By: Gary Simeone

Throughout most of her life, Joan Case, a Long Valley resident, has been interested in photography and all of the different types of cameras. She took her first few photographs back in the 1970’s with her uncle, shooting nature shots and landscape scenery in the northern New Jersey area. 

“My uncle taught me early on about cameras and shooting landscape and portrait style photography,” said Case. “I really fell in love with nature and the beauty of northern New Jersey. There was so much stuff to photograph out there, but I ended up gravitating more towards landscapes, flowers and trees and other natural settings.”

She said that her uncle was instrumental in helping her learn about a cameras f-stop and how to control the focal length and field of view of the lens.

Her superb photography skills led her to open two different gallery locations in Chester in the late 1990’s.

“I opened both galleries back in 1996, and for a few years had a pretty successful showing, but then the economy kind of tanked and I had to close up shop a few years later. A lot of the photography business was starting to move online and local businesses were going more with notecards and general frames. Unfortunately, I had to close both galleries in 2004.”

Luckily for her, she had her fulltime job as a distributor at a beverage company to fall back on so she could make ends meet. Case said that after working for over thirty years at the beverage company, she retired in June, so she could concentrate on her photography. 

“I basically retired to take photos and to get back to doing what I really love. The great thing about living in this area is that you really don’t have to go far to see beautiful settings. Now I have the time to ride around to places like the local landscapes and waterscapes of northern Jersey, the Catskills in New York and into Pennsylvania.”

One of her favorite trips she said, was a recent trip to Wyoming last May, to photograph the National Park’s and the Teton Range area of the Rocky Mountains.

When shooting her photos, Case uses a typical Nikon camera, with a range of lenses including the wide-angle, telephoto and the closeup lens.

Recently she has begun using her phone in place of her camera to take photos of landscape settings and the fall foliage that is nearing its peak season in the New Jersey area.

“The technology with taking pictures on your phone has come so far, and plus it’s a lighter load to carry as opposed to all of the camera equipment,” said Case. “The only real issue is that you can’t blow up the photos you’d be able to with a camera, so it makes it difficult to be able to frame anything. I do believe that the technology for that is not too far away though.”

Case has her own website where she provides artwork for people’s businesses and homes and also for decoration and gift giving needs. For more information, visit www.jcasephotography.com.