New Jersey (pronounced "Joysey")

Nikkor 50mm 1.4 @ 2 sec.
F16, ISO 100
D2Xs


I had just been on a recent trip to New Jersey to help out a family member with some cabinets and whatnot. Night was the only time I really got out to see what was going on. So out I trekked over to the beach at Seaside Heights around 10:30 at night and find that it wasn't overly crowded. Awesome, no one to get in my way or to fear having the tripod tripped over. So I got to the end of the boardwalk at Sampson Ave. set the camera on the tripod and looked about as if I were dumbfounded by what to take a photo of. Well duh! it took me a second but it did manage to creep into my head(it was a long day). So I set up in the middle of the walk facing off center. I thought to myself that I could feather the top of the scene to bring up the foreground and keep the lights down but thought nah better to keep it just the way it is. I find it very interesting that 3 figures in the photo are very blurred and the people farther back and walking toward me are pretty much not blurred Seems to make it a little on the ghostly side. Which is fine by me. At 2 seconds exposure this is what happens.

















Nikkor 85mm 1.8 @ 10 sec.
F14, ISO 100
D2Xs

I also saw that the mist and moisture from the ocean waters were coming in very fast. A bench next to me was getting dew soaked and started getting a little shiny. So I quickly popped off the 50mm in exchange for the 85mm and took a couple of shots of the bench from a couple of different angle, this one I liked the best. I like the lines of the boardwalk and the bench being at differing angles from the frame leading to nowhere adds a bit of tension.
















Nikkor 50mm 1.4 @ 4 sec.
F8, ISO 100
D2Xs

Now, I haven't been to the Jersey shore in a long time so when I looked at the booth in the the photo above I was a bit taken aback by the fact of having to pay to get on the beach. Has it gotten that bad that we have to fence mother nature up to keep her beautiful? It may have kept out the Riff-Raff here but it sure as likely increased it somewhere else.
Anyhow, I had wanted to be able to get inside and place a flash but it was locked and no-one was around who could help out. I liked having the chair lift in this. If I had put the flash on the outside behind the booth it would have caused the dark background to lighten up with an ugly large halo around and would have spilled over to the chair lift and the light from the lamp to the right. Using a flag or something to limit the light would have shown up because of the amount of mist in the air. Fortunately the lamp to the right of the booth was far enough away that it cleared up just enough to keep the misty glow from overtaking the photo.


On my way home I managed to stop at the Barnegat Light lighthouse and took a few shots. I liked this one best. I used a high f-stop and a wide angle lens to keep a lot in focus. The focal point was figured on the hyper-focal distance for the lens.

The water current coming around the lighthouse is so strong the smaller boats have to go full throttle sometimes just to get through. This animated gif shows how fast the water is actually moving.

Until next week!
As always please feel free to comment.