January 2012

2012 was a big year for change but not until later in the year. It started with us living in (Oakhurst) Ocean Twp., NJ in a rental house for the school year while Miranda finished up her senior year at Monmouth University. Our house wound up being a quarter mile from the NJT North Jersey Coast Line (NJCL) so prepare yourselves for a lot of NJT until May. ;-)

The first shooting I did in 2012 was of the Quadrantid meteor shower on January 4th, which was kind of a bust as this was the only shot that I got that captured one of the meteors.

 

My next outing was to Conrail's Freehold Industrial Track where I caught the local, SA31, rolling through the line's namesake town.

Delivery of AMT (Agence métropolitaine de transport) and NJT's newest locomotives, the ALP45-DP began in 2011 and continued through the beginning of 2012. I decided to run up to Port Newark, NJ on January 16th to attempt to shoot the newest imports but the gates were closed and I could not gain access to the AMT dual modes ready for transport.

After being disappointed with wasting time and gas for nothing, I headed home via Freehold where I once again caught SA31 and dealt with the lack of light as best I could.

 

One of the part-time jobs I had back in NJ was filing paperwork at the office my mom works. The only good part of the drive there was having to cross the Coast Line and occasionally getting stuck by a train pulling into or out of the Hazlet station as was the case on the 18th.

 

The busiest day I had was January 19th when I decided to spend the morning on the NJCL before taking the train to Hoboken to help my dad install new smoke and CO detectors in my grandma's apartment building. I started by driving to Belmar to shoot the Shark River bridge before heading back to Long Branch.

One thing that I have been noticing when looking at some of my favorite photographers' older work is their inclusion, whether intentional or not, of signs, vehicles, buildings, etc. giving a strong indication of place and even time period. For those not familiar with the NJ/PA area, Wawa is a chain of convenience stores (and now gas stations) located in the area. The second photo depicts the Coast Line well with the marina in the background but when taking another look, I feel that the Wawa billboard advertising coffee on this cold winter morning adds another dimension.

I must have chased the northbound up to Long Branch and caught him pulling through Long Branch yard up to the station.

Later that afternoon I hopped on the express up to Hoboken from Elberon to meet up with my dad. It just so happened that an NJT ALP45-DP had been sitting in Hoboken for a few days making it a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of day. 

 NJT's TGV sits on a side track in Rahway.

 Pacing PATH along the Passaic River.

A few shots of the Meadowlands Maintanence Complex (MMC).

A pan of the Light Rail leaving Hoboken.

The best shot I could get of NJT 4501.

The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western's Hoboken Terminal completed in 1907.

The next day I grabbed two shots at the Elberon station.

The first snow of 2012 fell overnight giving me a reason to head out in search of a rail train that was supposedly working the lower Coast Line. Unfortunately, when we got to Bay Head we found the train parked with no power. The day wasn't a complete bust as we caught a southbound through Spring Lake on our way home.

I came up with the idea to do a slideshow using all time-lapses and got the ball rolling with a trip to "film" sunset at the Raritan River drawbridge on the 24th. I thought I had the piece put together but I either don't or couldn't find it so these are two images from the evening,

The last shots I took in January were purely documentation as it was announced that the abandoned pedestrian overpass south of the ex-PRR station in South Amboy would be removed on January 28th. I ended up going shortly after sunset on the 27th to get one of the last trains to pass under the century old bridge as well as a few of the bridge itself.

That was it for my January as I kept working on my time lapse project with poor results.

Doing Something Different

While I continue to collect funds to replace my computer with one that can handle Lightroom 4 and 500,000+ photos, I've decided to do something that I've never done, a photographic year in review. I got the idea from the various forms of photography projects people attempt on Facebook such as the 365 photo thing, photo of the day, etc. Instead of doing one photo a day, I will basically review the photos I took in each month.

Here is some information about what I'll be doing and how:

- I'll be picking out photos that I feel are either "news worthy," pretty or that I just enjoy looking at!
- Most will be the small JPEGs straight out of the camera unless I have edited them at some point in the past.
- I want to give people a look at not only what I shoot but why and how. This is in no way meant to be a perfect portfolio of images but rather a personal look at what I choose to document with some insight.
- There will probably be a lot of crap that people don't care about but hopefully more (or an equal amount) that you do!

I originally planned on doing just 12 different posts (one for each month) but after going through January (a slow month) and picking out so many shots, it will definitely end up being more than that.

Stay tuned!