Freeze Frame: Photographer Captures Snowy Scene At Lake Afton
YARDLEY, PA —You may know Josh Friedman’s name. Maybe you’ve spotted the borough resident around town or in Lower Makefield Township or elsewhere in Lower Bucks County.
If anything, you just might know his photographs.
The 60-year-old Friedman captures the quaint and quiet scenes around Bucks County, from a snowy picturesque landscape at Lake Afton to the sunset over the bridge running between New Hope and Lambertville, N.J., and everywhere else in between.
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By day, Friedman is a clinical psychologist in Lawrenceville, N.J. By hobby, he carries a camera in hand.
“I’ve been doing photography since I was 8-10 years old,” Friedman said. “I had an old darkroom in the basement of our Long Island, N.Y., home in the late 1970s.”
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Friedman started snapping pictures at sporting events and on family vacations. As time went on, he would take photos of his two children when they were young.
Friedman has been married for 31 years and both children, who graduated from the Pennsbury School District, are all grown and out of college.
“Photography has been an important part of my life since I was very young when I used a 110 Kodak Pocket Instamatic. In Junior High School, I built and experimented with a pinhole camera. By high school, I converted a storage closet in my parents’ basement into a darkroom to develop photos. For the next 25 years, I shot with a series of traditional film SLR cameras. I approached the digital age of photography with some initial skepticism, but now I love the many opportunities for creativity that were not possible in the past,” reads Friedman’s artist statement.
Friedman graduated from Franklin and Marshall College, where he was president of the Student Arts Council. He earned a doctorate in clinical psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
About 15 years ago, Friedman’s photography hobby became more of a passion. He said he began to take his work more seriously and started taking online classes and workshops to finetune his craft.
“In my photography, I focus primarily on landscapes, nature, and travel. My “home turf” of Bucks County is rich in natural beauty as well as history, and this is reflected in many of my images. My diverse interests are easy to see in my artwork: nature, rustic scenery, sports, wildlife, architecture, and urban landscapes,” Friedman said.
Over the past decade, he has exhibited my photographs in many juried fine art shows. He also primarily sells his photographs through his online ETSY shop, “JoshFriedmanPhoto.” You can buy Friedman’s photos by clicking here.
“My photographs are now in hundreds of homes, offices, and medical clinics in addition to being used for commercial use. Now my shop is almost 12 years old, and I have shipped my prints all over the world,” he stated. “I have led photography tours in Bucks County, as I have given presentations on topics ranging from photographic composition to HDR (high dynamic range) photography.”
Friedman said, “weather shots are the most enticing to me.” He shoots pictures of Lake Afton, the Delaware River, Washington’s Crossing, Bucks County’s covered bridges, and Patterson Farm, among others.
The photographs are often landscapes or historical topics.
“It’s a great feeling that people recognize my work,” he said. “They say hello and acknowledge my work. In Yardley, I have a little bit of a following.”
Patch will be launching a regular feature showcasing Friedman’s photography. Stay tuned for more of his scene-setters.
About the Winter Lake Afton Picture (From Josh Friedman)
After getting shut out last winter regarding any opportunities for snow photographs, the past few weeks I have felt like a kid in a candy store. Whenever Lake Afton freezes over, and people are skating and playing hockey, it feels like the setting of a Norman Rockwell painting.
I took this photograph on Friday, Jan. 19th, at about 3:45 p.m., as the snow was falling steadily. A snow-covered tree beautifully framed the picturesque setting in Yardley. The historic “Old Library” and the St. Andrew’s Church are covered in fresh snow, at the edge of the pond.
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Photographing this type of setting is always a little tricky. I had my camera on my tripod, and I framed the scene so that the branches of the tree formed an inverted “U” shape, which framed the pond and the buildings. A snowflake landing on my lens would have left a blurry section in the photograph. To avoid this, I held an umbrella over my camera, as my hands got rather cold! I used a narrow aperture (f/16), which allowed a wide depth of field so that both the foreground tree and the background buildings would all be in focus.
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