Posts

Trip Report: Central PA, September 2020

Image
     This year has been a particularly bad one for me in terms of getting out and doing night time photography. It started off in March. After years of wanting to do this, I finally booked a trip to go camping in the desert, and had planned expeditions through Death Valley National Park in California and Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, only to have pandemic-related lockdowns start on that exact weekend. Since then, every month I've scoured the weather forecasts for all the dark sky locations within a day's drive on the weekends closest to the new moon, hoping that one of them would produce a couple days that weren't rainy or overcast, and trying to stave off any social obligations for those weekends until I was sure the weather wasn't cooperating. Even for taking photos that don't require clear, moonless skies, it's been kind of difficult to get out between the fact that I have to wake up by 5:30 for work, and you know, the pandemic.     But, I finally foun

How I Made This: Cape May Jetty

Image
Disclaimer before I start, this is my first photography blog post. Hopefully it's not too awkward, but any feedback about what aspects I should put more or less focus on would be appreciated. Location Scouting For this shoot, I drove down to Sunset Beach in Cape May, New Jersey. It's a place I've been a few times, most recently back in February, and I chose this place because of a couple unique features. First, as the name implies, it's a good place to view the sunset. Part of the beach faces west, towards the Delaware Bay, where you can watch the sun set behind the shipwrecked SS Atlantus, a World War 2-era concrete ship. About a half mile away, the beach curves to face south towards the Atlantic Ocean. The second reason is that, being at the very southern tip of New Jersey, it is one of the places with the least light pollution in the state, which makes it one of the better places to see stars at night. Admittedly, the conditions weren't that great, as there were