Little Rock Sunrise from the Junction Bridge–05/14/15 Featured Arkansas Photography
- At May 14, 2015
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
Taken with a Canon 5D MKII and Canon 24mm TS-EII lens iso 100, F8. The Junction bridge in Little Rock, which is now only for foot traffic, offers a great view of downtown Little Rock. I love to catch the early morning sun on the buildings. This is best done right before the sun has risen so that the glare on the glass is not extreme and it also allows you to still get the pre-morning blue sky off to the west. The Junction bridge is lit up at night and I made a point of getting this photograph taken before the lights were off. I took this shot in a series of images to stitch together later. I used a 24mm TS-E lens, but did not shift as the shifted portion of the image was not enough to capture the full panorama look I wanted. Instead I found the nodal point of the lens, and rotated it through 3 different locations and bracketed the exposures with each. Canon’s cameras have excellent color, but pretty poor dynamic range even at the base iso, so if you don’t want a lot of noise in your shadows, it’s always best to bracket your exposures. The lens I used, the 24mm TS-E is by far the best lens in this class, and has excellent details to the corners even at F 4.5. After working up each segment, I then used Ptgui to stitch the scene into one large panorama.
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.