04/12/13 Featured Arkansas Photography–Midday autumn calm along the Buffalo River

Autumn midday view of sweet gums and maples on the Buffalo River

Taken with a Nikon D800e, Nion 24mm 1.4 lens @ F7.1  1/250 of a sec shutter speed, iso 200.  On this day, the conditions were constantly changing.  I had been up on top of Roark Bluff most of the morning, but a large mass of clouds rolled in and pretty much shut things down for the morning.  I had gone back to my truck and I was figuring out where to head next when the clouds started to part.  The blue sky came out and within 20 minutes all of the clouds were gone!  I prefer to have some clouds in the sky when working with large masses of blue since the clouds will help break up the sky and allow for the use of a polarizer on a wide angle lens.  If I had just been shooting a solid blue sky, even at 24mm,  due to the angle of the sun I would of had the classic dark to light polarized effect that wide angle lenses can create.  However on a day like this with muted sunlight, you really want to have a polarizer on since it will make the colors in the leaves really stand out.  The polarizer also defeated any refection I was going to get on this shot but I felt it was a fair trade off.