Nature Photography in the Jersey Pines! @ConserveNJ @PinesAlliance #windphotography

Nature Photography Class

This past Saturday, Robert B. Laucks of Pinelands Adventures took us and a small group, on a wonderful 2-3 mile hike with our cameras and tripods in Franklin Parker Preserve for a nature photography class. This was our first time to this former cranberry farm area. It was beautiful! The perennial grasses and wetland areas were bursting with striking fall color.

Rob reviewed camera basics and functions with us; such as, ISO, shutter speed and aperture. He stressed the importance of light and showed us how to make a natural starburst; something Harry and I had learned on our photography trip in the Adirondacks. 

The weather was chilly as we expected for November. We didn't see any bobcats, Barred owls, pine snakes or deer, but I did see deer tracks in the sandy soil.

Photo by Diana Wind - 68mm ISO400 1/60 sec at f 5.6 NIKON D7100

We had plenty of pine cones to photograph to experiment with aperture settings on our cameras. We walked past charred pines and firewood from a controlled burn not long ago. Some of the pines were black on the bottom with rings of healthy, green growth midway and on up along the tree trunks.

One of the trails we walked along had a historic South Jersey train track from the 1920's that I had not heard of before. It was called the Blue Comet train. How do you like my first monochrome photograph of the track to show leading lines?

Historic Blue Comet train tracks (1929-1941, NY to Atlantic City) - photo by Diana Wind

After years of using my camera on auto setting and wondering why my photos were horrible, I'm finally comfortable using manual at all times. We were all using manual settings on our DSLR cameras. I used a Nikon D7100 with an 18-300 mm lens. 

Franklin Parker Preserve has about 5,000 acres of wetlands and over 4,000 acres of pine oak forest - a bounty of natural wildlife and habitats. We look forward to going back again soon. Obviously, cameras can only capture a small fraction of all that is there. 

Thanks Rob! 

And thanks to the person who shared homemade pistachio cranberry and chocolate chip cookies with all of us on the bus ride home.Yum!

Related Links
More About Franklin Parker Preserve
Discover Nature Near You in NJ

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