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.
02/25/16 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Sunset Falls on Mt. Magazine aka Chris Kennedy Falls
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 an Nikon D810 & 14-24 lens @ 14mm, F11 ISO 64 through 400 in a series of bracketed exposures, combined into a single photograph in Lightroom.
In Yosemite National Park, there is a famous spot where during the month of February you can catch the setting sun illuminating a slender waterfall. Once the angle of the sun moves past a certain point the light falls beyond the waterfall. The problem is there tends to be over 1000 people lined up to get the same shot, so it’s really become a common shot. Still a thrill to get, but 1000’s of copies floating around the internet and in various galleries.
By pure chance, one of my friends, Chris Kennedy found this place on Mt. Magazine. I am sure this creek has a name, but I felt it fair to give Chris title. I have seen thousands of waterfall shots taken in Arkansas, but I have never seen one that features the setting sun, both in the shot and illuminating the waterfall. I knew of a different spot a bit further down on Highway 9 and had mentioned this to Chris to check out. During that trip, he found a second series of waterfalls, just up the highway, and while he was photographing them, he realized that it was possible to catch the sunset on the waterfall. Chris sent me a shot the next day and I was transfixed! Chris mentioned to me in passing that the trip to the base of this waterfall was about like the hike down Big Devil’s creek from Hill Cemetery, a hike I had made many times, so I was not too worried about it. I had a lot to learn.
Highway 9 heads up the south side of Mt. Magazine out of Havana Arkansas. On the way up you will cross several small creeks that really just runoff from the summit of the mountain. The largest creek in the area Shoal, starts up on the other side of Magazine and runs to the north. As you wind up Hwy 9, you will come to a spot where two small creeks cross the highway and then come together. This spot has obviously been photographed many times before as there is a worn down trail to a vantage point. This creek now bounces down a very steep gorge over many more waterfalls, and disappears out of sight headed south. While walking along the highway, Chris spotted a higher waterfall, much further down the creek, and headed down the hillside to get a better view and in the process discovered this wonderful view.
The waterfall, is actually in 3 parts and in this photograph, you are viewing only the top part of the waterfall, which is also the highest single point. It’s about 20 to 25 feet tall from the very base. The creek then winds around the shale bluff and makes two more nice drops before emptying into a nice pool. The sun in January, is at just the right angle to shine on the base of the falls, providing a beautiful shot. Chris told me that you only have about 10 minutes to catch the light before the best part of it moves away from the falls.
I headed up to this spot with Dr. Todd Smith, (and will tell more of that story on my blog), and we were both able to get to the base of the falls just in time to catch this shot.
A few points of consideration:
- This waterfall has one of the most dangerous approaches I have ever attempted in Arkansas in over 40 year of hiking this state. You are hiking down a pitch of at least 55 degrees or more at times and it’s all loose rock
- About 1/2 of the way down you will hit a band of large loose rock that is full of pitfalls and places to break your ankle, there is an old crashed car laying in this part of the decent. This is a steep enough spot that if you lean too far backwards, you will fall.
- The last 20 feet to the base of the waterfall is along a 55 degree pitch, where if you slip, you will be headed straight down to the bottom 10 feet below. The area is just a muddy hillside and very slick
- When you are photographing the waterfall, you need an extremely wide angle lens, and a full frame sensor, (no APS-C cameras) if you want to get both the full waterfall and the setting sun. I used a 14mm lens
- Make sure to pack a series of filter and a tripod as this shot has to be bracketed.
- The trees above the waterfall are moving all the time due to the force of the water, so plan on shooting at least one frame at a faster ISO and shutter speed to stop the motion
- The hike out, well, lets just say it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s ten times worse than the hike down as the entire hillside is just loose rock, so you may climb 3 feet just to slide back 1.5 feet. The use of a rope on the last 50 feet would be strongly advised and something I plan to bring the next time I attempt this shot.
- You can try to come at the falls from a little bit further down the highway, but trust me the going is not any easier as the forest floor is just a bunch of broken rock and it make for very difficult footing.
- It’s very apparent that some blasting was done for the Highway above here and the rock just all fell away down the hillside and is very loose, footing is very tricky.
Overall this has to be one of the more unique places I have ever worked in Arkansas and have been to many. I would not attempt this hike alone, as there is just too much a risk, and I was glad to have Todd and Chris with me both times I headed down to the falls. This hike will give you just a bit more appreciation as to just how high Mt Magazine is and steep. The result is well worth the hike.
Paul Caldwell
October Sunset on the Buffalo River at Roark Bluff–02/24/15 Featured Arkansas Photography
Taken with an Nikon D810, Nikon 14-24 lens @ 14mm F8, iso 64, 1/3 of a second in a single exposure.
This is one of those images that you have to work on a while, then come back to and work it some more and then again and again. I took this shot while on a sunset/night shoot with Chris Kennedy from Russellville. We were just setting up for the night, on 10/04/14, knowing that we were way to early for the maximum fall color display, however I wanted to work with the best moonlight for later on that evening. You can barely see some pretty strong color up on top of the bluff, and the trees on the right bank were showing a bit of yellow. I have been to this spot hundreds of times and sunsets here are hit and miss. I have one other shot that is similar taken over 2 years ago, where it was also dead calm and the clouds started to get illuminated by the sun.
On this evening it started out with nothing, then as the sun crept down the left side of the frame, a bunch of high clouds rolled in. I started immediately for a spot further down the river, where I know one of the best reflections can be taken from. You have to watch this spot when certain photographers are “teaching” as they will all line up here and block the river. However it was still a bit early for this particular photographer and his minions to flock down the river. Chris decided to stay up higher and go for a different shot, but I wanted the full bluff reflection. If there is no wind on the river the reflection here will be as sharp as looking in a mirror, which on this evening it was.
As the sun set, the light on the bluff and clouds just got better. The sun hit the far right side of the bluff and turned it yellow and the afterglow on the middle of the bluff took on a wonderful rose color. The fact that there was no wind offered one great reflection of both the bluff and the clouds. I started to shoot this series with the Nikon D810, and really was not paying much attention to my histogram. I was a bit more concerned about the trees and such in the foreground and forgot to look to see if I was blowing out the sky. I was right on the line of 255:255:255: as it turned out, but somehow manged to get 5 or 6 frames that were no blown. I really attribute this to the Nikon D810’s amazing range of dynamic range at the base iso of 64. Normally I would have setup a bracketed series of exposures, but the light was changing so fast, I just shot as fast as I could and manually tried to change the bracketing but I did not really change the exposure enough to really protect the sky. The D810 is bit more tricky on highlight recovery than the D800 was and I was still shooting with the D800 mindset.
I knew from memory just how dramatic the light was that evening, so I worked this image up about 3 different times and attached different aspects of it each time. One time the sky, then the bluff, then the shadows on both banks. My main goal was to capture the amazing play of light on the bluff, from the rose color to the bright golden color on the far right. I then had to work up the reflections and make sure that the colors matched.
This shot was totally worked up in Lightroom and Photoshop. I ended up going back and forth several times before I got the image the way I wanted it. I then tweaked the colors with Topaz Clarity, which is final step I use now on pretty much all my shots.
Overall, the end result is shown here and once again it shows just how beautiful the Buffalo River and it’s bluffs can be.