The "Dock" Story

The marshlands with very little of the once visible "dock."

It was an ordinary day.  Just finished down- loading a few photos and scanning a few others that are all part of my story today.  Earlier this week my wife, Carol, and I visited with my brother, Steve, and sister-in-law, Kathy, at Stone Harbor, NJ.  One of the many things that we did in the three days we were with them was take a land tour of some of the marshlands that make up the shore area along the New Jersey coast.  One particular location we visited is on the street known as 96th Street that exits Stone Harbor toward the mainland.  Along that stretch used to be a narrow wooden dock that seems to begin and end nowhere.  There was no platform attached to either end of it, but it was an interesting walkway in the middle of the marshlands that always attracted my attention as we passed by it over the years.  When we saw it today I stopped the car, walked across the near-deserted street and snapped a few shots with my Sony Alpha DSLR.  Tried a few exposures in the auto mode then a few more in Aperature Priority. Most of the interesting wooden walkway that was there years ago has rotted away, but the remnants of the wooden posts still were a reminder of the original dock.

My daughter Brynn's award winning black and white image of the "dock."

It was back in the early 90s that I stopped for the first time at the same spot with my daughter Brynn to take a photo of the "dock."  The sky was soft with scattered clouds and a dim sun, perfect day for photographs.  Brynn had been the first one to see the dock as we entered Stone Harbor for vacation that year and wanted to capture the shot with her Minolta 35mm camera.  She positioned herself, made the aperture and shutter adjustments to the manual camera she was using and took a few shots. The following school year Brynn was part of my photography class I taught at Manheim Township High School, where she was a senior, and during the class eventually developed black and white Kodak Plus-X film, made a proof sheet, made the print and matted it.  Gave her an "A" for the project, but not because she was my daughter, but because the print was fantastic.  She eventually  entered the photo in the National Scholastic Arts and Photography Contest and won a "Gold Key" for her entry.  

My Polaroid creation of the "dock." 

It was the following summer that I returned to the same spot to try my luck with my Polaroid SX-70 Camera.  I had been taking photos with the camera for some time and mani- pulating the resulting prints with a tool used for forming ceramic pieces which the art teacher had given to me.  I began selling the prints and thought the marshland photo would be a good addition to my collection. The dock was still there and looked pretty much the same as the year before, but the tide was in and there was more water around the wooden walkway.  Snapped off a couple of Polaroid shots and returned to the rental to manipulate the results.  Rubbed the sky with the rounded end of the tool to create clouds and then took to the grasses with the pointed end of the tool to make them look more realistic.  My print eventually became one of my biggest sellers at the William Ris Gallery on 2nd Street in Stone Harbor as well as stores where I sold my prints along the Chesapeake Bay.  Over the last twenty years the marshland has started to swallow the intriguing sculpture that was once our "dock."  What might it do by next year?  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.