02/20/19 A Tale of two creeks Richland and Falling Water–Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography
A tale of two Creeks, Falling Water and Richland Creeks, Newton County Arkansas taken November 2018.
Taken with a Nikon D850 and 24-70 lens. Image capture in 3 horizontal images @ 24mm. I used both a CL-PL and ND filter to slow the exposure for the water.
If I had to pick a favorite spot in Arkansas, it would have to be Richland Creek. Most defiant a love/hate relationship as Richland alone has cost me more in camera gear than any other location I like to photograph. Just this fall I lost both a Nikon D850 and 24-70 lens upstream from where this shot was taken. Totally my fault and lucky for me, the creek was much lower so I was able to recover the gear and Nikon USA was able to repair it at a reasonable cost. But that’s another story.
Richland Creek is one of the fascinating creeks in Arkansas. At medium to high water levels it’s a great kayaking stream. The creek is lined with hardwoods most are 2nd generation growth as the creek was logged back in both the great depression and again in the 60’s-70’s. Most of the old growth trees are long gone but if you hike far enough upstream where the mules and loggers never reached you can still find some huge white oaks.
The creek also winds through some of the most remote parts of Arkansas, that are still remaining. Most of the watershed is now a wilderness area. There is a primitive hiking trail that works it’s way up the left side of the creek (left side facing upstream). This trail will lead all the way to Twin Falls and Richland Falls, well worth the trip.
For most the season, Richland hold water, but in the fall it’s very rare to find a good flow like the one shown in this image. Instead the creek is usually barely covering the rocks. The fall colors are getting tricky to catch also. In the past the peak display tended to be around the middle of October now the peak seems to be more in the first week of November. But the display is now hard to catch in full. Notice in this shot most of the larger trees on the left have dropped their leaves, but the willows and smaller hardwoods lining the creek are still in full color. However upstream many of the larger trees are still hold leaves. So you just have to go and see what you have.
To take this shot, I had to wade out into the creek to mid thigh deep. I found a rock that allowed me to place my tripod and camera safely above the creek. Still after the disaster I had just 1 week prior, I was a bit shaky on working in the creek. Still it was just too much not to get out and risk the shot. There was little to no wind and just as I arrived the deeply overcast sky started to breakup and gave me some nice mixed light.
Due to the high water levels, I was able to catch Falling Water Creek on the left of the shot. Falling Water Creek runs into Richland at the Richland Campground. Falling water breaks into several channels near the it’s mouth with Richland and this one is the smallest. It hardly ever flows unless Richland is running at a high level. So I was grateful to catch both creeks in the same shot with some of the most amazing fall color I have seen on the creek.
Written by Paul Caldwell for www.photosofarkansas.com. Please contact the author before using any part of this in a separate publication.
05/05/16 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Springtime sunset over Pinnacle Mountain
- At May 05, 2016
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
Taken with a Nikon D800e, Nikon 14-24 @ 14mm F 8, ISO 100, exposure bracketed in 3 frames and worked up in Lightroom with Topaz Clarity
The evening I took this, I have hoped for a bit more cloud cover, but the spring colors were out in full so I went ahead and worked up the shot. This was taken from one of my all time favorite spots over looking Pinnacle mountain. Here you are looking due west, so depending on the time of year, you can sometimes catch the sun setting right on top of Pinnacle. As I recall the best times for this are in late March and September, but it’s been a long time since I went after that shot.
Even with Nikon I went ahead and bracketed this shot, I feel many times that in protecting the shadows, I will blow out the highlights and they will never be recoverable. I worked this shot up once before a couple of years ago, but never got it where I liked it. Now with the HDR feature within Lightroom, I went back to the raw files and worked them up again. This time I got much better results and then worked on the file just a bit in Topaz Clarity. I am not sure why the sky went black at the top, but that is just how it worked out, I kinda of like it!
The HDR feature in LR has it’s problems, but most of the time I can do what I want and get the effects I am looking for so much easier than any other HDR tool I have ever used.
The spring colors in Arkansas just looked great on this evening so it all came together for me.
Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–October sunrise on Mt Magazine
- At March 25, 2016
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
PLEASE NOTE: All of the photography of this website is the property of www.photosofarkansas.com and is copy right protected. Do not copy any of the images on this site to paste on Facebook, Pintrest, or any other website without the permission of Paul Caldwell. Years of time have gone into capturing these photographs, please respect that. I do not take copy right infringement lightly. If you have a need to display any of my work on your site ASK me before you Copy & Paste.
Taken with a Nikon D810 and 14-24 Lens @ 14mm and F 5.6 ISO 250 exposure bracketed in 3 frames
On Mt Magazine, the view in late October back to the east can provide some amazing sunrises. The sun will rise right out in the center of the frame and when you have clouds the light can be fantastic. In this shot, I was on the 3rd floor of the lodge, but you can work from any floor. All the rooms on the lodge open out to the back side and have a southward facing view. Mt Magazine is the “border” of the end of the Ozark mountains, as all the mountains to the south are in the Ouachita Mountains. So you get a excellent view of the beginning of the Ouachita chain that runs from here to the southwest corner of Arkansas. In the view looking back to the east, you can see Flatside Pinnacle way off in the distance also. Flatside is 1,500 feet tall and is a great photographic area also.
Later in the spring and summer the sun will move back to the left and will rise out of view, so the best times to catch a sunrise, is October through early February. In 2015, the fall colors in Arkansas sucked, yes, they were that back. Mt Magazine tends to have a pretty good display even in the years like 2015 and I guess this is due to micro climate that Mt Magazine has, being 2,700 feet tall. But what made this shot were the clouds that came across the sky right as the sun came up. The sun is in the dead center of this shot, but is filtered by the band of clouds that are right on the horizon, but these same clouds allowed the light to reflect upwards and just popped the clouds towards the top of the frame.
I used ISO 250 on this shot as there was considerable wind blowing I wanted to start my exposure stack with a higher shutter speed. The Nikon D810 does a good job here, not as well as it would have at base ISO of 64, but I was still able to stop the motion of the trees and get the shot. The camera was mounted to tripod so alignment was not an issue. I used the HDR feature of Adobe Lightroom to merge the 3 exposures and Lightroom did a very good job on this shot. In this shot you can see the rock bluffs of Mt Magazine and then one row of the cabins that can be rented. There is really no way to get this shot without also getting the cabins in the view, so I just include them. Off in the distance you can see a couple of the rolling ridges that create the Ouachita mountains.