02/16/25 Featured Arkansas Photography–Sunset from Peter Cave Bluff

                                                                                                Sunset from Peter Cave Bluff–Buffalo River in Arkansas

One of my favorite spots to photograph Arkansas is from the Buffalo River.  Recently I have started working around the middle river instead of the more popular upper river.  The vantage points are just as nice and there are less people.  Peter Cave Bluff is a staggered bluff, and has a wonderful view of the Buffalo.  Looking upstream, you can see almost all the way to Woolum ford.  Looking downstream, you have views of Blue and Red Bluff no1.

This shot was taken as as 5 shot exposure bracket and a Hasselblad X2D with a 21mm lens.  Even with 5 shots, I still had trouble with the sun being blown out.  I have found that the X2D is very sensitive to direct highlights, more so than the Fuji GFX100.  Both cameras are using the same 100MP sensor.  I worked two images out of the five.  One with the sky and sun and the other had the river and landscape.  There was an extreme amount of dynamic range required to capture the entire image.  I used F13 on the 21mm lens hoping to get as much of the rocks in the foreground in focus.  There was so much wind blowing that afternoon, I decided not to attempt a focus bracket.

I found that once I worked up the final image, I used the latest Topaz sharpening software to attempt to bring the foreground rocks into better focus.  The result was not perfect, but still better than where I started.   The fall colors were given even more luster by the setting sun.  In the image you can see a couple of lines from the sun star I was able to capture.  The muted sun in the clouds did not give a normal star and the Hasselblad lenses only allow for a a 8 point star due to their internal aperture.

Written for Photos of Arkansas by Paul Caldwell