Watchung Hills Soph Snaps Prize-Winning Photo

Justin Scalera, Class of 2015 at Watchung Hills Regional High School, has never sung in a barbershop quartet.

But his sharp eye for beauty, and his experience with a Pentax K100D camera recognized a quartet when he saw one. He captured the scene, as well as a second prize of $150, in the D & R Greenway Land Trust Juried High School Exhibit, “Landscapes” with his photo, “Barbershop Quartet.”

A land preservation organization, the D & R Greenway was instrumental, in 2012, in preserving more than 2,081 acres, valued at over $34 million. And, since 1989, the group has placed 17,200 acres into permanent preservation, an area 20 times larger than New York City’s Central Park.

The annual competition for local high school students is sponsored by the Princeton Photography Club and the D & R Greenway. The juried exhibit, say the sponsors, showcases digitally-manipulated images that show the use of plants in the natural landscape. The sponsors presented the award on April 10th at a reception at the D & R Greenway Land Trust’s Johnson Education Center in Princeton.

Photos will be on display until May 3rd.

The 16-year-old, a student in Vincent Colabella’s first—year photography course, called his photo “a lucky fluke.” He’d been “taking pictures for three or four years” and one day, going by the Warrenbrook golf course, was struck by the four stately pine trees which he eventually dubbed “Barbershop Quartet.”

When Colabella mentioned the photo contest to his classes, Scalera decided to enter his tree “portrait.”

The prize will serve as a down payment for a new, even more advanced, camera.