April Creativity Exercise - Editor's Choice Award

Wow. I am just so excited and humbled by this. I belong to the Clickin Moms Photography forum for women in photography. This is a worldwide network of professionals, hobbyists and artists that come together to share and learn in our photography journey. I am inspired and blown away everyday by the work and vision I see here. Each month, they propose an exercise in creativity. I try to participate in as many of their exercises and challenges that I can, not for recognition, but just to get better. To be recognized for anything, I am just speechless. Each challenge and exercise has a specific theme for you to interpret. For April, it was a photographic time capsule - an image that would represent a very specific point in time. 

Here is my image that was selected. It is a very different image for me since I mostly photograph people these days. And I was totally improvising here to keep the camera still since I did not have a tripod.  I edited this image to portray to emotion that I felt looking at it. 

GM3A9299  

For me, this represented a very specific time indeed. I grew up in Toms River, NJ. Very close to the beach and boardwalk at Seaside Heights and Seaside Park. I was a total beach bum. The Coppertone kid. This whole area was decimated by Super Storm Sandy. This is the area where the infamous photo of the roller coaster in the ocean occurred. You could see that pier in the distance from my house. Sadly, just 11 months later, 5 blocks of the boardwalk were destroyed again after just being rebuilt. The storm had corroded wires under the boardwalk that caused an electrical fire. More than 50 businesses were a complete loss. Also lost was the carousel that I went on when I was a child. And I took my children on that same carousel for their first rides. I was visiting just after the fire and went to see the remains. It was a sight that I will never forget. I am just so honored to be recognized for this image.

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