Springtime sunset from Mt Magazine–03/23/15 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography
- At March 23, 2015
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
Taken with a Nikon D800e, single exposure with 0.9 ND grad filter on a Nikon 14-24 lens, F7.1 for 1/6 of a sec @ iso 320. The views from Mt. Magazine are some of the best vistas in Arkansas. The valley to the south, which is featured here looks towards Blue Mountain and below it, Blue Mountain lake. It’s easy to see where the timber industry has harvested all the natural hardwoods, below the Mt. Magazine as the deciduous trees run down the mountain to the park boundary. Springtime is a special time in Arkansas, I like to call the power puff period as all the trees will have different shades of green for about 2 weeks. After that, all the leaves will take on a similar dark green hue until fall.
This shot features the most famous tree on Mt Magazine, the bonsai shaped juniper. I would have loved to make it up to this spot when the huge dead cedar was still alive as it is a huge tree. It’s interesting still standing there and when you look at the roots, you have to wonder how it managed to live as long as it did as the vast majority of them are above the ground on the rock. Mt Magazine is the tallest spot in Arkansas at around 2,700 feet high.
Nighttime skies over Havana Arkansas revisited–02-09-15 Featured Arkansas Photography
Taken with a Nikon D800e, 14-24 Lens @ 15mm and F 3.5 in a series of stacked exposures. This shot was taken in February of 2013 on a very clear night from the summit of Mt. Magazine. The view is directly to the south looking over Havana Arkansas. In the distance you can see Blue Mt. Lake and Blue Mountain itself. I believe that Blue Mt. is the on the left. It would be a tall mountain if not for Mt. Magazine as Magazine dwarfs Blue Mountain.
This is one shot but it was composed by taking around 30 or so stacked exposures of 45 seconds. I had a 3/4 moon that night so the illumination down into the valley is all from the moon. I did some light painting on the tree on the left as the moon light was not going to get there until much later. I did not want to wait that long as by the time the moon would provide that illumination it would also be causing both flare and over exposure issues. This night there was quite a bit of traffic down in the valley along Hwy 10, but it just adds to the overall effect to me. I am always amazed when I look down into this valley during the day it’s hard to see any building of significant size, but at night even the smallest light will show up.
I first worked this shot up back in 2013 and thought I had a good version. Recently when viewing that shot, I realized that I had not been very accurate with the star trail work, and in fact I had a dip. This happens when you just slightly move the camera. It doesn’t take much to offset the trails. The best bet is just don’t touch anything until you are done. I say that, but I usually have to stop the series somewhere in the middle to see if I am getting some damaging flare. The Nikon 14-24 will flare with any amount of light that hits the outer element from the side and the flare can be very destructive and next to impossible to correct in post processing work. Flare tends to totally shift the blue of the sky to a red or yellow hue and tend to have a very hard demarcation which makes removal quite difficult.
Here is my first version of this work, and I greatly prefer the new one. I was able to pull out a lot more of the details in the valley. I also re-worked each of the images to try and pull out more of the trails on the left side. In this location the moon will pass from the left side to right and thus makes an even exposure pretty hard to obtain. However working in Lightroom and with some filters I have I pulled out more definition from the faint trails on the left side.
03/13/13 Featured Arkansas Photography–January Night skies over Roark Bluff
- At March 11, 2013
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
Taken with a Nikon D800e, Nikon 14-24 lens @14mm F 4.5, iso 400. Image taken in a series of 2 minute exposures and stacked to capture motion. This was my first trip with the Nikon D800e for night photographic capture. I had used the D800e throughout the 2nd half of 2012 but was never able to coordinate a good night for a shoot. I prefer to have a clear night with a 1/2 to 3/4 moon and on the 20th of January in 2013 all of this came together. There was also very nominal wind for the entire night. This particular shot was taken looking downstream so I can featuer Roark Bluff and still capture Bee Bluff, the next bluff down river. All of the on the bluff and riverside trees is from the moon and no light painting was needed. The moon is a wonder ally with night photography, giving you a great blue hue to the sky along with adding just enough illumination to see the foreground details i.e. bluff, trees, etc. I was very pleased with the results of the D800e at night. The 14-24 lens at F4.5 still was extremely sharp and the corners of the shot were very useable. I noticed no coma in the stars and very little chromatic aberration. I used Capture One 7 to convert the raw files and stacked them in Photoshop CS6 to capture the star motion. I then combined various versions of the foreground image until I got the best overall image.