Four Seasons At the Shore

From Publishers Weekly
New Jersey's shoreline gets the royal treatment in this robust collection of color photographs. Though heavy on images depicting Long Beach Island and Barnegat Bay, the book does offer images of beaches from Sandy Hook to Absecon, with the majority of the photos showing people fishing, sailing, sunbathing, surfing, eating ice cream and engaging in other beach activities. The book's summer section is a riot of people and color, while winter, spring and fall are more pensive, showing images of abandoned skiffs pulled ashore and Asbury Park's deserted amusement park. The essays-largely personal, though still accessible to the general reader-address the region's wildlife and landscape, the onslaught of part-time residents in July and August, and tasks such as looking for driftwood to make a fall fire and hanging wet beach towels on the clothesline to dry. Quotes from Bruce Springsteen songs and Walt Whitman poems complete this handsome volume.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Almost every photo seems to touch a chord.... If you won t make it to the Shore this summer, this handsome volume may be the next best thing to being there. — The (Bergen) Record

A visual smorgasbord... substantial and handsome. Should you acquire this well-wrought work of art, a word of caution: By no means consider lending it to anyone; it will not find its way back to you! — Boating World

A compelling coffee-table book. --The New York Times

Brings the fabled Jersey Shore right into the living room.... Impressive. — South Jersey Magazine

The Shore gets its due. — Asbury Park Press

Compelling and dramatic; the Shore book of the year. — The Beachcomber

A ''handsome volume.'' — Publishers Weekly

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From The Beachcomber
By Edward Brown

In Four Seasons at the Shore, Down the Shore Publishing has created a new and impressive landscape format picture book of the fabled Jersey Shore – all of it, from Sandy Hook down and around to Delaware Bay. Taking a leaf from a composition of Antonio Vivaldi, this saltwater publishing company employs the four-headed metamorphosis of our coast wrought by a single year's passage as a structure, and like the well-known Concerto No. 1 in E, begins with Spring.
Four Seasons at the Shore is a sizeable 10-by 11-inch hardback, with 223 pages of captioned color pictures and text, including an index and short bios of its 54 contributors. The 332 pictures – all superbly clear and composed – vary in size, some large enough and eminently suitable for framing if one were crass enough to remove them and deface the book. Helping make the effect are verse fragments throughout by everyone from Bruce Springsteen ("Cause down the shore everything's all right, you and your baby on a Saturday Night"); to hymns ("In the sweet-by-and-by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore").
Each season is prefaced by an essay written by a person well acquainted with life on the barrier beach islands of the Garden State: Spring, Rich Youmans; Summer, Sandy Gingras; Autumn, Larry Savadove; and Winter, Margaret Thomas Buchholz. These are intensely personal essays, labors of love if any writing could be so described.
Everything found on the Jersey Shore was fair game for the photographers here: the sea and beach, of course; happy shoregoers, boats, birds, surfers, fences, flowers, lighthouses, fishermen and fisher women, steps, docks, decks, wrecks, and reeds. As the season spills from weather-chancy spring into summer, one sees in the art the blue overhead deepening, and the water growing more docile and friendly. Autumn reflects with a lazy spiraling the vast changes just over the horizon, and winter paints everything but moving green water the color of wind-blown spume in a skeleton's eye.
And there are some surprises: cross-country skiers gliding across snowy Ocean City and Harvey Cedars beaches; a weathered house on Island Beach State Park still in use by its lucky owner; a lopsided view from a windsurfer; and any number of deep orange sunsets reminiscent of the familiar and beautiful "Endless Summer" poster. There aren't people obviously in view throughout, though, and there's probably a good reason for this. Part of the charm of Four Seasons lies in the invitation given here to the reader of inserting himself, friends, and family into the photos, calling out from the porches of memory and imagination his own magic days at the Jersey Shore.
The sea and its works, of course, dominate. In many ways the barrier beach islands of New Jersey and the Carolina Outer Banks, unlike, say, the California and New England coasts, present a dimension that is lacking anywhere else. The islands go beyond a single absolute; water is always either behind or in front of you whenever you position yourself here, miles eastward from the mainland proper. Water, vast quantities of it circling the barrier beaches, reaching to other continents, colors a protean scramble: sometimes blue, sometimes gray, sometimes green, that water with sun and fog, humankind joyously reveling in it – all recorded in shots taken by photographers at the absolute top of their game.
To this reviewer the most compelling essay in Four Seasons at the Shore is that of Margaret Buchholz, which begins with a recounting of long ago life on a barrier island. Reminiscent of the Henry Beston classic, The Outermost House, it sheds an intimate winter light on an aspect few will ever experience: growing up – and getting up – through the long seashore cold with cruel nighttime frost and marrow-chilling winds coming from the four points of the compass. And the stark, uncompromising quality of the art itself in this section could make a case that the photos captured in Winter are the most beautiful in the book. Certainly they are the most dramatic and evocative.
There was no central heating in the Thomas cottage on the bay in Harvey Cedars in the 1940s, and when the dark winter came down, Margaret recalls tussles with her brother "over who would get the thick, rough, Hudson Bay blanket, striped in red, green, and black. The loser got Daddy's navy pea coat: I can still feel the weight of it. Sometimes, when the temperature dropped below zero, my brother slept with our parents and I got all the extra blankets ….
"White and red were the colors of those frigid winters. The frozen, crystal white bay, snowy white yard, frosty white windows and vaporous white breath. Red was the stove in the morning, a bulbous iron potbelly in the middle of the room. Daddy had to get up early, shake down the ashes, put on more coal and open the draft … eventually the heat radiated into my bedroom and I slowly lowered the covers off my nose. I raised one hand and slide my sheepskin slippers from behind my pillow. My other hand pulled my wool plaid bathrobe from the bedside chair. I disappeared under the mound of bedclothes as I dressed in the sleep-warmed cave. Then I would spring from my nest and in two leaps would be rotating next to the potbelly, broiling on one side and chilling on the other."
Four Seasons at the Shore is compelling and dramatic, the shore book of the year – one to leaf through in contemplative moments.
Ed Brown is a freelance writer living in Medford.

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"New Jersey's shoreline gets the royal treatment in this robust collection of color photographs." — Publishers Weekly

“Four Seasons at the Shore is compelling and dramatic, the shore book of the year.” — The Beachcomber

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New Book Captures it All: Four Seasons, Shore Moods


By Marie Scandale (from The SandPaper, Long Beach Island)

The shore gets to our senses and into our blood, lodges in our memories and rests there all year long. So, to find a book that wraps up its impact is a real gift. Four Seasons at the Shore, newly released from Down The Shore Publishing, captures the moods in 300 color photographs and four authors’ essays on the seasons.

"As much as words and photographs on paper can possibly convey the sights, smells, sounds, textures, delights, and feelings of a place, we hope you’ll find the soul of the Jersey shore here," publisher Ray Fisk introduces.

Buy another coffee table just for this one. Four Seasons is a beautiful scrapbook for the people who call the beach a permanent home, and it’s a security blanket of a souvenir for visitors until they can come back.

It just wouldn’t be possible to place yourself and a camera in all the right places and times as did the 49 photographers who focused on the shore over the past two decades.

Practically immersing the viewer in the exhilaration of surfing, Michael Baytoff is there as the young man begins a gravity-defying charge down the face of a glassy wave. The surfer’s expression is framed in sea-splash. Baytoff’s photography has appeared in Time, Natural History and Audubon, among others.

Six leaning windsurfers painting classic, colorful swipes along Barnegat Bay are captured from the water by Fisk, whose telephoto lens lets the Causeway Bridge span along the backdrop in horizontal contrast. Fisk covered Atlantic City, the shore, and southern New Jersey for The New York Times, United Press International, and The Philadelphia Inquirer throughout the 1980s.

Some of the photos were published in the Down The Shore Calendar series over the years, but many were suited more for a book than a calendar format and so are seen here for the first time.

"We’ve tried to include both the familiar and the seldom-seen, the natural and the developed coast," said Fisk, "for it is often this dichotomy that captivates us."

The dilapidated causeway shack, an endangered species of a shore icon, is pictured in a spring field of flowers and in a winter glaze of ice.

In one of the book’s many close-up glimpses at wildlife, naturalist Steve Greer pictures a nesting gull and chick in a baby-imitates-mother moment. The fluffy, speckle-headed youngster opens its mouth wide to caw along with her.

If a picture takes the breath away, the writing is worth taking more time to mull over.

Four writers provided the essays. Rich Youmans is a magazine and book editor who has specialized in the history and literature of the Jersey Shore. He is the editor of Shore Stories: An Anthology of the Jersey Shore, co-editor with Frank Finale of Under a Gull’s Wing: Poems and Photographs of the Jersey Shore, and co-author with Russell Roberts of Down the Jersey Shore.

In spring, he says, "sunlight winks as if with secrets, with promises." From Sandy Hook, Seaside Heights, Long Beach Island and Cape May Point, Youmans looks closely at spring’s unfolding. His viewpoints cover the reopening of beach homes, and re-awakening of nature.

"The slow pulse of winter has quickened, and expectations grow," he begins. "Outside, a cyclist rings his bell for no reason, amid young laughter and old longings and the great hush of the waves as they roll in, roll on."

Sandy Gingras describes summer from a step back and above. Gingras, of Holgate, created the insightful "How to Live" books and gift company, whose How to Live on an Island and … at the Beach and others of broad appeal are shipped around the globe.

In a style all her own, Gingras speaks to the summer and its taunting brevity. "Under the quiet, summertime, you are urgent and pushy and I can’t hold onto you," she says. "I am so lusciously confused by you. I’ve lost my sense of time; I put it down somewhere next to that book I was reading, next to the sweaty glass of iced tea."

More descriptions of morning to night use images that were in front of our faces but subliminal enough that we might not have taken note of them. Yet reading the words is instant recognition of the emotions attached.

"The air holds the smell of bacon frying, draws out the laugh of that gull, echoes the cheap, innocent slap of a flip-flop. Wait a bit and the morning murmers with far-off engines starting. Come churn through the wide possibility of water."

Gingras goes on to describe an afternoon "full of itself" at the beach that had beckoned and glittered, and reminds us that family and friends are at the heart of a beachy shore summertime. "Let’s go home: take the best shells and hang the wet towels on the line. The outside shower runs like rain. We are cleaner than we’ve ever been before."

Agrees Shakespeare: "Summer’s lease has all too short a date." The book is sprinkled with literary quotes in appropriate places.

To pin down fall, Larry Savadove seems to call upon Harvard-honed literary prowess as much as years of wandering the world as a sailor, soldier, journalist and adman.

Savadove is the author of two novels, most recently, The Oyster Singer, and co-author of Great Storms of the Jersey Shore. Most notable among award-winning documentaries are those for "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau."

Autumn, he said, comes to the shore "in small sighs and apologies, as if it knows it doesn’t belong."

"But to dwellers by the sea, fall is relief, and belief. The beach no longer smells of coconut oil. It is primeval again."

Savadove is a master of metaphoric allusions. In Savadove’s description, "houses stand empty-eyed." As the Earth’s creatures are nudged by the changing season, "piping plovers flee the rumors that blow down from the North Pole."

Other than some nice references to fishing and tidying up, the writer doesn’t credit fall with too many friendly qualities it doesn’t deserve. "Fall stirs all the dreads of life. … we listen to the rattle of hollow reeds and the cough of the wind at the window…."

But … "we can feel the touch of a hand of an ancient ancestor reassuring, ‘It’s all right. Nothing dies, only sleeps. We know. You’ll see.’"

In the facing photo, three men in slickers haul oversized striped bass up the dunes, against the wind.

Winter is presented to us in all its old-time bluster, as memories of when the bay froze over to the mainland every year. Only a Long Beach Island native and noted local writer like Margaret Thomas Buchholz could do firsthand justice to the "invigorating" and "visceral" season.

Buchholz is the author of Shipwrecks: 350 Years in the Graveyard of the Atlantic, to be released this fall; and she is the other half of authorship of Great Storm of the Jersey Shore. She edited the historical anthology Shore Chronicles: Diaries and Travelers’ Tales from the Jersey Shore 1764-1955, and Seasons in the Sun, a pictorial history. She is editor of The Beachcomber weekly newspaper.

"Early in the morning, ice frosts the jetties and sea smoke hovers over the water," she describes. "The beach is swept clean, then left with a new wrack line of sea-borne detritus. I find a sturdy waterlogged timber with rusty iron spikes, remnant of a shipwreck or storm-dismembered seawall. When the winter-hardened sand freezes, it crunches as I step, collapsing underfoot."

The winters of her Long Beach Island childhood began every morning in a home that was a drafty, isolated cottage facing Barnegat Bay on the west.

"White and red were the colors of those frigid winters. The frozen, crystal white bay, snowy white yard, frosty white windows and vaporous white breath. Red was the stove in the morning, a bulbous iron potbelly in the middle of the room." Red was also her mother’s lipstick and the holly berries in the garden.

This is a winter that most modern summer worshipers never see, and the book’s words and pictures may be enough for them.

Many people over the years have asked Buchholz, what do people do here in the winter, anyway? The same things you do in your winter hometowns, she answers: "cook, drink, argue, make love, read, watch TV, go to movies, have dinner parties…

"But we live in a greater space. It’s good for our souls to have all that water before our eyes. Especially in the winter."

(Reprinted, with permission, from The SandPaper, Long Beach Island, NJ. Copyright© 2004 Jersey Shore Newsmagazines.)

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from "Summer"
by Sandy Gingras

Oh, summertime, you are an invitation, a seduction. I am so lusciously confused by you. I’ve lost my sense of time; I put it down somewhere next to that book I was reading, next to the sweating glass of iced tea. I am grown up; I’m a child. I don’t know what I am. What was I thinking, what was I saying…? Summertime: You sway me on the hammock, dance with me to that old Van Morrison song, elongate my hours, dip me in and out of afternoon naps. You hum to me with bees, sugar the air with flowers, lullaby the surf. You pull the tide out, stretch the longest day. I’m a body of languor. I’m humid; I’m yawning. But don’t let me sleep through it. See how I’m burning? Put some lotion on my back. Please. Because under the quiet, summertime, you are urgent and pushy and I can’t hold onto you. June…July…August, you are zero to sixty and gone. You melt the asphalt. There’s not enough ozone in the world to block you. Your flowers open and are done. Your colors are glare. Everything at the farm market is ripe at once. There are mountains of white corn, acres of peaches. The world is ready, ready, ready. Don’t waste it.

Look how the morning waits for us pink as a promise. Come out into it. Just sit on the porch with a mug of coffee and watch it becoming. The wind gathers itself from sleep, an egret stalks the salt marsh. That vine is winding itself into knots and flowers. The air holds the smell of bacon frying, draws out the laugh of that gull, echoes the cheap, innocent slap of a flip-flop. Don’t be distracted. Don’t go and do something else. The world is full of pause. See that fisherman balanced on the horizon in his little boat? I can hear him reeling in; I’m right there with him. The air trapezes us over, connects us. He’s humming some song that everyone knows. Hear how it goes? …

Afternoon is full of itself —- turn up the color, open the breeze. The beach beckons and glitters -— all sensations arrayed. Try to take it in…but it’s a too big sun in a too big sky. Every beach is a postcard -- wish you were here! The people look so various but similar. Here they dart and dive, boogie and strut, nap and dream. They are philosophers and litterers. They are burned in odd stripes and sticky and sun-blocked. Feel the heat of it! How electric the air really is. How it smells like something cooking up. Even in the quietest moment, there’s amusement park in the air. There’s the wide open throttle of a flower. There’s Coppertone and barbecue. There’s the gushy, tangy, spiritual wash of the sea. There’s a skid in the road. You can’t deny it. Summer wears the bikini, makes its own parade, can’t stop staring. Summer: All you need is a heart to run you all day. All you need is a body....


from "Fall"
By Larry Savadove

…But to dwellers by the sea, fall is relief, and belief. The beach no longer smells of coconut oil. It is primeval again. Looking seaward, you recognize eternity. Houses stand empty-eyed. Gulls squawk at tire tracks in the sand until they, too, are gone. The sea darkens, but the sky lifts. You can stand on the beach and cast a line and connect with the deepest abyss. You can surf a wave of your own, named and claimed. You can kayak out with the porpoises and pelicans, just that.

The sand fills in summer footprints until only yours remain. It's cool underfoot, as if the core of the earth were pulling into hibernation. Your shadow reaches out over the waves to meet the moon. You can hear the dune grasses strum. You can hear the wing beats of migrating ducks high in the sunset and the soft calls of overnighting geese. Shore birds leave. The laughing gulls slowly pull off their black hoods to blend feathers with the sky that will carry them away. Piping plovers flee the rumors that blow down from the north pole. Egrets suddenly find memories of distant bayous in their eyes, and maps to get there. High in some unreachable stratosphere, icy arrows point the way.

But the air that chills also sparks. Stars that lay hidden in the summer earthglow emerge again, reminding us we're not alone. We walk down the middle of the street and are surprised by a stray car, reminding us how alone we are. Boats retreat into their cocoons. The bay is redolent with the pungent perfume of dank mud and old bait and rotting vegetation. Whiffs of wood smoke delight with a primal comfort. The seawind draws patterns in the shifting sands, spreading a carpet of arabesques. It tidies up the sky, too, pushing the dust and pollen and fumes of summer somewhere off the edge of the world.


from "Winter"
By Margaret Thomas Buchholz

The winter beach is invigorating, visceral. If the wind -- always the wind -- is from the west the dunes protect me. On a sunny winter day the beach seems wider, flatter, more expansive, the sand whiter. Flocks of scoters and gulls claim the water, floating just beyond the breakers. Formations of sandpipers swirl in figure-eights as they lift from a jetty then settle again. Mares-tails of foam stream off the breakers to the east. A solitary line of footprints interlocks with paw-prints. Wind has softened the edges of four-wheel drive vehicle tracks. An incoming wave reshapes a patch of shells with a rattling, clacking sound. Down the beach, in the distance, black-clad surfers cluster like the ducks….

A coastal blizzard leaves the beach so white the sand becomes gray by contrast. A veil of white obliterates beachfront homes. Snow fills gullies in the rock jetties and hugs the dunes. Children would sled down them if they were allowed. I used to. Now cross-country skiers glide along the edge of the surf.

On some beaches seawalls and boardwalks have usurped the dunes. Behind the seawalls, boarded beach cabanas and empty condominiums front the ocean, shuttered against winter storms. Along the boardwalk, a congregation of white-bellied gulls faces into the wind, defining its direction. Runners buck this wind, or speed before it. In red and yellow parkas, they sparkle on the gray ribbon of boards. Two men lounge on a bench in the sunny niche of a closed concession stand and look longingly at an empty fishing pier projecting into the pewter sea. A cold sun only hints at warmth.

Amusement parks are static, giant immobile sculptures, steely and cold. Marinas display plastic wrapped boats. Motels are barren. Traffic lights on broad ocean avenues blink at very few cars. A flock of Canada geese waddles across an intersection; a formation of cyclists, bent low over handlebars, glides around them. Rows of Cape Cod cottages, angled modern homes, pastel Victorian concoctions and sprawling, multi-porch shingle palaces line quiet streets. They are empty and cold, pipes drained. Up and down the coast, tens of thousands of rooms quietly wait for summer....


from "Spring"
by Rich Youmans

Once again, I return to this still-empty beach. Shorebirds wheel and glide, trailing their shadows along the incoming waves, their bellies inches from whitecaps. Glyphs of heron and gull track the sand, and wet shells shine in the noon sun. Behind and above me, rising from the Highlands like a medieval fortress, the fraternal Twin Lights—one square tower, one octagonal, both of a time long gone. Far across the Atlantic, the New York skyline serves as a hazy reminder of the world beyond. I walk on, caught between eras, between environments, between the ocean and the bay.

Not far away, holly grows hard against barracks that withstood two world wars, and the bird shadows flit over crumbling battery emplacements. Everywhere, divisions: human vs. natural, concrete vs. sand, eternal vs. ephemeral. Season vs. off-season. A winter chill laces the salt air, but so does the spring sun. The wind blows in off the Great Atlantic, sending showers of spray, little hosannas. I feel it in my ears, along my raw cheeks. It penetrates my chest, and in so doing it hollows and cleanses me. In that moment, I am like a mirror through which this landscape processes endlessly the white-crested breakers, the gleaming shells, the marram waving among dunes as if in celebration.

That is the special power of the Shore in spring, when a walk along the beach can be a personal journey—one that for many of us has become a sustaining ritual. Soon, no doubt, I will welcome the advancing crowds, the rush of energy that summer brings. But not now. I walk on, absorbed by this place and its elemental beauty.


from the Prologue
by John T. Cunningham

I became almost as one with the past — with Indians who came in summertime to harvest fish for winter months and to garner shells to make their wampum; with those who found God in the unrelenting waves and the gentle winds and founded religious camp meetings at Ocean Grove and half a dozen other spots from Atlantic Highlands to Cape May Point; and with those who came in the 19th century for the sheer worldly pleasures at Long Branch and the discreet, gentlemanly gambling in Cape May inns.

Notebook after notebook gathered my facts and my thoughts — and my sharpened senses retained the beauty and the wonder. When it came time to write, my first words were: Most important is the sea in all its ever-changing moods.

I wrote of the history, the boardwalks, the man-made pleasures, and the distinct regions of the shore, but I also dwelled on rewards that come from even a bit of adventuring — in sailing on Barnegat Bay, in seeking “Cape May diamonds,” in exploring then-secluded Sandy Hook, in watching an osprey take flight, in walking for miles along the hard sand left by high tides, in watching snowy egrets seek food in the meadows, and in watching the sun go down across Delaware Bay.

Most important is the sea, free (except for beach fees) for anyone, whether he is down for the day or down for a few weeks in a multi-million dollar seafront mansion. Free, too, are the seashells, the saucy seagulls, the relaxed chatter from nearby beach blankets. The only requirement is that the senses must be given full play. The strand belongs more to the child who picks up shells than to the man who lolls away precious hours watching television on the most expensive and expansive beachfront deck on the coast.

The waves roll on, fascinating newcomers as much as they have enticed me nearly all my life. Wild storms strike, rearranging the shoreline in ways that no one anticipates or desires. Birds follow prehistoric spring and autumn migration patterns through Cape May and the wildlife refuges to the north, little fingers reach in wonder for a dazzling clam shell burnished by countless waves.

The Jersey Shore is, as always, what we seek, what we find or think we find, and if we stay with it, is always far more than we might have imagined.

Copyright ©2004 Down The Shore Publishing Corp. All Rights Reserved.

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CONTRIBUTORS


Gene Ahrens photographed the United States and Canada with a 4x5 Linhof Technika camera for four decades. Specializing in landscapes and nature, his stock also includes all 48 contiguous U.S. states and each state capitol.



Charles Arlia of Margate has been making fine art, abstract, and scenic photographs since the early 1980s and his work is often found on display in juried shows at the Atlantic City and Ocean City art centers.



David Barbara has traveled the Jersey Shore to photograph marine life and coastal scenics since 1991. He gives lectures on whales, dolphins, porpoises, and cetaceans to many organizations and lives in Edison.



Rebecca Barger, a staff photojournalist for The Philadelphia Inquirer since 1985, has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes. She has traveled to 45 countries, however always finds time to vacation at the New Jersey shore.



Michael Baytoff’s photography has appeared in numerous national and international publications such as Time, Natural History, Audubon, and Wildlife Conservation as well as exhibitions including a traveling National Geographic environmental exhibit. A photojournalist specializing in documentary and environmental work, he is affiliated with the Black Star agency in New York.



Bob Birdsall, along with his wife Jean, operates Birdsall Nature Photography in Barnegat Light. They specialize in images of the New Jersey Pinelands and the Jersey Shore.



William Bretzger is a staff photographer at The News Journal in Wilmington Del., where he lives. A native of Eatontown, N.J., he first picked up a camera as a journalism student at Trenton State College before studying photojournalism at Ohio University. Documenting the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg is a long-term project he is pursuing.



Margaret Thomas Buchholz is the author of Shipwrecks: 350 Years in the Graveyard of the Atlantic, co-author of Great Storms of the Jersey Shore, editor of the historical anthology Shore Chronicles: Diaries and Travelers’ Tales from the Jersey Shore 1764-1955, and Seasons in the Sun, a pictorial history. She is editor of The Beachcomber, a weekly newspaper on Long Beach Island, where she lives.



Donna Connor is a professional photographer with more than 25 years experience in photojournalism, portraiture and, most recently, travel photography. Her work has appeared in publications ranging from People and Time to Sports Illustrated and her clients include Atlantic City and Las Vegas casinos, numerous healthcare organizations and colleges, and an international law firm. Shooting in both corporate environments and real life situations, her love of people and the discovery of their stories makes her portraiture a collaborative effort. She resides with her family in Sweetwater, New Jersey.



Thomas Connor, a resident of Doylestown, Pa., and Beach Haven, N.J., specializes in nature studies, landscapes and seascapes. He has traveled extensively throughout North America for his subjects yet finds some of his most satisfying material along the New Jersey Shore and in the pinelands. His work is featured in various art shows and has been included in the Down The Shore Calendar. He was honored with first place in the Tinicum (Bucks County, Pa.) Arts Festival’s 52nd annual juried exhibition for "Winter On The Island" and "Happy Days."



John T. Cunningham, described by the New Jersey Historical Commission as New Jersey's "best known popular historian" and by Rutgers University as "Mr. Jersey" when it gave him an honorary degree, has written 48 books, more than 2,000 articles and 18 documentary films on the state. His first book, This Is New Jersey, published in 1953, is still in print in its sixth revised edition. He is currently finishing a book on the Revolutionary War "dark winter" of 1779-70 in Morristown and is also at work on a revision of his well-known, but long out-of-print classic, The New Jersey Shore.



Rosemary A. Dixon, of Lanoka Harbor, N.J., is a retired C.P.A. who travels the world — from Holland to the Fiji Islands — to scuba dive and photograph (lighthouses, in particular). Her published articles and photographs about lighthouses include a recent profile of the creator of the U.S. Lighthouse postage stamp series.



Keith Drexler, of Manville, N.J., makes his living as a printing press operator, but spends his free time photographing beaches, boardwalks, and lighthouses along the Jersey Shore.



Nancy L. Erickson’s photographs have appeared in numerous regional and national magazines, calendars and books. She and her husband Bill have operated New Wave Photography in Laurel Springs, N.J., since 1991.



Susan Federici, a pilot for 33 years, has been a flight instructor for most of that time, and worked as a corporate pilot for two decades. Specializing in aerial photographs, she "wanted others to see the view from a higher perspective," she says. "I have flown the Jersey Shore area for most of my life and, whether speeding over it at 35,000 feet in a jet or flying low and slow along the beach in a single engine airplane, I never tire of its beauty."



Valerie Fenelon has been making photographs of the shore for nearly 25 years, as well as fine art portraits and special occasions. A graduate of Moore College of Art, in Philadelphia, she operates North End Trilogy, an art gallery featuring local and shore artists, in Barnegat Light.



Ray Fisk joined college friends in 1977 to establish The SandPaper on Long Beach Island — his first encounter with the Jersey Shore. He worked there as Associate Editor, and then as a photojournalist for The New York Times, United Press International, and The Philadelphia Inquirer throughout the 1980s, covering Atlantic City, the shore, and southern New Jersey. He founded Down The Shore Publishing in 1984.



Sandy Gingras is the author and illustrator of six books including The Uh-oh Heart, How to Live on an Island, How to Live at the Beach, How to be a Friend and Reasons to be Happy at the Beach, and is the creator of At the Beach House: A Guest Book. A graduate of Hamilton College, she received an M.A. in English from Duke University and an M.A. in counseling from Rider College. The owner of "How to Live," a design and gift company and retail store in Beach Haven, she lives with her son Morgan, 14, on Long Beach Island.



Steve Greer, who grew up in the Canadian Rockies — "a magical place in which to learn the fundamentals of landscape photography," is an award winning photographer and natural history writer whose work has been featured in hundreds of publications worldwide. His images have appeared on magazine covers, calendars, greeting cards, advertising and educational materials. With an appreciation and enthusiasm for the natural world, he believes that honest, compelling photography can change the way people react to their environment, enabling them to make better decisions concerning the protection of open spaces.



Henry R. Hegeman, a resident of southern Ocean County, N.J., works for a consulting engineering firm, but has been a freelance writer and photographer for 30 years, specializing in hunting and fishing subjects. His work has appeared in numerous books, magazines, and calendars.



John Henrici is an amateur photographer residing in California, but whose heart is somewhere between Tuckerton and Leeds Point. He spent summers as a child in Lavalette, where he learned to surf, and graduated in 1976 from Stockton State College, living in and around pre-casino Atlantic City. "Invariably sunset would find me somewhere around the Mullica or Wading Rivers," he says, and he’d "follow the creeks up into the pines a bit. Rusty places. Old boats. There was simply too much to shoot. I learned to appreciate the awesome beauty of the bayshore." With his wife, Michelle, he moved to California, where they are both teachers, but "had these vivid South Jersey dreams, the residue of having stared at it so much."



Susan P. Hill-Doyle grew up on Long Beach Island and began capturing her native shore in pictures at age nine. She received a B.A. in studio art from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and now divides her time between photography, teaching elementary school art, and raising her sons Harry and Jack. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, galleries, and art shows. "Capturing a moment when everything is in perfect balance — light, subject, and atmosphere — is what my work is all about," she says.



Cornelius Hogenbirk served as a U. S. Army Signal Corps photographer in Japan during the occupation, covering the Yokohama war crimes trials. His first camera was a Brownie Hawkeye box camera, at age 10 in 1927. His scenic photographs of southern New Jersey, the Pine Barrens, and the shore have appeared in many regional publications. Retired, living in Waretown, N.J., he now devotes his time to gardening and nature photography.



Stephen Jasiecki has been photographing in the southern New Jersey shore for the past 20 years. He works as an electrician and resides in Egg Harbor Township, N.J..


Mike Jones spent ten years as a photojournalist, six of those years as the staff photographer with The Coast Star in Manasquan, before pursuing a full time freelance career. His father taught him to use his old Pentax SLR at age 10, and by the end of high school he was using a 4x5 Graflex. During summer vacations in Maine, he would climb around the rocky shore with a camera and tripod rather than visiting downtown Bar Harbor with his family. Currently shooting travel images and landscapes across the U.S., he makes use of a Toyo view camera and Mamiya RZ-67 medium format camera. He lives in Toms River.



With stock of over 25,000 images, Donald T. Kelly’s nature and travel photographs have been published in formats ranging from calendars, postcards, notecards, and bookmarks to electronic media, encyclopedias, and other books and magazines, as well as displayed in exhibitions. A resident of Mays Landing, he makes his living as a union electrician, but has been a dedicated photographer for more than 25 years, selling his work professionally for the last seven. Photography is only one of his artistic passions, however; he is also a writer and painter, and has been a pianist and composer for over 30 years, having written over 100 compositions for piano, duets for piano and violin, and choral anthems.



For over a decade, photographer Patti Kelly has documented the environment along the Jersey Shore from the beaches to the back bays. Her award-wining work appears in magazines, newspapers, and books illustrating the people and places of New Jersey. Patti Kelly received a BA in Journalism from Temple University.



Michael J. Kilpatrick operates a nature photography guide service specializing in New Jersey coastal marsh and seashore subjects. A resident of Lindenwold, N.J., and originally from North Wildwood, his work has appeared in national publications, including Nature Conservancy magazine and Ducks Unlimited.



Rich A. King spends much of his life, since the mid-1980s, in the back bay marshes of Island Beach State Park, often sitting in a blind poised with his cameras. He is, admittedly, obsessed with the estuary, and when not making photographs there, he is giving lectures, slide shows, and educational programs on the estuary food chain, wildlife, and the bayshore environment. He makes his living as a plumber in Toms River. Of his passion for this ecosystem, he says: "What I look for is to open people’s eyes."



A doctor of optometry in Freehold, Edward Kulback, finds his creative outlet working with his camera equipment in manual mode to "slow down the process, and think about what is being captured on film."



The nature and scenic photography of Daniel Leach, of Hatfield, Pa., has gone from a serious hobby in the 1980’s to a part-time profession since 1996.



Manny Lekkas received his photography education at the New York Institute of Photography, has won awards for his work at numerous New Jersey art shows, and has been published in Nature Photographer, Peterson’s Photographic, New Jersey Outdoors, and other publications. He currently resides in Winston Salem, N.C.



Burton E. Lipman’s photographs have been widely published in magazines and newspapers and have won top prizes in juried contests. A resident of East Brunswick, N.J., he has had a varied career: as president and C.E.O. of a Lehman Brothers Co. subsidiary; founder and president of a heart-pacer component manufacturer; and vice-president of operations for Wyeth and Lever Brothers companies. He is also the author of technical books published by John Wiley, Prentice-Hall, and Bell Publishing.



Judie Lynn, a retail store manager in Ocean County, laments that she has little time for her photography anymore. However, with a career change into real estate, she looks forward to more flexible scheduling that will allow her to once again to pursue her passion of photography.



Robert Manners grew up in Trenton, and served as a photographer in the U.S. Army. He resided in Manahawkin for many years and now lives in Atlantic City, where he works for the Hilton Casino.



Bob Manning is employed as a Senior Business Analyst at Computer Aid Inc. in Wilmington, Del., and is a part time wedding photographer. His love of photography began in the first grade when he took a picture with an old Brownie box camera. He was influenced by his mother, who as a single parent working out of the home, supported Bob and his brother by hand coloring and painting photographs for the top photographers of the day. A graduate of the New York Institute of Photography, his photographs have been exhibited in shows from northern New Jersey to the Jersey Shore to the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.



Thomas A. McGuire became an award-winning photographer, focusing on the Jersey Shore and participating in art shows throughout the state. During the 1990s, many of his images were included in the Down The Shore calendars. He delighted in sharing his work, and when praised for it, would say, "God created the image. I just snap it." He died in 2003, after a valiant battle with cancer, but his work lives on to inspire us.


Don Merwin resides in Cape May.



Michael S. Miller’s work has been published in calendars and in local and national publications and is included in private collections and galleries. A graduate of the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., he is also a long-time guide for the Monmouth County Park System, and resides with his wife in Avon-by-the-Sea.



Robert S. Misewich bought his first 35mm camera while serving overseas in the army in 1960. He became a dedicated nature photographer in 1996, after retiring from a 31-year career as a field engineer with Lucent Technologies. A resident of Turnersville, N.J., his travels up and down the east coast have produced images published in Birder’s World and other publications.



Melissa Molyneux is a freelance photojournalist in the New York region, working for magazine and newspaper clients such as the Star Ledger, The New York Times, and stock agencies from her home in Basking Ridge. A graduate of the Pratt Institute with a B.F.A. in photography, she studied at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design in London. Staying true to her fine art roots she applies her fine art training to her passion for photojournalism.



Peter Keenen O’Brien has contributed to the Down The Shore calendars for a decade and one of his photographs appears on the cover of the novel Tales From An Endless Summer. He follows in the footsteps of his father and grandfather as a photographer, first borrowing his father’s camera for a cross-country trip during high school. Born and raised in Bayonne, he graduated from Seton Hall in 1978 and earned a masters of divinity at the university’s graduate school of theology. With an interest in ecclesiastical art, he has contributed to documentaries, most recently as an associate producer on the film "An Unreliable Witness" during filming in Ireland.



For Rob Pietri, the Jersey Shore was a great place to grow up in the mid 1960s and the 1970s. Summers were spent fishing with his Dad for stripers, blues, and blowfish or snorkeling off the jetties, spear fishing, crabbing; then, as a teen, surfing and lifeguarding. "Now, at midlife crisis stage, I am glad I can capture in my photography some of the feelings and flavors of what was once enjoyed by myself and others. Open your eyes and hear the music," he says.



Over the last ten years J.J. Raia has tried to photograph every corner of New Jersey in all seasons for his calendars and continues to discover new places all the time. In addition, he has now begun to photograph the landscapes of the western U.S. but continues to make a living running trains for Amtrak and lives in Edison with his wife and two children.



Dan Rogers lives in Lancaster County, Pa., and works as a construction manager but has been shooting scenic photography for almost 30 years. His serious interest in photography began while doing documentary photography as an archeologist in West Virginia.



Dan Ryan, of Highlands, N.J., has been taking pictures since his father gave him a Kodak pocket camera with flash cubes as a teenager. He works in the field of training support and incorporates photography into his work.



Larry Savadove is the author two novels — The Oyster Singer and The Sound of One Hand — a cookbook, Melting Pot West, and co-author of Great Storms of the Jersey Shore. A graduate of Harvard College, he has lived in Japan, Latin America, and Los Angeles, but spent every summer of his boyhood on Long Beach Island and returned to settle there after years of wandering the world as a sailor, a soldier, a journalist, an adman, and a maker of award-winning documentaries, most notably "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau." His two children are also veterans of Long Beach Island; he is at work on two more novels, also set at the shore.



After working in television for over twelve years, Brien Szabo switched careers to become a professional nature photographer and stay-at-home dad. He specializes in capturing diverse natural images of his home state of New Jersey and the northeast. He's been published in magazines, teaches photography, and hosts nature photography workshops throughout the region.



Pat Totten has been photographing the Jersey Shore for the past 30 years. Since retiring from teaching chemistry she has traveled extensively, taking her camera to every continent to pursue her passion for photography. Much of her travel is centered around astronomical events, such as eclipses and meteor showers. In November 2003 she was part of a small group of the first humans ever to see a total solar eclipse from Antarctica.



Frank L. Varkala has concentrated on the Jersey Shore and the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire as a photographer for 13 years, and, recently, has begun shooting casual portraits and weddings. A 1974 graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University, and long-time resident of southern Ocean County, N.J., he now lives in Vermont.



Sally Vennel and her husband divide their time between Surf City, N.J. and Crested Butte, Colo. Her work has been featured in calendars and art shows in both locations and in California. She says her photography takes her "to many beautiful places, including numerous safaris in Africa."



Rick Vizzi has been photographing nature and subjects of his interest since he was 10 and, although he received a B.A. in art from William Paterson University and Rutgers, never had "professional" jobs as a photographer other than a few years shooting weddings and some newspaper features. "I decided not to try to make a living at it, which allowed me to pursue it my way." A historic restoration contractor for almost twenty years, his latest pursuit is woodturning. His goal is to make fine prints of as many of his photographs as possible, and to exhibit them. "I have some things I'd like to communicate," he says, "more than just showing a collection of photos."



David Lorenz Winston’s lifelong love of the natural landscape has taken him on travels from his home in Philadelphia throughout the U.S. and to Siberia, Peru, India, Nepal, Tibet, Greece, Portugal and Nova Scotia. His work has appeared in calendars and on cards published by Pomegranate, Brown Trout, UNICEF, the National Wildlife Federation, Hallmark, and Recycled Paper Products. He is working on the photography for a series of children’s books about farm life, the first of which was the award-winning Life on a Pig Farm.



Rich Youmans is a magazine and book editor who has specialized in the history and literature of the Jersey Shore. He is the editor of Shore Stories: An Anthology of the Jersey; co-editor, with Frank Finale, of Under a Gull's Wing: Poems and Photographs of the Jersey; and co-author, with Russell Roberts, of Down the Jersey Shore.

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