Picture-perfect Pinelands

MEDFORD LAKES - An alarm clock buzzes before dawn in Albert Horner’s home nestled in the New Jersey Pinelands.

After arising and a quick cup of coffee, he grabs his camera equipment and heads out in his sport-utility vehicle for an especially beautiful spot deeper in the Pinelands, a national and state preserve featuring a unique landscape and dozens of endangered plants and animals.

Carrying his tripod on his shoulder, Horner treks alone by moonlight and flashlight through huckleberry and tea berry bushes, other brush and tree branches to destinations like the banks of a pond along the Batsto River in Tabernacle, where he positions his equipment at the water's edge.

There he waits, sometimes for more than an hour, for just the right moment as day first breaks, touches the shutter and snaps what he sees — the mist mystifying the colors, a glassy river or pond surfaces or foliage colors made more brilliant by dew.

After 10 years of photographing picturesque places throughout the 1.1 million acres of Pinelands in all seasons, Horner has published a long dreamed of book of his works, "Pinelands: New Jersey's Suburban Wilderness."

'Brilliance of color'

This book has been a dream of mine since I started seriously recording the magnificent landscape of the New Jersey Pinelands National Preserve,” the 69-year-old Horner said. "My greatest dream is to have the publication of those images help preserve this wilderness for future generations.”

The camera technique he employs in this effort gives many of his 83 landscape photographs the quality of an oil painting or watercolor.

“People will tell me my photos look more like paintings,” the self-trained photographer says, explaining every artist takes a little license.

His "license" involves taking time exposures from a second to up to 30 seconds, a technique that can enhance what the eye sees or what his lens takes with a shutter speed of only a fraction of a second.

“You can get brilliance of color but little distortion because at that time of day it is dead calm. Things are not moving except a few trickles in the water, which appear only as flattened white streaks in a time exposure."

Horner uses a digital camera, which he says is "the only way to go these days" in photography.

Most of the book's photographs are exposures he shoots early in the morning.

When he began his photographic journeys, Horner merely enjoyed taking pictures of scenery in a unique location.

But through his artistry, longtime commitment and extensive travel, his appreciation of Pinelands beauty has transformed him into an environmentalist dedicated to doing whatever he can to protect the places he has recorded.

“The more I photographed, the more I became an advocate for the Pine Barrens, some of which already has been marred by off-road vehicle drivers who intentionally veer off roads and trails and destroy conservation landscape like it is a motorsports arena."

Horner has come to know the woods and its inhabitants intimately — the beavers who build dams and huts to create ponds, the deer and their foraging habits, the endangered Pinelands tree frogs and their croak, birds and their calls, the names of trees and bushes and which wild berries are edible.

“Many days I went to a specific site, but on other days I just rode into the forest to explore, looking for the next site to photograph,” said Horner, who said he has been traveling through the Pinelands since he was a boy.

'A magnificent experience every time I am out'

"It's a joy for me to be out in the Pine Barrens watching the day unfold, such a magnificent time of day that leads to a magnificent experience every time I am out there," he continues. "The birds and frogs sound like an orchestra as they begin singing or calling back and forth to one another just before dawn. And as I am watching the sun move across the landscape, I wonder why there is no one else there to watch it."

In "Morning on Chatsworth Lake," mist partially obscures the distant green tree line and its reflection in the lake.

In "Maples River Bend" on the Mullica River in Wharton State Forest, vibrant reds, golds and oranges of foreground autumn foliage leap off the page while mist mutes a more densely forested background. In other pictures, even more vibrant brush and tree foliage hug banks of narrow winding rivers.

Interspersed throughout the book to reinforce the photos are haiku or other brief poignant pieces from philosophers or environmentalists such as Henry David Thoreau. Some verses are an interpretation of a specific photo on an adjoining page.

Michelle Byers, executive director of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, calls Horner's photo essay an invitation to discover, explore and fall in love with the Pine Barrens because it captures "the essence of its beauty and mystery."

Art, especially photography, has played a vital role in how the Pine Barrens has been saved from destruction by urban sprawl, said Pinelands Preservation Alliance Executive Director Carlton Montgomery.

"Its accessibility, via paved and sandy roads, is both an asset and a vulnerability, and Albert's work is helping all of us who cherish the Pine Barrens to keep the preservation flame alive."

Horner earlier collaborated with writer Barbara Solem to provide photographs for her book on Pinelands history, "Batsto: Jewel of the Pines." An iron works ghost town with a mansion museum, Batsto manufactured and supplied arms to the Continental Army of George Washington during the Revolutionary War.

"Albert Horner's stunning and haunting landscapes take us on a visual journey into the heart of the Pine Barrens," she said. "After viewing his 'first light' images, I guarantee you will never experience this vast and unique wilderness in quite the same way."

Carol Comegno; (856) 486-2473; ccomegno@gannettnj.com

ON THE WEB

To purchase Pinelands: New Jersey's Suburban Wilderness:

   www.pinelandsimagery,com