Ocean City Morning

It was a beautiful morning last weekend along the New Jersey coast. I like the winter trips to catch sunrises because the sun rises so late. A 7:15 sunrise allows me to wake-up as late as 5:00 and still get down there in time to position myself for a nice sequence of shots.

This morning the pre-sunrise color was not that great, even though I thought the light cloud cover would provide very nice colors. But I got a good 30-40 minutes of a fantastic post-sunrise sky. I was very glad to have this because it took me much longer than I thought to locate the old 59th Street pier. I thought I was going to completely miss any good shots but I was able to get a couple of very nice ones.

Below are two choice photos from that morning.







Site: Photography by Matt Schrier
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Prallsville Mill

This is an iconic pair of buildings in Stockton NJ, right along the canal. A storm was brewing, and the lighting was perfect for just a short time. A few minutes later the dark clouds make this shot impossible.



(Click on the image to enlarge)

Avalon Sunrise

It's getting harder and harder for me to drag myself out of bed at an ungodly hour to take the 1 1/2 to 2 hour drive to the NJ shore in the hopes of getting some nice sunrise shots. The rewards can be great, but the risk is getting down there and finding too many clouds in the way. I actually woke up at 4:15 AM on Saturday, checked the weather and found cloud-cover over New Jersey. So I went back to bed and I tried it again on Sunday. The downside to this adventure is that when I get home a few hours later I am really beat, and a shower and a nap are in order.

The sky was quite clear on Sunday (a little too clear - a few more fair-weather clouds could have created some nice colors). I set Avalon as my destination and I headed for this fishing pier. The sunrise ended up being quite nice, as you can see below.

After spending some time lingering along the beach I headed up to Brigantine to look for the foxes I had photographed last year. I saw a glimpse of a single fox, but no more than that. Oh well, maybe another time.