Picture Story

One of my oldest friends recently decided to pursue photography. While she was eager to learn more about night photography, she was reluctant to go out on her own to practice. That’s when she gave me a call. My answer was an instantaneous yes. This was exactly my type of girls’ weekend. It took a while to find a time that we were both free. Having to pick a date months in advance, we really lucked out with the weather on the weekend we chose.

Before our trip, I did a lot of research into the stretch of the New Jersey coastline where we were going to be shooting. In general, I spend a lot of time on map apps looking for green spaces. Once I find a promising area, I look at the street and satellite views, then search the internet for available images to get sense of what to expect. While our primary destination for this trip was Island Beach State Park, I knew that I wanted to spend at least one evening along Great Bay Boulevard, colloquially known as Seven Bridges Road, in Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey.

Based on my research, I knew this was going to be a good spot. I even knew from the weather report that we should have a good sunset. What we got was one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen, with a rainbow of colors reflecting off of perfectly still water. I did decrease the highlights and boost the saturation somewhat in post to highlight the amazing colors, but the final picture captures the reality of the sky that evening.