The Real Voice of New Jersey Real Estate

Title: Jesse and Thomas

© Mark V. Krajnak 2008 | All Rights Reserved

I love great photographic portraits. The kind where you look at the photograph and you immediately get sucked into it and you feel like you’re right there with the photographer. There are many great portrait photographers out there….Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon, Steve McCurry and my friend and mentor, Joe McNally, to name just a few.

Since I became serious with my photography, I tended to do more still life and landscape photography. I just never thought to really do people photography and it’s not like I had models knocking on my door to shoot them. But I started to think that since I liked portraiture so much I need to find a way to do more of it. I stumbled across a website called 100 Strangers (it’s also a Flickr group) and the basis is….your mission, if you wish to accept it, is to meet and photography 100 strangers.So I took the plunge.

The thing is, these aren’t supposed to be paparazzi style photos. The people have to know you’re photographing them. I imposed a few elements on my 100 Strangers project. #1 is I have to chat with them abit, get to know them a little. I find out their names, where they are from, and whatever drew me to speak with. Then I tell them about the project and ask if I can take their portrait and include them in it. And while most people say they don’t having their picture taken, no one has denied me yet (then again, I’m only up to #19.) My other self-imposed regulation is that in post-processing, I convert the color image to B&W (because I love B&W portraiture) and frame the photo using a thin gray border and a wider white boarder. I just want to keep the elements consistent. When I’m done with the project, whenever that may be, I hoping to print a book of the photos, at least for me.

What’s been so great is that everyone I meet has been more indifferent - and more interesting than the last person I met. Above you see Jesse, a tattoo artist from Kissammee, Florida, and Thomas, a New Jersey resident with a love on antique steam engines. Talk about different! Jesse is a young tattoo artis, an apprentice really, at a shop called Hart & Huntington. I walked in there recently to look around. It was slow, the staff was just hanging out (they also see clothing at this shop). I thought, wow, what an interesting collection of people. I said I was from New Jersey, told them about my project and asked who wanted to get their portrait done. They offered up Jesse, so I took him into the cool-looking waiting are, chatted with him a bit and started shooting. The very first image he smile. I put the camera down and I said “Jesse….no offense, but you don’t strike me as the type of guy that smiles for pictures.” He said “No, I never do.” I said “Well, just relax and chill.” He immediately was then just himself and in about five minutes I got four or five images of him  (and his tattoos) that I really like. We exchanged cards and I sent him one of the prints that he liked.

Thomas I met during Village Day at Batsto, New Jersey, a few weeks ago. He just has a great face and I once I started speaking to him, he was so happy to tell me about his hobby of restoring this old steam engine. He was really proud of it and it showed. What made this photo to me, though, was the late afternoon sun that just warmed his face. Sometimes you get lucky with great light.

 If you’d like to see the rest of the strangers I’ve photographed, please go here: 100 Strangers I’ve Met

To Contact Mark Click here - Mark V. Krajnak

For additional “Photo Friday’s” Click here - Photo Friday’s 

http://www.robbinsvillehomesforsale.com/004691

Suffer The Little Children

© Mark V. Krajnak 2008 / All Rights Reserved

A Halloween Tale….

No one is really quite sure when the noises started in that house in the Pine Barrens

Or when they stopped.

They do know that, curiously, often times people that would go into the old house were never seen again.

There was that guy hired to fix the roof.

The roof got fixed….but he was never seen again.

Then there was that salesman who stopped by once, and was never seen again.

Well, they did find his shoe.

Then, late one Sunday, that preacher stopped by.

Ah, yes…the preacher. That’s pretty much when all the stories really got started.

The noises (screams?) were loud that night.

That’s when the children started to tell the stories late at night, at sleepovers and around campfires.

They would huddle under their blankets with their flash lights on and tell these stories…

Stories about how a witch lived up there, stirring up her witch’s brew.

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble…

Stories about how the owner of the house had caught the Jersey Devil itself and kept it chained up in that lighted room.

The children would say how The Jersey Devil hated the light and would cry out (scream?) every time the little chain was pulled to light the bare, yellow bulb.

Others said it was Mrs. Jane Leeds herself, wailing at the thought of what she brought into the world.

The Pine folk know when it comes their way,
Slowly and quietly stalking.
But human beings are not it’s prey;
when the Jersey Devil goes walking.
Small animals hide in their holes away;
And ‘Hush, oh, hush!’ the campers say,
when the Jersey Devil goes walking.

No one is really quite sure what the noises were. Some still hear them, especially late in October, when the air is crisp, the ground fog is rising and the leaves rustle in the trees. They claim they hear this wail (scream?) that makes the hair on the back of their scalp stand on end and their steps quicken to some place warmer and more well-lighted….


Happy Halloween, Everyone!

To Contact Mark Click here - Mark V. Krajnak

http://www.robbinsvillehomesforsale.com/00465D

Title: Cheesesteaks All Around  

© Mark V. Krajnak 2008 | All Rights Reserved

28 years.  

15 years.  

When you’re a Philadelphia sports fan, you measure things in years.  

As a Phillie fan, I know that it’s been 28 years since the Phillies won the world series, 25 years since a major championship (sorry Jon Bon Jovi, the Arena Bowl championship doesn’t quite cut it), and 15 years since the Phillies were last in the World Series.  

On Wednesday, when evening temps were closer to 40 degrees than 50 degrees, and a light drizzle was enveloping the City of Brotherly Love, Brad “Light’s Out” Lidge did for the 48th consecutive time what he’s been doing all season: Saving a win for the Philadelphia Phillies.  

But this one was different. This one opened the floodgates of Phandemonium. This one exorcised demons that had long strangled the Philadelphia sports fan.  

I was 10 in 1980, when a heart-tapping, glove thumping screwball pitcher named Tug McGraw last put the Philadelphia baseball fan into a state of delirium. With a tired arm, he willed a fastball past Willie Wilson of the Kansas City Royals and the Phillies celebrated a World Championship. Now, 28 years later, I was able to see Brad “Light’s Out” Lidge stride from the bullpen into one of the strangest, yet most interesting, World Series games in recent memory.  

A few days earlier, while throwing out the ceremonial first pitch, Tug’s son, country singing star Tim, spread a handful of his dad’s ashes (Tug passed in 2004, succumbing to cancer) on the mound at Citizens’ Bank Park in Philadelphia. It had to help because the Phillies could always use any help they can get.  

They aren’t the mighty Yankees. They aren’t the favorite sons like the Red Sox. They are a blue-collar, working class team that has endured for over 100 years and produced many years of losses. Yet their fan base stays.  

Why? I honestly don’t know. This season, I even “took a break” from them for two weeks. I didn’t want to divorce or break up with them…I just needed a break from sporadic play and weak line drives. And yet, I always come  back to the red-and-white.  

Cole Hammels. Carlos Ruiz. Ryan Howard. Chase Utley. Jimmy Rollins., Pedro Feliz. Pat Burrell. Shane Victorino. Jayson Werth. This starting nine will walk together for ever as champions. They will never have to pay for another dinner or drink in the the city of Philadelphia. Wednesday night was their St. Crispin’s Day.  

And they made us fans proud. Thanks, Phillies. Your fans appreciate it.  

(I took this photo of Jimmy Rollins on July 4, 2008, when the Phillies played the New York Mets. While Jimmy didn’t have the greatest of World Series’, he’s their spark. As JRoll goes, so goes the Phillies.)

To Contact Mark Click here - Mark V. Krajnak

For additional “Photo Friday’s” Click here - Photo Friday’s 

http://www.robbinsvillehomesforsale.com/004656

Title:  Saw Mill, Batsto Village, New Jersey

© Mark V. Krajnak 2008 | All Rights Reserved

Autumn came to Central New Jersey in full force this week. I spent some of it in Orlando, Florida, and came home to temps in the ’50s. Still, I like it. I like the fall weather and the color it brings. I just don’t like what comes after it (namely, winter).  

Last weekend, I hoped in the car and headed down Route 206 south to thehistorical Village of Batsto. I expected to be there basically alone, but instead found out that I came on “County Village Day.” Lotsa people. Good people, though. Nice people. Still, I was able to get some nice images in a gorgeous setting. The trees around this old village were on fire, and the clapboard building and iron leftovers fit the scene perfectly.

This image of the saw mill was one of my favorites from the afternoon. If you’d like to see more, head over to my Flickr page and scroll down abit.  Once the people started leaving though, and the sun started setting and the air got chillier…the village started to remind me of M. Night Shymalan’s The Village .  Kinda spooky a couple of weeks before Halloween.

I shot my last frame, packed up my gear and climbed back in the car to head home before….well, just before something happened.   Hey, the Jersey Devil  WAS born in the Pine Barrens of South Jersey you know…

To Contact Mark Click here - Mark V. Krajnak

For additional “Photo Friday’s” Click here - Photo Friday’s 

http://www.robbinsvillehomesforsale.com/0045E8

Title: Silos in the Sunset

© Mark V. Krajnak 2008 | All Rights Reserved

Sometimes, things just work out.  

Earlier this week, driving home from New Brunswick, I stopped to shoot some photos of the sunset overlooking Brainerd Lake in Cranbury, NJ. While I didn’t really get anything I liked, I ended up meeting a nice guy named Lawrence  and he helped me out by allowing me to photography him to be #16 in my 100 Strangers project.   The sky was on fire again.

As I continued toward home, I saw this scene in West Windsor. Sometimes I’m amazed at how diverse Central New Jersey is. Here we have corporate parks and business areas, as well as horse farms and regular farms all intermingled. We’re under an hour to Manhattan and Philadelphia and just minutes from gorgeous farmland and the beaches. It’s really a gorgeous place to live and raise a family.

To Contact Mark Click here - Mark V. Krajnak

For additional “Photo Friday’s” Click here - Photo Friday’s 

http://www.robbinsvillehomesforsale.com/00458D