Painting The Pinelands
As I write this we are hours away from the first big snowstorm in a couple years in the Northeast. So I thought, what could be better than to sneak in one more image from my autumn photography travels. And I apologize... I can hear it now (and you know who you are)... "Not another Pinelands photograph!"... "Don't you go anywhere else?"... "Don't you live in PA?".
I can't help it. There is just so much to see and explore in The Pinelands and I have only scratched the surface in the three years I have come to know it. It is a United States Biosphere Reserve, it represents 22% of the land area of NJ, it's a unique combination of pine-oak forests and rare plants, and hardly anyone knows about it. And to me, what really makes the Pinelands special is the water... slow moving rivers, marshes, abandoned cranberry bogs, lakes and more.
And sometimes all that water combines with the weather to produce beautiful foggy mornings unlike anywhere else. As it did the morning I made this image. I was wandering around Whitesbog in fog so thick it was disorienting. It felt like I was on another planet - and completely alone. It was quiet as I walked along the abandoned cranberry bogs. And with every step, small islands in the bogs were first revealed, and then concealed again.
As I moved and observed and made some photographs, I began to think like a painter. I could create almost whatever I wanted to. My canvas was the thick foggy morning air that concealed everything beyond thirty feet. My paints were the muted reds, oranges and yellows of the autumn morning. And instead of using a brush to create color on that canvas, I used my legs. I walked back and forth to reveal just what I wanted to and nothing else. I knelt down on the ground to get different angles and I zoomed in to isolate the subject and create my "painting".
Thanks for indulging me in one more Pinelands photograph - I can't promise it’s the last!