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On Location: Jersey Shore
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Endless Vacation’s photography director talks about her delicious drive
down the coast
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BY MOYA McALLISTER
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| A lifeboat stands at the ready on Sunset Beach in Cape May, NJ. |
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Photo Op
As the photography director for Endless Vacation, my job is mostly assigning and editing pictures that other people take . . . but I’m a photographer as well. In fact, my husband Joe and I used to take off on a whim in his ’69 Mustang, snapping pictures wherever we ended up. A Jersey shoot would be my chance to show off my own photography to my coworkers—and I wanted Joe to come, too.
As die-hard New Yorkers with two teenagers, we’d never really considered a vacation on the New Jersey shore. What were we thinking?! Less than two hours after leaving the city, we reached Sea Bright, one of the first beach communities along the coast, just as the sun started its golden slide into late afternoon. The beach was peaceful and pristine, backed by high grassy dunes and practically deserted at that time of day. One other couple strolled hand in hand, and a pair of teenagers lazily tossed a football. Joe and I moved quickly to capture them with our digital cameras, staying well out of the subjects’ line of sight so they wouldn’t become self-conscious.
Beach Treats
Long Branch, less than five miles south of Sea Bright, was our next stop. After shooting (and then sampling) the delicious hot dogs at the Windmill, we noticed a line snaking around the far end of the parking lot. Joe and I always follow the rule “Where there’s a line, it’s a sign.” We wandered over to find the Lighthouse, a spot that sells Italian ices on New Ocean Avenue. Our smooth and tangy lemon ice came out of a soft-serve ice cream machine—no scraping hard slivers from a frozen cup.
The next morning, we got back on the Garden State Parkway to head for Cape May. The scenery was stunning: Sparkling blue ocean flowed past the driver’s-side window, while cozy beach houses peeked through tall dune grass on the passenger’s side. Though the drive can be made in two hours, our route took longer: We left the Parkway after Somers Point and traveled the rest of the way on Ocean Avenue, which runs along the Atlantic shoreline through Ocean City, Sea Isle, Avalon and Wildwood.
Ending the Day in Cape May
It was an easy drive, but we were glad to arrive at the Lobster House, our first stop in Cape May. The manager let us stage our shoot on several tables on the sunny dock. Joe and I proceeded to arrange and re-arrange the plates of appetizers in order to get the boats and water in the background, and then moved in really close to bring the food into focus in the foreground. The hardest part for Joe: taking the time to photograph the food without diving into it! We had fun working as a team, passing the camera back and forth and coming up with new ways to look at subjects.
After dinner (finally!) at the Lobster House, we checked into our room at Cape May’s Virginia Hotel. I loved the red lampshades on the crystal bedside lamps and silver-painted furniture with mirrored tops. Built in 1879, the Virginia has been fully restored and updated—it now has luxurious Belgian sheets, free wireless Internet and live jazz in the lobby bar on most nights. We sat in the middle of our big fluffy bed and shared a room-service dessert of chocolate truffle cake with pistachio ice cream and espresso syrup.
The next day we spent some time window-shopping on the Washington Street Mall (more like a 19th-century restoration village than any mall I’ve ever been to), then walked the promenade, took pictures of the scenery and held hands in the Sunset Pavilion. A mom in a beach chair watched her two boys braving the waves on their boogie boards as the sun went down. Like us, they were unwilling to call it a day until the last beam of light sank behind the Cape May Lighthouse.
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Published: September 2007
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Photo: Joe Sinnott
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