EASTER BUNNY!

Every year I get cheesy and silly, and 2012 is no exception.

The Easter Bunny is real, and I have proof!

 

The 2012 Easter Bunny

 

So the first thing my wife said was, “Maybe she’s laying eggs.”  And then I said, “Rabbits don’t lay eggs.  They’re mammals.”  And she said, “The Easter Bunny lays eggs.”

I can’t argue with that logic, with magic and all, of course.

On the photography front, rather simple… D5000, ISO 200, 200mm lens, 1/320 @ f/5.6.  Another example of grab the camera and shoot.  With rabbits, there’s usually no time to set up tripods and change lenses (always leave a zoom on your camera when it’s in the bag), they’re kinda quick.  Although, this one must have just awakened from a good snooze as she hung around for a little while, but you can never count on that.

I’m happy on two fronts.  My lawn is nice and green and growing, and another year we have rabbits.  I can’t help but remember when my son was about three years old and he used to run after them… the rabbit would look at him as if to say, “Really kid?” then wait till he got good and close and take off at 100 miles per hour.  This, of course would go on for 20 minutes while my wife and I just watched the show.  And laughed.  He slept good that night.  There was much rejoicing.

And then there was the other time my neighbor planted a vegetable garden in his yard.  He was told to surround all the vegetable plants with marigolds because rabbits don’t like marigolds and avoid them.  In the morning, we had about five rabbits sitting there eating marigolds.  It was like rabbit cocaine.  The next day, they did away with the veggies.  We have tough rabbits.  My neighbor doesn’t like rabbits.

And in a weird way, the little buggers are comforting.  If we drive home at 3AM, there’s always three or four of them around the house, surprised and frozen by the car’s headlights, to greet us.  They’re “watch” rabbits- hey, Bugs Bunny would never let anything get past him either.

Happy Easter little bunny, and try not to tear up my lawn too badly this year!  Ya gotta believe.

Miss E. Demine

This is Miss E. Demine, in a photo taken by Mathew Brady circa 1863.  Her image is part of a collection titled “Women of the Civil War” and is commonly referred to as “Girl in a Double-Breasted Jacket.”

I downloaded the full-size scan of this image from the National Archives and did a few hours of restoration work in Lightroom and Photoshop. I’m an absolute amateur when it comes to restoring old photos.  This one was in very good shape, though.  The only problems were many white spots and lines across the photo.  It was tedious, but certainly not impossible to restore.  The restoration is certainly not complete or perfect, but I didn’t want it that way.  After all, it was taken in the 19th century- no photography from that time period was perfect.

Mathew Brady is known as the father of modern photojournalism.  His photos of the Civil War were the first to show Americans the horrors of war, and the first to show the gore of battle, something most people had never seen before.  Some believe these images helped end the war.  In fact, Brady was more of a “project manager,” sending out a team of photographers to photograph the battles.  Many of the images attributed to him were actually taken by others.

But there was something else too, more than just battles, dead bodies, and canons.  More than Lincoln and slaves.  More than North and South, Union and Confederate.  There were people like Miss E. Demine.  I wonder what her life was like?  What was her first name?  What horrors of the Civil War did she witness?  Was she Union or Confederate?  Was she wealthy or poor?  I guess we’ll never know.

I think she is hauntingly beautiful and I wish I could find out more about her, but what I wrote here is literally all the information from the archives and anywhere else on the Internet that I could find (and this information was probably 100 years old when it was entered into the archives).

She certainly couldn’t imagine that 149 years after her picture was taken someone in New Jersey would be restoring it on a computer.

Thank you Miss E. Demine for allowing us to enjoy your beauty for years to come.  Through all of your hardships, I hope you led a happy life.

The Decisive Moment… (for me)

The famous French war photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, said it best in his 1952 book, The Decisive Moment…

“Photography is not like painting,” Cartier-Bresson said.  “There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative,” he said. “Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”

When involving yourself in photography, you either get this, or you don’t  There is no way to teach The Decisive Moment.  There is no way to say, “I will now pick up my camera and take a winning picture,” at least in my mind.  If all the stars align correctly, these moments will appear before you.  The key is to know your equipment well enough that it is ready, up to your eye, your finger poised on the shutter release, and you press it at just the right instant in time… The Decisive Moment.  The problem is that those moments are short and electrical signals to nerve endings and muscles are painfully slow, even at the speed of light.  When I see what I want in the viewfinder, that microsecond where I SCREAM to myself “PRESS THE SHUTTER YOU IDIOT!” and my finger actually reacts, seems to take forever… The command has been issued, but it is a painfully long time before the human body can carry it out.

Recently, my wife started singing again.  And since I got into photography again, she gets me into situations where I can get some great photos.  Now, concert or stage photography was never my specialty, although I did it a bit when she sang in a band in the late 1980′s.  But music, especially rock music, has been part of my existence since following Black Sabbath in 1970.  So recently, I found my self and my camera at The Downtown Cafe in Red Bank, NJ for Rock ‘n’ Roll Karaoke.  This is different from traditional karaoke- you know, cheesy electronically created music with no vocals.  Some poor slob who thinks they can sing reading the words they don’t know off of a video monitor they can’t see because they drank three shots to get up the courage…

Rock ‘n’ Roll Karaoke is live.  The band is great.  The vast majority of people who try it can actually sing. And the lyrics?  Yes, they have a big book on a music stand with all the lyrics.  But unless it’s the singer’s first time or they’re nervous, most don’t even look at them.

No, this is open mic night with the band.  And the singers are great.

Gil gets into his song

So, when someone gets up in front of your camera lens, and you begin having flashbacks to 1975 and reading articles about Led Zeppelin and Robert Plant in Circus Magazine as a kid (especially when this person is actually singing Zeppelin at the time!) – you start to feel good about where the pictures are going that night.

Anyone else here? Probably not.

As Gil began to get into his performance, I found someone before my camera who looked like he didn’t care about the rest of the world – and for a few moments, maybe didn’t know the rest of the world was even there.  On top of that, the stage lights were just right and I had the right lens on the camera (a simple 50mm f/1.8).

But, he was still having fun, as you can see.  (Zeppelin is always a crowd pleaser.)  I was close- but I didn’t yet have The Decisive Moment.  But, as the song progressed, I knew it would come.

And with a final drum kick and power cord, I finally had it… The Decisive Moment…

Get it?

These images were all shot on a Nikon D5000, 50mm f/1.8 lens, ISO 3200, 1/40 or 50 sec @ f/1.8 or f/2.8.  The lens flare in the last image was a bonus.

Thanks Gil for a great performance and a great moment in time!

Smoke on the water…

... a fire in the sky

(With apologies to Deep Purple.)

I took this photo on the spur of the moment the other night.  I was sitting around watching TV and I happened to look out the window.  It was around sunset.  I was looking out a north-east window, and all the houses, trees, and the sky were this amazing orange-salmon color.  I grabbed my camera, literally ran out the front door (facing the sunset) and snapped a couple of quick pictures.

Exposure at ISO 400 was 1/30 @f/5.6.  This was shot at 52mm, which just goes to show you can hand-hold a camera at a shutter speed slower than the reciprocal of the focal length (for the photo geeks out there) and still get a sharp picture.  Had I tried to use a tripod on this shot, there would have been no shot- the tripod was in the closet and would have taken me at least two to three minutes to set up.  These colors lasted about another 15-30 seconds and they were gone.  Why did I choose the 18-55mm lens?  That’s what was on the camera.  Again, a lens change would have meant missing the shot completely.

Post processing was done in Lightroom and all I did was bump up the contrast a little and did a bit of sharpening and noise reduction.  Other than that, this photo didn’t touch Photoshop.

The “photo” lesson here is to always be in some form of “ready.”  My camera is always packed away ready for the next shot- or at least close to it.  Sometimes it takes a lifetime to see a sky like that.  Thanks to Deep Purple, I was ready…

Asbury Park- Past, Present, and Future

I hear so much about Asbury Park, NJ.  Indeed, if you look on a map of the United States and look for New Jersey, you’ll often find Atlantic City and Asbury Park.  Maybe they’ll throw in Trenton because it’s the capital.

Past

From the mid-1800′s to around 1950, Asbury Park was the place to be.  A sea side resort where the rich and famous came to party and hang out.  There was plenty to do- shows, restaurants, hotels, amusements, rides, boardwalk, and of course, the ocean.  Something for everyone.

But in the 1960′s, Monmouth Mall opened up in Eatontown, a few miles north.  This new “shopping in one place” concept killed the little shops on the boardwalk, and walking blocks on a city street to find another store.  Then, the death knell… Great Adventure… it opened in the 1970′s right near an exit of the NJ Turnpike, about 40 miles west of Asbury Park.  Hundreds of the newest rides and attractions sucked the life out of the shore areas.  Asbury Park, already old and run down, fell into disrepair.  Maybe if it had been kept up, it would have survived.  But the much larger areas of Seaside, Atlantic City, and Wildwood all had bigger and more extensive boardwalks.  Asbury Park didn’t stand a chance.

Greed then kicked in.  Developers bought near ocean front property with big plans to revitalize Asbury Park.  It never happened.  Whether government got involved or became a hinderance, permits were never issued, bribes were demanded, buildings collapsed, and block after block turned into urban blight.  Crime skyrocketed and the police force dwindled.  No one came to the boardwalk, so all the shops closed up and boarded up.  Part of the Palace Amusements was dismantled and Tillie the Clown was removed (I believe to a museum).  The last sacred bit of Asbury Park, the famous carousel, was saved from demolition by being purchased and moved to one of the Carolinas, where it runs to this day (I’m told).  Asbury tinkered on being considered a ghetto.

Present

Then the plans began.  Revitalization, again.  This time, with new government, a new economy (remember, real estate was going up 10% in value every year!), they could start anew.  And start they did.  Most of the convention center was remodeled and reopened.  Now we have a few restaurants, shows, a bar or two… the boardwalk was refurbished and now people are actually walking on it!  With people comes opportunity for business.  A small water park for small children was opened, a few small restaurants and food stands, some clothing, and other typical beach stores have all opened.  The Stone Pony was saved by Bruce Springsteen and a few others.  The Paramount Theater has live shows, and The Wonder Bar is still there along with a few others.

So, I decided to take a drive to Asbury… we had been here a few weeks ago for the annual Zombie Walk- 4000+ people dress up as zombies around Halloween and walk the boardwalk.  Tons of people and a really fun time.  I looked around a bit and it intrigued me… there were signs of revitalization.

So with some construction going on, I thought I’d get a few photos of what is right now, before it is gone for good, or at least remodeled.  I did my own personal photo walk.  I waited until the afternoon to get a warmer glow to the light.  All of the following were shot with an 18-55mm or 55-200mm lens, ISO 200 or 400.

The Carousel House

Above is where the famous carousel once ran.  I do remember riding it in one of its last years of operation and grabbing for the golden ring… now, the building is being renovated, although slowly.  A few years ago it was all boarded up- the boards are now gone and you can peer inside to where the carousel once entertained countless thousands of people.

Inside the Carousel House

In back of the carousel house was the “Casino” – in its heyday it held a skating rink.  In the 1980′s or ’90′s, part of it collapsed, but has now been rebuilt.  Hopefully in the near future it will hold shops or something.

The Casino, Interior View

Between the Casino and carousel were amusements- games and such.  Now, it’s a construction site.  Peering through the construction wall, I found this…

Casino Construction

I can only hope those new swans and dragons are a sign of things to come.

Next to the Casino was an old steam power plant.  It provided steam and electricity to the boardwalk and some surrounding areas in the 1920′s.  It is boarded up and there is no access.  There was at least one attempt in the last few years to turn it into an art museum, but I believe those plans fell through.  What will become of this building?  No idea.  It looks like a cool place, but I can’t imagine a walk inside would be safe, although I’d love to get a peek.

Abandoned Steam Power Plant

Further down the boardwalk are some newer shops.  There’s also a kiddie water park across the street from The Stone Poney, which is, of course, open all year.  Stop in for a beer, catch a show, and the likes of Bruce Springsteen or John Bon Jovi may show up.

Water Park and Stone Poney

It’s also nice to see this…

Beach Chairs Stored for Winter

A beach chair rental shop, closed for the winter, but nevertheless, there.  Cool how the window reflected the beach… waiting for the warmer weather and all those beach chairs to come out of storage.

Current events are not lost on Asbury Park either.  While walking around looking for interesting angles to take pictures, I came across this scrawled on the wall of the power plant….

Graphitti, Asbury Park

I’m sure it’s a leftover from the Zombie Walk a few weeks before.  There were plenty of “Occupy” protesters at the Zombie Walk.  But it does illustrate that no matter its condition, Asbury Park is still a “hip” place to be, at least during an organized event.

Future

What does the future hold for Asbury Park?  I’m honestly not sure.  I do know it caters to a large gay/lesbian population and lots of “artsy” people.  I can’t imagine they’ll let it continue in its current condition for too much longer.  After all, those curtains just don’t match urban blight!

I guess it depends on how much greed is left in our current business/government environment.  Are there leins on properties?  Probably.  I can’t imagine that a developer would buy a million dollar piece of property if he would then have to pay another $10M in unpaid taxes.  If the local government is willing to work with developers on forgiving leins, reducing property taxes to a reasonable amount (at least short term), cleaning up their part (streets, parking lots), cracking down on crime, and not taking bribes, maybe, even with the current economy, Asbury Park has a shot.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! (with apologies to my son)

I couldn’t resist.  I had to post my favorite Halloween picture EVER.

It will most likely mean nothing to anyone but me and my wife, but, well, it’s a fun picture.  My son, Victor, may hate the fact that I posted it on my blog, but I think he’ll forgive me.

If it doesn’t make you smile looking at a happy kid picking out his very first pumpkin, well, then, you’re just not trying.

Victor was about 8 months old in this picture and walking for a month, so he was an expert.  He didn’t even have teeth yet.

 

Victor's First Pumpkin - October 1998

 

This shot was taken on my old film camera back in 1998.  Minolta Maxxum 7000, I think with a 70-200 mm zoom.  I have no idea what the exposure was or what film I was using (it was Kodak print film).  At some point later on I scanned the print and the image file has moved to about 5 different computers over the years.  I finally processed it in Adobe Lightroom and got what I think is a great picture.

As with all photography involving small children, it is 100% luck, right place, right time, karma, planets lining up, God on your side, etc.  I’ve heard it said, “Never work with children or animals.  If you have to pick one, pick animals.”  I’m not sure if that’s true as I really don’t work with either one, but my hats are off to child and pet photographers the world over.  Patience is the name of the game.  This day, I shot several rolls of film while Victor picked out his pumpkin.  He was running all over the place, in “pumpkin glory.”  This shot was when he started banging on it to let us know that this was “The One.”

This picture was shot at a family owned farm in Tinton Falls, NJ- the farm closed down several years later, unfortunately.  A victim of suburbanization- condos stand there now.  I don’t know if anyone cared, but I was sad that day… I could never go back here and take another pumpkin picture with my son.  Glad we got this one.  I remember it had a great area set up for pictures, as you can see.  The best pumpkins were set up in rows, and they had those great bales of hay in the background.  With only a little planning, you could take great pictures like this without other people in the background, cars, buildings, power lines, etc.  It was just wonderful.  They should have had a giant sign with an arrow saying “KODAK MOMENT HERE!”

I have this picture in our bedroom.  I wake up to it each day.

 

Need Something to do this Weekend? Visit a Lighthouse!

It’s a cool night in October.  The temperature has dropped and the fog is rolling in along the coast.  The salty ship’s captain is in trouble- he can’t see the stars to navigate.  It’s been a long journey “across the pond” and they’re all tired.  He can’t see the coast.  Heck, he can barely see the front of his own ship!  He just has fog.  Waves, and waves of fog.  He tries to maintain his calm so as not to alarm the rest of the crew, but they know they’re in trouble.  Blind, and in trouble.  He issues the order to proceed, dead slow.  If he has to run into something, better to do  it at a crawl than at full steam.  The engine room responds, but it takes awhile to slow down a large ship.  He’d love to stop, but the company won’t let him.  They must deliver their cargo on-time or there will be trouble.  Lost money, and trouble.

Then, as they creep through the fog, the captain spots it… the light, circling across the fog like a friend in the distance trying to sweep it off the water’s surface.  Then, a second light.  Perfect.  “Helmsman, 30 degrees to port, ahead slow!”  “Aye captain, 30 degrees to port, ahead slow.”  The captain knows they’ve just spotted the Twin Lights of Navesink.  A few minutes later he spots a third light, just to the north of the first two- Sandy Hook!  Now the navigator can triangulate- they know their exact position.  The captain hears the engines perk up and he feels the ship start to come around, heading toward the coast.  The crew sighs, you can feel the tension on the bridge subside.  The only danger now is other ships- but there’s not much they can do about that.  Just then he hears the first blast of the fog horn from the lighthouse.  They’re close now.  “Navigator, set course to parallel the coast…”  “Aye captain!”  It won’t be long now.  Port is just a few hours away.

…..

It’s October… ghosts, goblins, pumpkins, kids with costumes, candy, decorations, lighthouses… Wait, what?  Lighthouses?  Yup, it’s that time of year to take the NJ Lighthouse Challenge!

You see, NJ has 11 or so lighthouses in various states of operation.  There are also two museums and two life saving stations.  Most are now museums and are in need of your support.  The idea of the challenge is to visit all fifteen of these facilities over the two day weekend (this year, Oct. 15-16).  For a $1 donation at each lighthouse, they’ll stamp a comemorative card that proves you were there.  Here’s a link to their web site with all the details:

http://www.njlhs.org/ChallengeofNJ.html

Can you go inside, and climb them?  You bet!  Here’s a rare view from the Twin Lights of Navesink.  Why is it rare?  Because the south tower is usually closed to visitors, except during the Lighthouse Challenge.  The view is majestic and beautiful.  In the museum, you can see the first order Fresnel lens that was once installed in the south tower.  For a brief time in history, it was the brightest light on earth and could be seen thirty miles away.  Think of how comforting that was to a ship’s captain.

View of the north town from the south tower of the Twin Lights

The Sandy Hook light house is still in operation, guiding mariners around the hook.  She stands, majestically, at the north end of Sandy Hook, on the now decomissioned Fort Hancock Army Base.

The Sandy Hook Lighthouse

So, you have nothing to do this weekend?  Go support a lighthouse!  They need your help and it’s loads of fun.  If they get closed, they’re gone forever.

And while you’re up there, remember that ship’s captain and tip your cap to the ghost of the Lighthouse keeper…

Why Should I Visit the Jersey Shore? Didn’t They Just Have a Hurricane?

Yup, we did.  Pretty bad one at that.  Amazing that as late as 12 hours before hurricane Irene hit, I actually spoke to someone who said they were “skeptical” (his word, not mine!) that the storm would “even hit New Jersey.”

Ummm, well, uhhh, WRONG!  The National Weather Service pretty much nailed the forecast on this one.  The computer models were all very accurate.  I think the biggest deviation from the forecast was the strength of the storm when it finally rolled over NJ (the winds died down a bit), but it was still bad enough.  Days later we still have flooded towns, thousands of people without electricity, and boil-water restrictions in some areas.  There are trees down, roads closed, bridges destroyed, basements flooded.  Certainly not the utter devastation of a Katrina or an Andrew, but we don’t get too many hurricanes in these here parts.  And people died.  Again, not a Katrina or Andrew (or any one of a hundred other bad storms), but the loss of even one life is too many, even if, as in some cases, it was their own damn fault (when they say evacuate, you go.  When they say don’t drive on flooded roads, you don’t!).

Oh, and we also felt an earthquake!  Remember that, a few days before?  How quickly this week’s top story forces us to forget last week’s top story.  And of course the week before that was the financial crisis and the “plummeting” stock market (don’t look now, but that plummet came back… had you “bought low” you would have made money- just sayin’).

OK, so back on topic and more in line with photography.  Why should you visit the Jersey Shore this weekend?

Here’s why:

Because that calm, blue ocean is back.  Because the people who work at the shore need your business.  But most of all, because through plummeting markets, earthquakes, and hurricanes, you need to spend time having fun with your family.

This photograph is a study in patience.  I was kind of tired and didn’t feel like doing my usual walk on the boardwalk, so I sat down on one of the many benches and watched the families and kids play on the beach one breezy evening.  Today, I figured, I’d let the picture come to me instead of me finding the picture (way easier on the knees).  So I sat.  And sat.  And sat.  Nothing.  Fiddled with the camera.  Made a few test shots just to see if the exposure was right.  Yup, ISO 200, f/11, 1/125.  Checked my watch.  I was only here because I dropped Victor off at his drum lesson.  I only had a few more minutes… I wish something would happen.  There was a family right in front of me on the beach.  The father had been struggling to get this kite airborn the whole time.  Finally, he did.  Had I been doing my usual walk along the boardwalk, I would have missed this shot.

To me, this photograph is the reason you take your family to the Jersey Shore.  Are there nicer beaches?  I guess.  Are there beaches with bigger hotels and five star travel ratings?  Yes, there are.  But for this one day, for this one moment, for one little girl and her dad, this was the best beach on the whole planet.

The Other Side of Mother Nature

As we watch, and wait, for Hurricane Irene to wreak its havoc on the east coast of the United States, I am reminded that there is a kindler, gentler side to Mother Nature.

We’ve had a heck of a week… we felt our first earthquake in who knows how long, torrential rains have inundated our area for the last month, and now we’re dealing with a large (but hopefully not too powerful) hurricane.

Through all that, I’m glad I spotted the start of Autumn.

Lucky Shot? NO WAY! Make Your Own Luck!

So my son was in his drum lesson which, because of some make-up time, was nearly two hours tonight.  A perfect opportunity to take some pictures around Belmar, NJ.  There was a chance of severe thunderstorms, and we’re near the water, so, caution is the better part of valor…

I’m parked at the Belmar Boat Basin, on the Shark River Inlet, right after the storm passed through the area.  It was a particularly nasty storm, and while not completely over, it was obvious the worst had passed through my location.

However, just to the southwest, the sky was electric.  I positioned the car so the rain wasn’t coming in the open window, aimed the camera, and waited…

Jersey Shore Lightning, Belmar, NJ

 

I’ve always wanted to take a lightning shot, and never had the “scene” to do it with.  I usually chicken out with lightning, go inside, and hide.  Here in NJ, we don’t have the grand vistas that photographers have out west, where you can see a storm 30 or 40 miles away, and photograph it from relative safety as it approaches.  Here in NJ, and suburban areas throughout the county, you see the storm when it is above you or just to your (usually) west.  Anything more than a mile or so away and all you see are the trees and buildings that are in the way, especially at sea level.

So for this shot, right place, right time, right camera settings… ISO 400, 1/25, f/8 on a Nikon D5000 with 18-55 mm lens at 30 mm.

Is it a stellar lightning shot?  No way.  I’ve seen way better.  But it does illustrate that you need to have your camera with you and previsualize the scene a little.  I’ve heard it said that ”LUCK” stands for “Labor Under Correct Knowledge.”  And that’s exactly what I was doing.  I was working under the correct knowledge that the thunderstorms would be moving through the area between 6 and 9 PM, right around local sunset (so I knew the light would be perfect).  I’d been to this location before, so I knew I’d have an almost 360 degree view of the sky, no trees or powerlines.  I knew the sky would clear behind the back edge of the storm during the sunset, which is what lit up the houses.  So I just had to set the camera, and wait for a lightning strike to appear.  This one lasted about 2-3 seconds.  As soon as it appeared in the viewfinder- CLICK!  Easy as pie.  Lucky?  Nope.  It was literally planned this way!