Manasquan Reservoir County Park

In the morning of July 4th, I woke up at 3 a.m. and drove to the Manasquan Reservoir County Park for the sunrise shot. It is a beautiful little park in the Howell Township, Monmouth County of New Jersey. Manasquan reservoir is an important part of the water supply in Monmouth County, with a 4 billion gallon water capacity, it supply up to 30 million gallons of water a day for the resident of Central New Jersey. The reservoir is part of the larger county park of 1204 acres that include woods and wetlands, a 5-mile trail, fishing and boating areas, and a environmental center.

Other than recreational and outdoor activities, Manasquan Reservoir is a charming place for photography, thanks to the dead trees that are standing still in the water. We arrived at the reservoir half an hour before sunrise and I still had some time to scout around for good composition - the point is to have the dead trees well separated on the picture. About 10 minutes before sunrise, the color of the cloud and sky getting incredibly vibrant - it was the most dramatic dawn I have ever seen since I moved to US. The color doesn't last long and it was totally gone in just a few minutes, I was fast enough to capture the right moment. We stayed for a while and walked around the park in hope of finding another good spot for the next photography outing.

By: Kah-Wai Lin
 

Sierra Night

High up in the Sierra Nevada Mountain range, Yosemite is hours away from any significant source of light pollution. I knew that during the night I would see a show of stars like no other I had ever seen before. I made my half-hour long drive up Glacier Point Road long before sunset to ensure I could claim the spot I wanted before other star gazers got there. As the sun dipped behind the granite mountains in the west, the stars began to shine. The longer I waited the more brilliant the small dots in the sky became. Looking east toward Half Dome there were so many stars that it was difficult to even focus on a single point, the all seemed to blend together in a bright mixture of the Milky Way. As I made my exposures of the sheer face of Half Dome, I started to notice small lights making their way up it. The head lamps of rock climbers had gone un-noticed to me while I was focusing on the stars. Even in the freezing cold temperatures, the climbers continued up the mountain at midnight. They were just a couple more lights among the millions of others above them.

By: Kaz Canning