Where to do Photography in New Jersey 

There are numerous photography hot spots throughout the state of New Jersey. With so many places to take pictures, where should you go first? Hover over the image to see the location of the image and head there to create some jaw-dropping New Jersey photography. Some of the Best New Jersey photography locations can be right in your area. We have found an abundance of great photography spots in New Jersey.

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George Washington Bridge, New Jersey, upclose of stell in dynamic colors and lights

George Washington Bridge NJ Photography Hot Spot

135 New-Jersey-Pamela-Goodyer-Photography-Book

Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge – NJ photography location

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Photo Lessons in New Jersey learn to photograph all hot spots and get dynamic images.

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New Jersey Photography Lessons and Classes

Photography Classes on Nights and Weekends

New Jersey Photography Lessons. Would you like to learn from an international award-winning photographer and owner of Photography Magazine Extra? Pamela Goodyer is a high-energy, funny, enthusiastic teacher and trainer. She lives in her luxury mansion by herself in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Kidding; it’s cool, though, and an incredible place.

She gets right down to it, from basic beginner photography to advanced techniques and teaches you an abundance of photography information. There is no small talk, so you get the most from your hourly rate.  She doesn’t waste your time and money walking around going to look at the light; look at the angles before you have all of the basics down.  She gets to the real nitty-gritty of the things you need to know to master the art of using your camera to utilize its insanely powerful features.  While you are learning the how-to learning photography, she, along the way, explains each area and how to use the feature and what to do to create dynamic, award-winning images.

Do you want to create images like the ones you see here in Photography Magazine Extra?  Once you have the how-to’s of the camera down, she will then explain how to create the jaw-dropping type images that she produces. She will teach you everything you need to know and not hold back.

If you are interested, she will cover marketing yourself and how to make money in photography, what works, what doesn’t work, and why. If you choose that route, she will teach you how to make $100,000 a year in your photography business. She will even help you set up your business. Get started in your business for the next school photography season. Work seasonally and make a six-figure income, then travel the world the rest of the year doing the photography you love.

Additional Photography Locations

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THIS SECTION UNDER CONSTRUCTION RIGHT NOW

South Amboy Waterfront Photography Location

sunset in keyport new jersey

Keyport New Jersey Waterfront Photography Location

rocky hill canal, in south brunswick new jersey by pamela goodyer

Rocky Hill Canal Photography Location

pigs drinking water

Rutgers Farm Photography Location

Submit – Where to do Photography in New Jersey  

We will love to hear from you if you have any great places for photography in New Jersey. Do you have your hot spot and want to share images with your full credits for the photos? Please send us an email with New Jersey Photography Hot Spots in the subject line. We love N.J. photography locations.

The Best Photography Locations in New Jersey

New Jersey photography locations 

 New Jersey is also known as the Garden State. There are a plethora of different types of areas in New Jersey.  New Jersey has numerous urban locations, but it is also home to many landscape photography opportunities.  New Jersey has marshlands with some of the best birding locations, such as The Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge. In addition to birding locations, there are many mills, state parks, barns, bridges, beaches, lighthouses, and much more.  New Jersey Photography Locations come in abundance. When you start at the state’s top, you can photograph waterfalls and mountain ranges. Most notable in New Jersey are the urban locations in the Essex County region. If you like graffiti and cityscapes, this area will keep you busy for quite a while.

Where to do Photography in New Jersey – Hot Spots

Of course, the Jersey Shore runs from around Old Bridge, New Jersey, down to Cape May, New Jersey. The shore locations offer many nighttime-long exposure opportunities seasonally, of course. There are numerous areas with boardwalks with many different rides you can photograph at night to create light trail long exposure images.

Finally, there are several Milky Way Photography Areas in the state. We list the Milky Way Photography Spots in New Jersey for you.

There is true diversity within the state of N.J. with multiple different types of photography areas; this is where you can purchase your N.J. State Park Passes. 

Where to Take Pictures in New Jersey? Look at all of our top locations for photography in New Jersey Hot Spots.

Best Spots to Do Photography in New Jersey

Some of The Best New Jersey photography areas and locations.

Red Mill – Clinton, New Jersey – A small town with one of the most photographed mills in New Jersey. Pair this up with another photography hot spot. Bring your wide-angle lens and neutral density filter to get the milky water effects.

Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge – Galloway, New Jersey – Photograph birds for hours. A very cool place to do photography with a zoom lens, ideal for birding.

Liberty State Park – Jersey City, New Jersey. A great place to spend many hours doing landscape photography, cityscape photography, human interaction photography, bird photography, and night photography.

East Point Lighthouse – Heislerville, New Jersey A daytime spot in the middle of no man’s land to get some great lighthouse images, but be sure to go later in the day and wait for the night to arrive to do your milky way photography.

George Washington Bridge – Fort Lee, New Jersey – A great place to do nighttime photography of the colorful bridge. Do long exposure here and get the milky water effect for stand-out images.

Cape May, New Jersey – Do some ghost hunting while here. You can do ghost hunting photography, Milky Way photography, cityscapes, and beach photos, and stay busy photographing here for days on end.

Sandy Hook, New Jersey – Home to one of the best lighthouses in the state. A good bird photography area and a beach photography hot spot. Go off-season to avoid the hefty fee to get into the park.

Batsto Village – Hammonton, New Jersey photography area. This haunted old village would be great if they were open after dusk, but they are not planning on doing some excellent daytime photography here. If you want to risk being charged with trespassing, take your chances for night photography here, but we do not suggest it. The park police are always out in full force here 24/7.

Good Photography Locations in New Jersey

National parks, monuments, and historic landmarks

  • Appalachian National Scenic Trail
  • Delaware National Scenic River
  • Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area
  • Ellis Island National Monument
  • Gateway National Recreation Area in Monmouth County
  • Great Egg Harbor River
  • Morristown National Historical Park in Morristown
  • New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail Route
  • New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve

Prominent geographic features include:

  • Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park
  • Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange
  • Delaware Water Gap
  • Great Bay
  • Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
  • Highlands
  • Hudson Palisades
  • Meadowlands
  • Pine Barrens
  • South Mountain

Great Photography Spots in New Jersey 

New Jersey photography areas and locations and the basics of New Jersey

New Jersey is bordered on the north and northeast by New York (parts of which are across the Hudson River, Upper New York Bay, the Kill Van Kull, Newark Bay, and the Arthur Kill); on the east by the Atlantic Ocean; on the southwest by Delaware across Delaware Bay; and on the west by Pennsylvania across the Delaware River.

New Jersey is often broadly divided into three geographic regions: North Jersey, Central Jersey, and South Jersey. Some New Jersey residents do not consider Central Jersey a region in its own right, but others believe it is a separate geographic and cultural area from the North and South.

Within those regions are five distinct areas, based on natural geography and population concentration. Northeastern New Jersey lies closest to Manhattan in New York City, and up to a million residents commute daily into the city for work, often via public transportation.[55] Northwestern New Jersey, is more wooded, rural, and mountainous. The Jersey Shore, along the Atlantic Coast in Central and South Jersey, has its own unique natural, residential, and cultural characteristics owing to its location by the ocean. The Delaware Valley includes the southwestern counties of the state, which reside within the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area. The Pine Barrens region is in the southern interior of New Jersey. Covered rather extensively by mixed pine and oak forest, it has a much lower population density than much of the rest of the state.

The federal Office of Management and Budget divides New Jersey’s counties into seven Metropolitan Statistical Areas, with sixteen counties included in either the New York City or Philadelphia metro areas. Four counties have independent metro areas, and Warren County is part of the Pennsylvania-based Lehigh Valley metro area. New Jersey is also at the center of the Northeast megalopolis.

High Point, in Montague Township, Sussex County, is the state’s highest elevation, at 1,803 feet (550 m). The Palisades are a line of steep cliffs on the west side of the Hudson River, in Bergen and Hudson Counties.

Major rivers include the Hudson, Delaware, Raritan, Passaic, Hackensack, Rahway, Musconetcong, Mullica, Rancocas, Manasquan, Maurice, and Toms rivers.

There are two climatic conditions in the state. The south, central, and northeast parts of the state have a humid subtropical climate, while the northwest has a humid continental climate (microthermal), with much cooler temperatures due to the higher elevation. New Jersey receives between 2,400 and 2,800 hours of sunshine annually.[56]

Summers are typically hot and humid, with statewide average high temperatures of 82–87 °F (28–31 °C) and lows of 60–69 °F (16–21 °C); however, temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on average 25 days each summer, exceeding 100 °F (38 °C) in some years. Winters are usually cold, with average high temperatures of 34–43 °F (1–6 °C) and lows of 16 to 28 °F (−9 to −2 °C) for most of the state, but temperatures could, for brief periods, fall below 10 °F (−12 °C) and occasionally rise above 50 °F (10 °C). Northwestern parts of the state have significantly colder winters with sub-0 °F (−18 °C) being an almost annual occurrence. Spring and autumn may feature wide temperature variations, with lower humidity than summer. The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone classification ranges from 6 in the northwest of the state, to 7B near Cape May.[57] All-time temperature extremes recorded in New Jersey include 110 °F (43 °C) on July 10, 1936 in Runyon, Middlesex County and −34 °F (−37 °C) on January 5, 1904 in River Vale, Bergen County.[58]

The average annual precipitation ranges from 43 to 51 inches (1,100 to 1,300 mm), uniformly spread throughout the year. Average snowfall per winter season ranges from 10–15 inches (25–38 cm) in the south and near the seacoast, 15–30 inches (38–76 cm) in the northeast and central part of the state, to about 40–50 inches (1.0–1.3 m) in the northwestern highlands, but this often varies considerably from year to year. Precipitation falls on an average of 120 days a year, with 25 to 30 thunderstorms, most of which occur during the summer.

During winter and early spring, New Jersey can experience “nor’easters”, which are capable of causing blizzards or flooding throughout the northeastern United States. Hurricanes and tropical storms (such as Tropical Storm Floyd in 1999[59]), tornadoes, and earthquakes are rare, although New Jersey was severely impacted by Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012 with the storm making landfall in the state at 90 mph.

Where to take pictures? The New Jersey Hot Spot Location section is a great resource.

Where to take pictures in New Jersey

Announcing our Photography Contest

All of the winners will have their photo featured in our Magazine  Lots of Prizes

 See all of the Details on our Photography Contest Page.

New Jersey photography locations

When to Go: Weekdays, when it is slightly offseason, are best.  Keep in mind to view the milky way dark sky area, so you will want to plan your trip around a new moon or the week before during milky way week.

The milky way is only visible at certain times so be sure to view our milky way information. Bring your freinds along to star gaze nj skies while you do photography. It can be scary.

Camera Settings

Aperture Priority

It is generally used to control the depth of field (control how much is in focus from your subject back). If your shutter speed drops to 1/30th sec. or lower because you lack light, you will need to put your camera on a tripod to avoid blurry pictures. Anything handheld below 1/30 sec will be blurry. The higher the “f” number, the less light that will come in, and your shutter speed will drop to let more light in.

When your “f” number goes up, your aperture closes. At f-22, you are barely letting any light in.  Always watch your shutter speed when taking your shot, look at the bottom of the screen through the viewfinder and check your shutter speed. Do not let your shutter speed go too low when hand-holding.  Sometimes you cannot get a super high f stop because you do not have enough light. This will happen quite often times, such as a sunset. Again, put your camera on a tripod, and now your photos will not blur except for any subject moving in the image.

You might want the opposite effect. That is when your subject is in complete focus, and the background is blurred, called the bokeh effect. You will use your lowest F-number, such as 2.8 or 3.5. Go as small as your particular lens will allow.  Shooting in Aperture Priority allows you to control this.

Shutter Priority

If you have moving subjects such as people moving, you will want to shoot in shutter priority to be sure your images come out sharp. When people are moving slowly, shoot at 1/250th sec, and adjust your ISO accordingly. If they are moving very fast, increase your shutter speed to about 1/1000th sec. If it’s a bright sunny day, go as high as 1/1200 second for very fast-moving subjects.

Manual Mode

If you have moving waters here, you can do your long exposure running, milky water shots.  You will have to use a tripod for this effect.  All of your settings will vary depending on the lighting and what neutral density filter you have. You will shoot in manual mode for the milky waters.

ISO is always 100 or as low as your camera will allow. The aperture is f22. Your shutter speed will vary depending on the light. Take some test shots to decide on your shutter speed after you put your neutral density filter on. (It’s like sunglasses for your camera to stop light from coming in).

Use your shutter release or your 2-second timer also to prevent camera movement. Voila. You now have your milky water exposure. You will want at least a 5-second exposure for water. (If you don’t have a neutral density filter, you may not get more than 1/15th of a second in the sun. That does not give you a good effect). Go to our store to buy your ND filter. We like a 3.0 for super long exposure in the daytime, and we have a ten-stop filter for bright sunny days.

How to Find Good Photography Locations Near Me

Besides visiting our page with details on the best New Jersey photography spots you can visit, there are several other ways to find great photography locations. You can start by exploring your local area and noting exciting or visually appealing spots. Look for unique buildings, natural landscapes, or other landmarks that could make for great photographs.

Other Places to Find Good Photography Locations

Another option is to use online resources to find photography locations. Several websites and social media platforms are dedicated to showcasing stunning photography locations. These platforms often feature user-generated content, allowing you to see site photos from different angles and perspectives. Some popular platforms for finding photography locations include Instagram, Pinterest, and Flickr.

What is Your Photography Style and How to Pick a Location?

As you explore different options for finding photography locations, it’s important to remember your style and the type of photography you enjoy. Some sites may work better for certain photography styles, such as urban landscapes or nature photography. Consider your unique vision and style, and choose locations that will allow you to capture the images you’ve been dreaming of.
But sometimes, the best locations are hidden gems requiring exploration and adventure.

Places to Take Pictures

-Cape May Lighthouse
– Paterson Great Falls
– Sandy Hook Lighthouse
– Absecon Lighthouse
– Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park
– Liberty State Park
– Princeton University Campus
– High Point State Park
– Grounds for Sculpture
– Island Beach State Park
– AtlanticCity Boardwalk
– Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
– Batsto Village
– New Jersey Botanical Garden
– Waterloo Village
– Sterling Hill Mine Museum
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