03/14/19 Sunset skies over Pinnacle Mountain–Featured Arkansas Photography

Sunset skies over Pinnacle mountain

Taken with a Nikon D850 and 80-400 lens, ISO 200.  4 vertical shots combined into 1 final image. 

Love the area around Pinnacle mountain in western Pulaski county.  All day long the skies had been grey and dark, no color.  But right at sundown, the clouds broke open and the sun started to shine.  It was still raining a bit, but I headed out to try and capture at least 1 sunset shot.  I was working with the D850 and 80-400 lens, (a lens I have mixed feelings about) and no tripod, so I pushed up the ISO to 200 and shot brackets.  I really should have pushed up to around 400 or even 800, but I was still able to get my shot.  There is a bit of noise in the foreground, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.  The skies were just loaded with color and I loved the way the various layers of clouds were moving across the skies.

I used Capture One to convert the images from raw files and then used Photoshop CC 2018 to create the panorama.  It’s not really a true panorama, but more large format image.  To capture this, I took 4 vertical images all hand held then used the panorama tools in Photoshop to create the final image.  Photoshop does a great job most of the time and was able to get this image converted fine.

Pinnacle is an amazing looking mountain in western Pulaski County, Arkansas.

Written for www.photosofarkansas.com by Paul Caldwell, please do not reprint or reproduce any of this content without permission.