Photos of Arkansas

With all the rain of late, I felt it would be a great idea to post some shots that were taken during the brief dry spell we had in June and early July.  I tend to try to get up to Petit Jean as often as I can mainly since it’s so close to Little Rock.  I have taken  photos all over the state of Arkansas, but I still find Petit Jean to have some of my favorite spots.  The main issue with Petit Jean is the large number of people that will be there really at anytime of the year, except the dead of winter. You have to work your shooting around them and find spots less frequently favored (ones that are not just 10 feet away from a car).

Early in the Morning you can get one of the best sunrises from Petit Jean.  If you are lucky, you will catch the Arkansas river valley fully encased in fog.  The sun will rise over the fog and make for a excellent shot.  Make sure to get there at least 30 minutes before sunrise to allow you to get setup.  The grave site of Petit Jean is one of the best spots but there are other less known ones.  If you just drive past the turn off to Petit Jean’s grave and then then turn towards the Winrock Conference area you will find some great spots  along the road.   You get the same valley view, but with some more encompassing trees.   Once at the grave site, move around the big rocks until you find a spot where you can feature the rocks and the sunrise.  Don’t just limit yourself to the top, look around for cracks and crevases that make for more unique photos.

This shot which was taken from the grave site is looking due west.  The rocks here will come alive in the morning as the sun hits them.  You might have to take some of the more harsh graffiti off in Photoshop, but that seems to be a necessary evil up there.  The early folks were content to just carve in the rocks, but spray paint has taken over as the main method to deface the rocks.   This shot was taken as a series, HDR (high dynamic range) and then combined into one large negative.  I use a different method than most people to work my HDR,  developed by Timothy Farr and have found it to provide the best results.   This shot was taken with a Canon 5D MKII, with a 24-70 lens at 24mm.

The sky that morning was an amazing shade of of blue and it faded from a dark to almost turquoise color that was broken by a slight band of red right at the horizon line.   One issue you can have with any HDR work is movement.  Wind noise as I call it.  If there is a good breeze blowing you can pretty much forget working with traditional HDR methods as the leaves will never line up.  When this happens I work with a method I learned from Todd Smith from Little Rock.  This allows you to take parts from from several of the image to create the final version.  You also have to watch the clouds as they are moving and can blur also.  Your eye will most likely not pick this movement up.

Since Cedar Falls was dry, (surprising due to all the rain), I drove over to Mather lodge.  I am big fan of the trail that runs from Mather Lodge to both Cedar Falls and the Blue hole.  It has non stop photo opportunities and is full of Dogwoods.   The visita from Mather lodge features the canyon that has been created by Cedar Falls Creek.  You can see the cliffs on the left that are part of the Bear Cave area.  This morning there was a good amount of sunlight lighting the valley.  However as I stood there some low hanging clouds started to move up the valley and within 5 minutes the entire look of the valley had changed.

This shot is a what I call a slight pano.  It was taken from two frames from a medium format back in the Landscape mode.  The medium format back is a 4:3 ratio and lends itselft well to this type of work.  I worked the two frames up independently and then combined them in Photoshop.   Photoshop does an good job on this type of work and can  correct for a lot of the optical errors that can occur.   Within 5 more minutes, the clouds were gone and the valley was back to normal light.  You can see from the various trees, that everything was very lush almost like a rain forest.

The cliffs on the right side can be reached from the road that cross Cedar Creek near the campgrounds.

Tags: Arkansas, Image editing, photoshop, United States

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 9:39am and is filed under Photography Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.