DEP Photography is Revealing
Every Picture Tells A Story – Which Do You Prefer?
Shooting a photo is fun, and often revealing, in what you choose to put inside and leave out of the frame. Do you “enhance” the original with photoshop?
The below photo is posted on DEP’s Barnegat Bay Restoration website, so one would assume that it is supposed to illustrate something positive about Barnegat Bay – not the Lighthouse. And everyone knows that Lighthouses are vertical.
So note how the DEP photo of the Barnegat Bay Lighthouse emphasizes verticality, and in so doing brings the ugly green algae slime on the rocks prominently into view in the foreground. Was DEP trying to emphasize the fact that the bay has a eutrophication problem? (algae is an indicator of excessive nutrient pollution). And the un-natural exaggerated green color suggests the original photo was color enhanced via Photoshop to bring out the red of the Lighthouse and blue sky. Engineered rip-rap (rocks). And note what it leaves out: No public access, No people, and No dunes or any other natural features:
In contrast, note how I avoid that nastiness and bring other desirable features of the Bay into the picture – water, boat, sand, and public walkway to access the Lighthouse:
In the alternate, one can shoot the Lighthouse from the back, and show dunes and vegetation and those ugly imported rocks: 
Or one can shoot the view from the top of the Lighthouse, and emphasize over-development and how vulnerable all those homes are:
Or you can emphasize the human aspects – picnic benches, walkway, seagulls overhead, and guy sunning himself on the rocks at left:
Or you could simply depict everyday people accessing and enjoying themselves on the Bay/Shore:
Or you can suggest irony, in a fisherman, with the Oyster Creek nuclear plant aquatic life slaughter machine just over his shoulder on the far horizon:
Or boating
Or what we’re fighting
