02_07_22 Fall Sunrise over Western Pulaski County featuring Pinnacle Valley
A composite image taken in 3 parts with a DJI Mavic 2 Pro Drone. The fall colors were just about peaked on the ridge in the foreground, and had already pushed past peak in the valley. I wanted to included the Maumelle River in this shot as I loved the look of it’s graceful curve at the bottom of the image. The Arkansas river flows in the background. The sky that morning was special with a wonderful peak/pink color and the rising sun popped the colors of the trees on the ridge. I found very few spots in the state in 2021 that had as much fall color as the Walton Heights Ridge.
Paul Caldwell
05/05/16 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Springtime sunset over Pinnacle Mountain
- At May 05, 2016
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
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Taken with a Nikon D800e, Nikon 14-24 @ 14mm F 8, ISO 100, exposure bracketed in 3 frames and worked up in Lightroom with Topaz Clarity
The evening I took this, I have hoped for a bit more cloud cover, but the spring colors were out in full so I went ahead and worked up the shot. This was taken from one of my all time favorite spots over looking Pinnacle mountain. Here you are looking due west, so depending on the time of year, you can sometimes catch the sun setting right on top of Pinnacle. As I recall the best times for this are in late March and September, but it’s been a long time since I went after that shot.
Even with Nikon I went ahead and bracketed this shot, I feel many times that in protecting the shadows, I will blow out the highlights and they will never be recoverable. I worked this shot up once before a couple of years ago, but never got it where I liked it. Now with the HDR feature within Lightroom, I went back to the raw files and worked them up again. This time I got much better results and then worked on the file just a bit in Topaz Clarity. I am not sure why the sky went black at the top, but that is just how it worked out, I kinda of like it!
The HDR feature in LR has it’s problems, but most of the time I can do what I want and get the effects I am looking for so much easier than any other HDR tool I have ever used.
The spring colors in Arkansas just looked great on this evening so it all came together for me.
06/26/12 Featured Arkansas Photography–Stary Sky over Pinnacle Mountain and Area 51
- At June 26, 2012
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
Canon 5D MKII, Lens Canon 16-35 @ F4.5, Iso 250, Exposure approx 45 sec (single image). This image was taken in a series of photographs in a process called stacking. This is one method working night scenes where you are trying to capture star trails. I have found this to be the best method when working with the moon. The moon will provide excellent illumination to the extent that you can get a scene that looks almost like daylight except for the color of the sky. The sky will take on a deep blue color, the blue is very dependent on both the amount of time you expose each stack and the amount of moonlight/position of the moon in the sky. I have found that this type of photography, even though it takes a lot of processing in the background is my favorite way to capture a night sky.
06/24/12 Featured Arkansas Photography–Sunset over Pinnacle Mountain State Park
- At June 24, 2012
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
Image taken with a Canon 1ds MKII, Canon 24-70 F2.8 @ F11, ISO 100, 5 shot combination for exposure. Back in 2009, which seems to long ago to remember, we were having almost nightly thunderstorms in July. I can only hope that Arkansas gets some this type of weather soon in 2012. We are about as dry as I can remember for this time of year and soon you will start to see tree going into stress, then dropping leaves. The area around Pinnacle State Park is photographers paradise in that there are some many great vistas to work from. One of mine is the view directly to the west from the summit of the quarry ridge at the Pinnacle State Park visitors center. Here you get an unobstructed view of the summit of Pinnacle mountain and can often catch an evening storm coming in from the west. This sunset was taken as 5 separate exposures then blended together to get the final image.