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Leggett's Sand Bar
Leggett's is a bar and restaurant about a block from the beach in Manasquan, New Jersey. It also was host of the
AFSP Jersey Shore Out of the Darkness Walk for a number of years. I became involved with the walk in 2014 when I volunteered as an event photographer. I soon found myself on the committee.
Since Leggett's was hosting the walk, we would have our committee meetings in the restaurant. The restaurant being a block from the beach gave me an excuse to spend time photographing the beach, boardwalk and whatever else caught my eye. I would also look around to see if there was a spot that I wanted to use on the day of the walk. The image shown here is from February 2016 and I had just finished shooting some light painting images on the walkway at the beach. (Note: the images were my first attempt - you will never see them....)
The meeting was to begin at 8:00 PM, which in February is pretty dark, and it was only about 7:30 PM so I decided to play around with some images of the outside of the bar. I was attracted to the neon sign, the two "stripes" below it and the reflections on the parked cars. For some reason I was using the Nikon that I carry as a spare camera and I don't have a remote for that so I had to use a 2-second timer to trip the shutter. This was done to help reduce camera shake during the long exposure.
I took five (5) or six (6) shots at various exposures, packed up the camera and headed inside for the meeting and pizza. I didn't get a chance to upload and look at the images until the next day. When I did I was reasonably happy until I got to this one. While the shutter was open a car drove by leaving an interesting streak across the bottom of the frame. Though this is a 15 second exposure, the people inside were reasonably stationary making the other images rather static; the car moving thru the frame made it more dynamic and gave it a little extra pop.
I was still rather new to Lightroom so I was playing around with some of the presets that came installed with it. I don't remember the name of the one used for this image but it may have been "Hollywood" or something like that. It was supposed to give it a "cinematic" look. Once I applied the preset and made a few adjustments I was happy with the way it looked but there was something oddly familiar about it. It was almost like I had seen this before. It took a while but I realized that, to me, it had the same type of "feel" as Edward Hopper's
Nighthawks. I know that they are not even close to similar but that is just the vibe I got from it.
I have included the original image here to show the difference the preset made. I like the original, it is much more vibrant but the streak left by the moving car is not as prominent and is just somewhat lacking in some way. I also tightened up the crop just a little bit.
2016 turned out to be the last year that the walk was hosted by Leggett's - it had just grown too big. The walk moved to Bar A in Lake Como in 2017 where it is still held each September. I last volunteered in 2018.
If you are in the Manasquan area, check out
Leggett's - I can personally attest to their pizza. Very good!
Image made @ 7:38 PM on 25 February 2016
Technical Information
Exposure: 48mm - 15 seconds @ f/14 - ISO 100
Equipment list
Nikon D60 body
Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens
MeFOTO RoadTrip Classic tripod
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