Photographing the natural beauty and biological uniqueness of the Pine Barrens always lures me into its broad expanse.
I selected this image because it is one of those rare experiences when I was fortunate enough to be perched on the edge of a new weather front.
Standing there, I was bound in my tracks, captivated by the stillness of the moment. The gently falling snow around me was testimony to the absolute quiet that enveloped the forest.
At one point the clouds began to dissipate enough for the afternoon sunlight to find its way to the forest floor. The swirling translucent wafers around me were suddenly backlit!
Using a variety of shutter speeds, I was able to play with different amounts of blur to capture the action of the falling snow.
Atlantic City Boardwalk
Summertime tourists enjoy the timed-honored tradition of walking Atlantic City’s famous boardwalk. With the casinos as a backdrop, the boardwalk attracts more than thirty million people each year.
Back in 1870, the casinos and hotels of Atlantic City had one big problem to contend with…SAND. It was everywhere, from the train cars to the hotel lobbies. Alexander Boardman, a conductor on the Atlantic City-Camden Railroad, was asked to think up a way to keep the sand out of the hotels and rail cars.
Costing half the towns tax revenue that year, an eight foot wide wooden foot walk was built from the beach into town. This first Boardwalk, which was taken up during the winter, was replaced with another larger structure in 1880. On Sunday September 9, 1889, a devastating hurricane hit the island, destroying the boardwalk. Most of the city was under 6 feet of water, and the ocean met the bay at Georgia Ave. The Boardwalk of today is 60 feet wide, and 6 miles long.
Atlantic City is also well known as the inspiration for the board game Monopoly.
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Along the peaks of the White Mountains in Alaska, a seemingly endless labyrinth of 20 foot tall spruce stand vigilant, surveying the valleys below them. I call them, the sleeping giants.
These stoic towers spread out over 1- million-acres of wilderness.
The range reaches a maximum elevation of 3176 ft. And it is only along the highest points where the relentless winter winds and blowing snow encase the trees in a solid crust of compacted snow and ice.
Standing in awe of such a rugged untamed wilderness eventually gives way to necessary movement in order to generate some warmth.
The hard crunching sound of snowshoeing is sometimes unexceptingly interrupted by punching through the snow’s crust. And it’s easy to loose your sense of direction. Not to mention the howling winds that quickly cover snowshoe tracks made minutes before.
Photographing this place is a challenge, both physically and mentally. Looking through the viewfinder is a calculated risk – any exposed skin against the camera’s metal body means certain frost bite. And pushing the right buttons on the camera with cumbersome mittens is nearly impossible. Removing them for more nimble lighter weight gloves involves some serious consideration. Weighing the discomfort of freezing hands against creating a photograph of such intense beauty with sub-zero temperatures and savage winds is the ultimate conundrum.
It is solitude redefined.