10/14/14 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Sunset at Roark Bluff on the Buffalo River

Sunset over Roark Bluff on the Buffalo River

Taken with a Canon 5D MKII, Canon 14mm F 2.8 lens, in a bracketed series of exposures @ iso 200 This one is a special shot as it was one of those photographs that was just pure luck.  I was up on the Buffalo River with Bob Shull, mainly to work the night skies, and we were just up on the river setting up our cameras.  I had been looking downstream as the moon was starting to rise and it was in a very nice position.  I had left my Canon 5D MKII setup for a upstream shot of Roark bluff for later that night.  The evening skies had been cloudless, so I was not very interested in a sunset.  I remember for some reason I looked around, probably due to a noise on the river, and wow, all of a sudden a bank of clouds had rolled at just the right time and they were on fire!  I had to shoot the 5D MKII in a series of bracketed exposures as I knew that I would not be able to pull in the entire exposure with just one frame.  This scene only lasted about 6 minutes and then the sun dropped below the bluff.  My first series, missed the reflections of the sunset on the water at my feet.  The river was not dead calm, but I still was able to pull in the reflection of the sunset on the water and the river rocks.

This was one of those once in a life time lucky lighting shots, that unless you happen to live on the river and can be out there everyday, just doesn’t happen very often.  This was one of the last major photographs I took with the Canon, as I was in the process of transitioning to my Nikon D800, however I was much more familiar with the Canon at the time, so I shot with it.