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Joshua (Josh) Friedman’s love for photography began when he was about seven, maybe eight years old. “I took photos at all family events. If we were on vacation or if I went to a sporting event or a field trip with school, I was always the guy with a camera in his hand.” By the time Josh was in high school, Josh had his own dark room. “A buddy of mine and I would develop photos.”
Although he didn’t take photography courses in college, he took some art classes and became the president of the Student Arts Council. Josh graduated from Franklin and Marshall College, and after that earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He has had a psychology practice in Lawrenceville, NJ for over 30 years.
About 20 years ago, Josh wanted to get more serious about photography, so he began to take courses and attend workshops, but he says, “I mostly just went out and shot a lot of photos and practiced editing them and using different techniques, so it kind of grew.”
Josh uses a digital single lens reflex (SLR) Canon 5D Mark IV to take his stunning landscape photos of Bucks County. Take a cursory look at his website, (www.joshfriedmanphotography.net) and you will find photography of Bucks County landscapes, photos of national parks, U.S. cities, Europe, U.S monuments, battlefields, beaches and ocean. Another thing you will find is that he divides his online Bucks County galleries into four seasons.
Josh likes to take photos early in the morning, especially during the fall. “The primary thing is that the light is just wonderful and soft. I happen to love pre-sunrise, sunrise, and then what’s called the golden hour, roughly an hour after sunrise.” During the summer it’s a little more difficult because the sun is up very early. Josh says, “It may sound like something Yogi Berra says, but in the fall it stays early late. If I'm out at six, it's still dark at that time. In autumn you get that nice early-morning fog or mist coming off the water, or over farmland and you sometimes get really neat skies in the early morning—the light bouncing off the sky—you can get purples, a fair amount of pinks and yellows.”
Taking photos early in the morning, besides the soft light, is a way for Josh to practice his art without distractions. “In Bucks County and in national parks, if you’re out in the middle of the day, it can feel like Disney World in terms of the number of people. I can’t blame them; everyone loves the national parks. But if you’re out in the early morning, some of these places that can be like a zoo or like Disney World at midday, I have all to myself. There’s a certain peacefulness to that too.”
Josh says, “I feel fortunate where we live. We’re in Yardley and this coming fall it’s 25 years. There’s a lot locally. This morning, I’m going 50 minutes north, there’s just a lot nearby. You can plan, but you don’t have to plan too carefully.”
Josh has exhibited his photographs in many juried fine art shows, but he primarily sells his photographs through his online ETSY shop. He says, “I always get asked, ‘Do you have a book?’ And a lot of people asked, ‘Do you have a calendar?’ Finally last year, for the first time, and I’d been meaning to do it for years, I did a Bucks County calendar. It actually sold very well, with different landmarks in Bucks County in each of the four seasons, each month with a photo that went with that season.”
Josh has also done workshops and presentations in Bucks County. “Maybe three or four years ago I was asked to do one for Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, so I did sort of a three-part workshop for them. One part I did was virtual—this was mid to end of COVID—so part of it was virtual instruction on different ideas and strategies pertaining to composition in photographs. Then we had a photo outing one morning in Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, and after that we met up again virtually about a week later and all the participants would show five or six photos they took during the outing for critique and follow-up.”
Josh’s photography of Bucks County led him to do a presentation called “Bucks County Beauty and History.” He says, “It was sort of a photographic tour, and I integrated a little bit of local history with my photos. I first did that maybe three or four years ago for the Yardley Historical Association. That was actually a lot of fun, and it forced me to learn a little bit more of our history—some pertaining to the Revolution, some to the canal, covered bridges, farms, and other things. We’re surrounded by a lot of interesting history.”
Josh has done workshops on composition and HDR (high dynamic range). “HDR is a process where you merge different exposures so that you have the correct exposure for each of the different parts of the photo, ranging from the darkest part to the brightest part. The correct exposure for one area is not the same as for other parts, so you take multiple exposures and use different software to blend them together.” This makes the photo look more like the scene would look to the eye, when our brain does the blending.
A sampling of Joshua Friedman’s fine art photos can be viewed on his website www.joshfriedmanphotography.net. They can be purchased on “joshfriedmanphoto” on Etsy.com in sizes ranging from 4 by 6 inches to 30 by 45 inches. You can also visit him on Facebook www.facebook.com/joshfriedmanphotographyand Instagram @joshfriedmanphoto.