08/20/16 Featured Arkansas Photography–Early morning at Buffalo Point, Buffalo National River

Early mornings are some of the best times to photograph the Buffalo River. This is from Buffalo Point.

Taken with a Phase One IQ100 and 35LS lens, no filters @ ISO 100 for 1/40th of a second F12 and Phase One XF.

While on a trip to the lower Buffalo River, I was able to spend the night at Buffalo Point Campground.  This is the first campground that was built on the Buffalo, and dates back to the WPA and CCC days of the late 1930’s in Arkansas.  Here you are pretty low down on the river as there is only about 20 or so miles left before the river runs into the White River.  Buffalo Point is a very popular spot on the river as it has an excellent campground, and there is a great swimming hole below the large bluff on the far side of the river.  From here you can take a quick float down to Rush which is about 8 miles or do down river.  It’s a great float to take in the fall to enjoy the fall colors as most often there will be enough water for floating year round.

I was hoping to catch the early morning light burning off the fog but there was only a small amount of fog.  However there was a large cloud bank moving in from the west and sun managed to pop the lower clouds along with the fog rising up towards the top of the bluff.  I had the place to myself, which on this river is a rare event so I was able to have almost 45 minutes before the first floaters started to come down from Hwy 14 and break up the great reflection on the river.

The Phase One XF and IQ100 worked together very well on this occasion.  I was using a tripod due to the slower exposure times and the fact that the 35LS lens is so heavy.  The camera controls on the back of the IQ100 LCD made working with this scene very easy.  I ended up shooting several manual brackets but due to the impressive dynamic range of the IQ100 sensor, I was able to create this image from one exposure.  The 35LS lens performed quite well, giving me excellent details throughout the image.