09/18/18 Sunset from the Broadway Bridge Little Rock Arkansas–Featured Arkansas Photography
Taken with a Nikon D850 and 19mm PC-E lens, 2 12mm shifts from center.
The new Broadway Bridge over the Arkansas River in Little Rock/North Little Rock, is a brand new bridge, just finished earlier this year. The construction is very applying to the photographic eye. I have been trying to figure out where to get the sunset, feature the bridge and the skyline of Little Rock for a while now. For this shot I was on the North Little Rock side of the river and waited until the sun was right on the horizon. To get the sun in the shot, requires you to move too much to the right and thus loose the skyline. During the peak winter solstice, you might be able to get the sun into the frame as it will have moved to the left as far as it’s going to.
For this shot I used a Nikon D850 and 19mm PC-E lens. Ideally the best lens to frame the shot would have been a 24mm to 35mm, but Nikon’s 24mm PC-E is very weak on the corners before shifting and once shifted IMO is pretty worthless. Nikon doesn’t make a 35mm PC-E and the 45mm would have been too much lens. The 19mm is tack sharp even with a 12mm shift. You need to watch your framing and check the focus as the ideal focus spot will shift as you shift the lens. There is a bit of vignetting, but that can be corrected in post. It would be nice if LR would get a lens profile done for the 19mm, but so far there is not one. Typical again for Adobe as the 19mm has been out now for over a year.
I used Lightroom to create the panorama, and only used the left and right shifts as the center just provided the same details. Lightroom still has trouble blending the exposure on this type of shot and tends to cut a demarcation line right down the middle of the frame. You can export the same 2 files to Photoshop CC and get a much better blend, but Photoshop CC doesn’t have the boundary warp option, which I use all the time. And you are no longer working on a dng/raw file instead the panorama image is converted to a tif once the panorama process is complete.
This image was shot at the base ISO of the D850 of 64 which is very clean even when pushed. Since there was no wind the evening this shot was taken I was able to get by with longer exposure times.
Written for www.photosofarkansas.com by Paul Caldwell, please ask permission before using any part of this article in a different publication.
02/21/14 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Moonset and sunrise over Downtown Little Rock
Taken with a Nikon D800 Nikon 14-24 Lens at 20mm, F 7.1, 1/20th of sec exposure, ISO 200. Photograph developed from a single file. The view of Downtown Little Rock is a great place to catch a sunrise especially if you can find the Arkansas River still to allow for the best reflections. I made this trip with Todd Smith, another noted photographer in Little Rock. Todd and I were also very lucky to have a setting waning moon directly over the city. This when combined with the sunrise rise lighting the clouds in the background made for a wonder shot. Once again the Nikon D800 did not disappoint me in that I was able to work up this from a single raw file, something that would not have been possible in my days with Canon. In the distant background you can also see a flock of birds that were flying down river. What I liked the most about this shot is how the sun was just starting to rise and was only hitting the Regions and Stephens buildings. In the foreground is the Junction bridge and the Main street bridge is directly behind it. Since late December, Little Rock has been lighting all the bridges at night with a bright red light. Some of this light is responsible for the color on the water in the foreground.
10/18/13 Featured Arkansas Photography–Sunrise through the rocks on Petit Jean Mountain
Taken with a Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24 lens @ 14mm, F 8, iso 100, exposure bracketed in 4 series. Petit Jean State Park (which was able to stay open throughout all of the stupid government shutdown) has some wonderful places for sunrise/sunset photography. The mountain has one long section that runs along the length of the Arkansas River and the eastern most end has a great view of the river as it turns due west towards the city of Morrellton. During certain times of the year, you can catch the sun where it will briefly (for about 5 minutes) totally illuminate the rocks below the summit. I have worked this spot hundreds of times over the year, but didn’t realize that this scene was possible until last December. You can also see on the large rock to the left what appears to be the profile of a face. On this day there was just a small amount of fog in the valley off in the distance and when the sun popped up over the horizon, the glow was amazing. I took this photograph with a Nikon D800 with 4 exposure brackets but due to the amazing dynamic range of the D800 at iso 100, I only ended up need 2.
02/21/2013 Featured Arkansas Photography–Night skies over Twin Rivers Park
Taken with a Nikon D800e, 14-24 lens@ 17mm, F4.5, iso 400. Image is the result of a series of 35 second frames that were stacked together. Well, it’s been a while since I put up anything new, and I do have my reasons, but I am going to try and get a bit more current. This shot was taken over the new bridge at Twin Rivers Park, in Little Rock. This is a new subject for me but one I have wanted to explore for a while now. The bridge has a series of bright lights that run along it’s course so it added an additional challenge for any type of shooting. If you exposed the bridge for 35 seconds, it would be totally over exposed, but I need the 35 seconds for the stars. So the solution is to expose a series for the bridge after the stack is done, then combine the images together later. The bridge added one other problem in that it had a much brighter center that would go off like a search light every once and while. You can still the effect in the center of the image, but I felt it was balanced enough as I had it. The effect of the center light is a bit harsher in the smaller jpg file I have uploaded for the web. I was blessed to be shooting with Dr. Smith that night and only to have a few planes overhead.
08/28/12 Featured Arkansas Photography–Nighttime stars over the Big Dam Bridge in Little Rock Arkansas
Taken with a Canon 5D MKII, 14mm Lens, F4, approx 20 seconds, iso 400. I don’t spend too much time down at the big dam bridge, but it can be an interesting night shot on a clear cool night. On this night, it was pretty warm, over 85 degrees so I picked up some rose streaking in the sky. However the stars themselves stand out very well. I picked a night when they were running a bit of water through the dam so the 20 second exposure was plenty to blur out and smooth the water. The lights on the top of the dam took on a nice starlight look due to the 14mm lens. I recently sold the 14mm Canon since I am in the process of moving to Nikon, but I will miss that particular lens.
The Big Dam Bridge runs across the Terry Lock and Dam and allows cyclists, walkers and runners to cross over the Arkansas River to the North Little Rock Side of the bridge. I took the shot from the North Little Rock side, looking back towards Little Rock.
If you look closely over the middle of the bridge, you can easily spot the constellation Orion. The belt is very easy to see. I also liked the way the rose colored sky blended in near the tops of the hillsides.
05/30/12 Featured Arkansas Photography–Sunset over Pinnacle Mountain
- At May 30, 2012
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
Taken with a Canon 5D MKII, 70-300 Lens, ISO 100 F8 at a shutter speed of 1/400. There are times that you just get lucky!. While I was working this great sunset, I happend to catch this lone para-glider working around the summit of Pinnacle. For the shot I had to hand hold my Canon 5D MKII with a 70-300 lens since the light was fading too fast to switch over to my tripod. The pilot made only about 2 passes and I was able to capture him on the 2nd pass. The sun lit the plane up perfectly.