I had long heard of this place in Northern NJ, Long Pond Ironworks State Park and had to visit. I got up a 4:30am last fall 2025 and trucked up there about 50 miles north of me and found the place in the dark. Next time I’ll go a tiny bit earlier. I bumbled my way down the water’s edge along a trail only about 50 yards from the parking lot and set up to wait for the light to change.
After about 10-15 minutes I hear someone and another photographer walks down and we chat for a few minutes. Then 10 minutes later two more. Soon there are 5 of us and I’m not relinquishing my spot, LOL. My tripod is planted and obviously a couple of the guys are irritated, but still nice and I offer to let them in next to me. I was there for about 2 hours. When the sun came up over the mountain, the light was super different. And the mist burned off rapidly as soon as the sun was up, even though it wasn’t shining on the lake. The movement of the mist as it started to run was lovely.
I noticed that there were all these duck boxes out on the trees and thought that was very cool with their colors and shapes. Those trees you see were flooded many years ago and one by one they are decaying. but currently what you see is as they are.
The light is really, really nice on this pond, especially before dawn and in the mid-fall when the leaves are colorful. It’s a wonderful, easy-to reach place that I will definitely come back to again.
These were taken with my trusty Olympus EM-1 and the great, compact 40-150mm F/4 Pro . Very under-rated.
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