12/29/15 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Foggy Morning View from Roark Bluff
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Taken with a Canon 5D MKII, Canon 24-70mm Lens, ISO 400 to 800 bracketed, and exposure bracketed in 5 separate exposures.
The early morning hours on the Buffalo tend to be some of the best to photograph the river. I love to hike up to the summit of one of the river bluffs and then wait for the morning fog to lift over the river. However sometimes the best shots are taken in the fog as this one was.
On this morning, I was setup to catch the fog rising and wanted to keep my lens out of the sun, so I was aiming westward. During the long morning wait I went back to my pack to get a drink and just happened to see this shot, as the sun was starting to break through the fog. I was barely able to run back to the camera, grab my camera/tripod and catch this shot.
I took this image in 5 exposure and ISO brackets since I knew that the Canon camera would not allow me the dynamic range to capture it in one shot. The Canon 1ds MKII, as good as it was for the time @ 16MP was pretty terrible with shadow recovery. Most the shots I took during this time were all in exposure brackets. Still the sun coming through the fog has always been a hard part of the shot to get just right. I did not want to the bright orb of the sun to just break through the shot, but instead I wanted it to just barely show. Many of the HDR software tools at the time would not allow for this, and I ended up having to do a manual bracketing exposure. Since then I have re-worked this shot many times over the years and but still have come back to my early versions as my preference.
This photograph has been printed up to sizes of 40 x 60 and has been selected by several Hospitals and offices in Arkansas to be placed in their permanent collections.
12_02_15 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Autumn afterglow at Sam’s Throne
Taken with a Canon 1ds MKII (16MP), multishot bracket for exposure, Canon 24-70 @ 24mm F 11 iso 200
This an example where it pays to work with older files, in this case, way back 2004, with more modern software. I have taken a lot of sunsets at Sam’s Throne, however this is still one of my all time favorites. When I purchased my Canon 1ds MKII, which had 16MP, I started retracing many of trips to places I loved to go as I felt that 16MP would be about the maximum in resolution for a long time to come. We all know that changed pretty quickly. However on this evening, I found the best shot was after the sun set as it painted a wonderful afterglow in the sky. Sam’s Throne was just starting to change for fall but there was plenty of color around. To make the shot perfect, the couple of clouds that rolled into the frame helped to breakup the solid sky.
Sam’s Throne is one of premier climbing spots in Arkansas but it’s also one of the best for photography. You have a huge bluff line that runs at least 1/2 mile or longer and allows for wonderful views of the Big Creek valley. In this view you can see the Throne itself and all the rolling hilss that work their way off into the distance. The forest here is a good mix of both pine and deciduous trees, mainly Oak, and Gum but there are also some nice Maples scattered though the valley. One of the best aspects of Sam’s Throne is the fact that you can drive very close to the bluffline and you only have about a 1/8 of a mile walk to get started. Sam’s Throne is a great place to camp also as there is now a primitive campground with about 10 sites.
As this series of shots was taken with an older Canon Digital camera, the noise in the shadows was excessive. The 1ds MKII was not noted for extreme dynamic range. Back in the day, I shot almost everything in brackets knowing I would need multiple shots to get the exposure coverage I needed without excessive noise even at base iso or one step up. I had worked this image many times with various HDR software toolsets, but never really received the output I was looking for. Now that Adobe Lightroom has an excellent HDR tool, I decided to go back and try this shot again. The result was impressive and I found a much better overall image. The big advantage to HDR in LR is that Lightroom leaves that output as an .dng, in essence a raw file. This means you have all the flexibility of a raw file but with the added exposure blend, and you can still use the excellent Lightroom Toolset. I have started going back to a lot of my early Canon photography and working it back in LR and the results have been impressive.
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.