Photographer's First Show Focuses on Natural New Jersey

Photographer Danielle Austen knows New Jersey is more than what’s seen on TV or while driving on the highway.

 “I don’t think people realize how beautiful Jersey is,” Austen, a Hillsborough resident, said. “It’s not just the Jersey Shore and the Housewives. I think people kind of think of New Jersey as just the Turnpike.”

It’s the images that aren’t the highways or the beach crews’ antics at the heart of her first show, “Wild New Jersey” set to open Sept. 22 at the Atrium Gallery in the Morris County Administration and Records Building. The joint exhibit, which she’ll share with photographer Dawn Benko, features the natural side of the state both call home.

As a photojournalist who’s worked with the Daily Record, Courier News, New Jersey Monthly, Austen’s background is in Fine Arts, having studied painting, sculpture, drawing and photography at Cornell University. She later received a Master’s in photojournalism from Syracuse University, cementing what would later become her career.

But her passion’s become the fine arts side of photography, and nature is a favorite subject, she said.

“I always found my inner peace when I’m out shooting nature,” she said. “It’s a way to relax.  .  .  It’s been sort of a full circle, starting in Fine Arts, getting into journalism and then back into Fine Arts.”

“I’m exceptionally lucky here in Hillsborough because we have the Sourland Mountains, the Raritan Canal,” she added.

Since Benko, her former colleague at the Daily Record, also gravitated to nature photography, the pair decided to team up for a joint show. Benko called to inquire about a show at the Atrium Gallery, and the plan came to fruition several months after the initial inquiry.

“We were sort of going in the same direction, so we decided to team up,” Austen said. “This was sort-of our old stomping grounds in Morris County. They usually do three to four shows a year.  .  .We got a call this summer asking if we could be ready for September.”

The free show runs until January 12 and features photographs from around the state.

“We are documentary photographers,” Austen said. “We kind of shoot what we see.

Austen feels her images take a more “quietly serene” tone, and several of her photographs were shot on cloudy, low-light days.

Thus far, the first show experience is a positive one, according to Austen.

“We’re really looking at it as a great new venture in pursuing our art,” she said.