clouds seemed to be in the right position to be able to photograph, and all the impossible variables seemed to fall into place. I set up by Island Heights, and began a relatively frustrating hour checking exposures, getting my timing down, and trying to remember to continuously press the shutter (next on my purchase list: remote shutter). I managed to get several bolts, though the one I’m going to share was the night’s best. It was totally exciting each time I knew I ‘got one’ in my shot, and I am now waiting patiently for the next storm.


Just so you can compare, I’m going to show you nature’s fireworks vs. the ones that we shoot off on the Fourth of July. I tried a little something different with this year’s fireworks and pushed my ISO way higher than I typically do, so I could include some foreground. When I finally got to look at the frames, I was really happy at the sense of ‘awe’ that including the people watching the show included.





www.deepsixphotography.com

Light Show

I love doing firework photos. Unfortunately I don’t always have to opportunity to get around to doing them.

I’m typically not terribly personal on this blog, but I do want to mention that Fourth of July has always been my favorite holiday. It is unfortunate for me, that because of this – it rarely turns out well.

I didn’t get any firework photos from the fourth itself. The following snips are from the 1st.