06/20/17 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Springtime sunset near Calico Rock on the White River
- At June 20, 2017
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
Note, Please do not attempt to screen print or download this image for use in any type of project either print or web related. If you are interested in use of this image CALL ME OR EMAIL ME nothing in the world is free.
Taken with a Phase One IQ3100 and XF camera with a 35mm LS lens. I used ISO 50 and only one exposure. Raw file was developed in Capture One and then final color work was done in LR and Topaz.
There are many great places to catch a sunset in Arkansas, however if you don’t mind the long drive from Little Rock, the area around Calico Rock is excellent. Here you have a long winding bend in the White River and bluff that is about 150 feet above the river. There are nice vistas both to the east (towards Calico Rock town) and the west as in this image. You only get a few short months where the sun will actually reach all the way over to the bluff, mainly late June and July after that the sun will be behind you on the left. Even though I had a lot of folks milling around this night I was able to get one shot or two with the light reflecting on the nearly calm White River.
I also like to work this spot at night as you can catch the evening fog rolling. Many times the fog will totally close down the scene so you need to be there right at dark. The surrounding towns will give off a bit of unnatural light, but if you work with the moon, then this is an excellent place for star trail work, not so good for Milky Way as the main Milky Way is behind you.
The small crag in the foreground is sometimes called “Little Hawksbill Crag” after the more famous Hawksbill Crag up on the Buffalo River.
Paul Caldwell
Copy right by photosofarkansas
03/27/17 Featured Arkansas Photography–Sunset and Moonrise at Calico Rock on the White River
- At March 26, 2017
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
Taken with a FujiFilm GFX 50s and 32-64 lens, ISO 200 hand held 5 part horizontal panorama.
Calico Rock has to be one of the best places in Arkansas to go and grab a panorama and feature both wonderful scenery and the White River. Just down stream on the White River you will find the town of Calico Rock and in this photograph the town is visible just off in the distance. You can spend the whole day here and the scene is always changing. On this day, I was there around 5:00 p.m. and there were no clouds in the sky at all. Many times I have been there and just had a huge blue sky with no clouds. For such a shot, clouds to me make it much more interesting, period. However on this day just as sun was starting to go down, a line of clouds rolled in and the moon rose over them. I could not have asked for a better scene.
On this evening I was shooting the Fujifilm GFX 50S, which is Fuji’s new entry into the Medium Format range of cameras. Fuji is using the same 50Mp sensor from Sony that has been used by Phase One, Pentax and Hasselblad. But this is the first large format camera from Fuji ever, as before all of their cameras have been APS-C. More about the camera in later reviews, but I have to say I am totally impressed with what can be done with this camera. I knew that the sensor had a lot of range since I used the Phase One versions, but never hand held. The Fuji GFX is both considerably lighter than the Phase One XF and the 120mm lens has image stabilization something that no Phase One lens has. Normally I have taken this in 15 exposures, 3 for each segment but with the GFX, I just took an exposure for the middle of the exposure range and pushed up the shadows and pulled down the highlights. Neither of the extremes were blown out. In fact the shadow recovery rivals the Nikon D810 and in fact may be just 1/2 a stop better. But the real amazing facet was just how sharp the 120mm lens was, outstanding optic.
This image has shadow push in several areas, the entire lower half of the left and right sides were pushed at least 2 stops and the middle of the image which was not in the sun was push at least 1 stop. The sky on the far left was pulled down 1 1/2 stops and the sky on the far right was pulled down 1 stop.
I took these Fuji Raw files straight to a panorama in Lightroom first, and then worked on the image in both Lightroom and Photoshop with several Topaz tools.
Overall the color and clarity is excellent throughout, and I have attached a couple of full sized crops below to show this. The first is the lower right side featuring the bluff and the trees along the river. This part of the image was pushed as much as 2 stops and I still have a nice green color in the trees that are just starting to leaf out. The other crop is from the center of the image where the sun was shinning and again you can see that the amount of fine details is very impressive.
Written for PhotosofArkansas by Paul F Caldwell
09/22/16 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Sunset at Calico Rock on the White River
Taken with a Fuji X-Pro2, ISO 400, 35mm F2.0 lens, at F9, Panorama taken in 4 vertical images, each segment 3 exposures for a total of 12. Worked up in Adobe LR
Calico Rock, is one of the more interesting spots on the White River in Arkansas. You can drive right to it and when you arrive, you have a sweeping view of one of the larger bends of the White River. The bluff is about 150 feet above the river and you really cannot see much of the bluff itself. However there is one vantage spot where you can look to the west an there is a small out cropping that adds a lot to the photograph. Many call this “little Hawksbill Craig” after the larger feature up on the Buffalo River. However I just like to photograph the valley. If you look downstream, you will see the town of Calico Rock on the left hand bank of the river.
This shot was taken in a series of vertical segments, 4 total and for each segment I exposed 3 images. I then worked each of the 3 shots into a HDR balanced image in Lightroom. After that, I took the final 4 images and created a panorama. It’s very important to realize that you do not want to do any work on the individual HDR segments before the panorama merge. I prefer to use the boundary warp feature of Lightroom also as most of panoramas in taken like this will only work in a spherical format and thus your top and bottom edges will have some problems.
The Fuji X-Pro2 makes this very easy with it’s automatic bracketing shutter, where you only have to press the shutter once to fire all 3 brackets.
I have found that Fuji made some very good positive changes to the dynamic range of the X-Pro2 as can be seen in this image. Also Adobe must have done a bit of tweaking to their X-trans conversion for the X-Pro2.
You can get to Calico Rock from Little Rock, in about 3 hours and the drive is quite beautiful.