09/22/16 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Sunset at Calico Rock on the White River

Sunset from Calico Rock on the White River in Arkansas

Sunset from Calico Rock on the White River in Arkansas

Taken with a Fuji X-Pro2, ISO 400, 35mm F2.0 lens, at F9, Panorama taken in 4 vertical images, each segment 3 exposures for a total of 12.  Worked up in Adobe LR

 

Calico Rock, is one of the more interesting spots on the White River in Arkansas.  You can drive right to it and when you arrive, you have a sweeping view of one of the larger bends of the White River.  The bluff is about 150 feet above the river and you really cannot see much of the bluff itself.  However there is one vantage spot where you can look to the west an there is a small out cropping that adds a lot to the photograph.  Many call this “little Hawksbill Craig” after the larger feature up on the Buffalo River.  However I just like to photograph the valley.  If you look downstream, you will see the town of Calico Rock on the left hand bank of the river.

This shot was taken in a series of vertical segments, 4 total and for each segment I exposed 3 images.  I then worked each of the 3 shots into a HDR balanced image in Lightroom.  After that, I took the final 4 images and created a panorama.  It’s very important to realize that you do not want to do any work on the individual HDR segments before the panorama merge.  I prefer to use the boundary warp feature of Lightroom also as most of panoramas in taken like this will only work in a spherical format and thus your top and bottom edges will have some problems.

The Fuji X-Pro2 makes this very easy with it’s automatic bracketing shutter, where you only have to press the shutter once to fire all 3 brackets.

I have found that Fuji made some very good positive changes to the dynamic range of the X-Pro2 as can be seen in this image.  Also Adobe must have done a bit of tweaking to their X-trans conversion for the X-Pro2.

You can get to Calico Rock from Little Rock, in about 3 hours and the drive is quite beautiful.

 

09/21/16 Featured Arkansas landscape photography–6 finger falls on Falling Water Creek

Late May on 6 finger falls in Newton County

Late May on 6 finger falls in Newton County

Taken with a Phase One IQ100 and 35mm LS lens, 2 part horizontal pano.  Taken in 4 shots to merge later for foreground and background in Helicon Focus

Arkansas has many great streams to hike but one of the best is Falling Water Creek, which is well named as it has a large number of waterfalls it’s entire length before emptying into Richland Creek.  Falling water creek has an upper and lower half, and some of the best spots to photograph are on the lower half.  There you will find creek wide ledges like 6 finger falls.  6 finger falls, named for the cut outs the creek has made in the ledge, is quite a wonder.  It offers great photographic opportunities year round but is best in the fall and spring.  You will be lucky to find any water in the creek in the fall and if you do consider yourself lucky.  The banks are lined with deciduous trees that offer a great display of fall color.

You will also like the fact that for most of it’s length, falling water creek has a forest service road that parallels it’s length and so offers quick access.  This of course means in Arkansas you can expect to find all types of folks here on a good weekend, so plan your trip during the week if at all possible.  The forest road is number 1205.  Heading due north on the road, falling water creek will be on your right for the upper half, and then after you cross it on the left.  For a portion of it’s length, the Ozark Highland trail is just above the road on the right, below the bridge.  This is great day hike also.

Make sure to include a trip to the mouth of falling water creek at Richland Creek campground.  Richland is the crown jewel of creeks in Arkansas and is also protected as a Wilderness Area, so you can enjoy a day without hearing a 4 wheeler.

 

 

09_10_16 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Sunset from Sam’s Throne

Late summer sunset from Sams Throne in the Arkansas Ozark mountains.

Late summer sunset from Sams Throne in the Arkansas Ozark mountains.

Taken with a Pentax K1 in three vertical segments of 4 exposures each, LR used for HDR conversion to 3 vertical segemnts, Stitched in Lightroom into single 3 part panorama, ISO 100, F11 Pentax 15-30mm Lens @ 17mm.

In the late summertime of September, the Arkansas skies can surprise you.  Many times you will find a pure blue sky about 1 hour before sunset, only to see some light cloud cover roll right as the sun sets.  On this evening, I was able to catch some of this at Sam’s Throne.  I had hoped to have clear skies as I was going to stay for a while after dark and work the Milky Way with the Pentax Astrotracer feature, but the sunset was a added bonus for sure.

Sam’s Throne is one of the premier climbing spots in Arkansas due to the bluffs that run for over 1 mile.  The rock is a type of sand stone and and during the sunset will take on an orange color.  The rocks are also covered with a bright orange lichen, one that I have really only found in this part of Arkansas.  So at the times of bright and intense light, the rock of the bluffs can really stand out.  I like to work from a spot where you can catch both the true throne (the smaller peak in the center of the image) and pick up the bluff line.  During the late summertime the sun will set just off the bluff through the trees and can add a wonderful effect as it will accent the pines at the top of the bluff line.

This photograph, is quite a composition as it was taken in 12 frames, 4 from each station in a short panorama.  I then blended each segment with Lightroom’s HDR tool into a 3 dng files, that were then combined into a 3 part panorama.  This allowed me to capture both the brightest highlights in the shot and keep the noise out of my shadows.  The green of the trees was just perfect on this evening, just a bit of yellow starting to show up in the tops.  There were a few trees already starting to go into a full color display, but these were more towards the top of the bluff.

You can pick any of hundreds of spots to work at Sam’s.  In this shot, you can see on the left side the same bluff line as it has worked around the hillside.  I sometimes like to work from that spot also as you can still capture the sunset and you have a different perspective of Sam’s.

It takes about 2.5 hours to get to this part of Arkansas from Little Rock, and the drive north from Russellville is well worth it, especially in the Spring and Fall when the trees take on very unique colors.

 

08/22/16 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–The washing machine on the Cossatot River Southwest Arkansas

Cossatot Falls on the Cossatot River, one of the most impressive water features in Arkansas.

Cossatot Falls on the Cossatot River, one of the most impressive water features in Arkansas.

Taken with a Canon 5D MKII and 24mm TS-E lens, with a CL-PL and ND 0.9 filter installed, exposure time approximately 1.5 seconds.

You can find some excellent photographic opportunities on the Cossatot River, along with some of the best Arkansas whitewater.  Go down there anytime the river is running over 500 cfs (cubic feet per second) and you can expect to see a lot of kayakers running the falls.

I like to hike the 6 falls when there is about 100 to 400 cfs max running the river.  This allows you to make easy crossings and you can still get down close enough to the river to get some great angles.  The river will run muddy right after a rain storm due to the massive amount of timber clear cutting in the area, so plan on heading down a day or so after a big rain.

You can easily hike down the entire left side (left side facing downstream) and there are 6 separate ledges which the river cuts through.  Each has a unique rapid and name:

Cossatosser, Eyeopener, BMF, The Washing Machine, Whiplash, and Shoulder bone.

If you make it down there, remember that the sun will move across the river from left to right so the some of the best photograph will be early in the morning.  The falls run due south.  There are a ton of huge rocks that line the river and each of them will allow you a spot to setup for some great photos.  The washing machine, featured in this photo has some of the best angles up on top of the ledge, but you need to cross over right above this small rapid.  If the river is running too high, this can easily become a hazard so be careful.  All the rocks are covered with slim moss and will be slick.

The rock is sandstone or something close and in the sun will take on a wonderful red-orange hue so try to make it on nice sunny day.

 

08/21/16 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Storm Clouds over Buffalo Point, Buffalo National River Arkansas

The Buffalo River at Buffalo Point in early August with a morning storm rolling in.

The Buffalo River at Buffalo Point in early August with a morning storm rolling in.

Taken with a Phase One IQ100 and Phase One XF/35LS lens, at ISO 100, F12 for 1/40 of a second on tripod, single exposure.

This was taken back in early August 2016 on the Buffalo River in Northwest Arkansas.  This part of the river is known as Buffalo Point, and is one of the more popular spots on the river.  It features one of the larger campgrounds on the Buffalo along with hundreds of miles of hiking trails.  Within 9 miles of Buffalo Point, you can driver over to Rush Arkansas which is an old mining town which dates back to around 1917.  There is not much left standing at Rush, but it still offers some nice hiking.

This image shows just how fast conditions can change.  I walked down to the river before sunrise.  This particular bluff is on the east side of the river, thus will not get any sunlight until mid day.  It’s a great spot to catch a sunset if the clouds lineup, but you also can expect to find hundreds of people wandering around the beach which just add confusion to both the scene and water.  On this morning I was hoping to catch the area to myself, and for about a magic 40 minutes I had just that.  There was almost no wind blowing, so I also was able to get a very nice reflection of the bluff.  This bluff is about 80 feet tall and the face about 35 feet or so and it’s one of the classic Ozark bluffs made 100% from limestone so you can expect to get some interesting color from the rock.

I worked the area up and downstream, but this spot was the best as a early morning storm rolled in.  When I first arrived there were no clouds in the sky at all just a bit of river fog, but within 30 minutes the top of an old thunderhead came over the river and really added to the shot.  The heat and humidity were intense but the photographic opportunities were excellent.

This is single exposure from an IQ100 Phase One digital back and I have to say that the overall dynamic range of this back is impressive.  The ability to finally cover a shot with just one exposure, knowing that you have room to work up shadows without a bracketing series of exposures is a great feature and long overdue from Phase One.

 

 

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.

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.

 

 

08/08/16 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Milky Way over Buffalo Point, Buffalo National River

The Milky Way over the Buffalo River at Buffalo Point, Buffalo National River.

The Milky Way over the Buffalo River at Buffalo Point, Buffalo National River.

Taken with a Pentax K1 and 15-30mm lens @ 15mm and F 3.2 ISO 3200 for 2 minutes using the Pentax Astrotracer function in camera.

This was my first test for night photography with the Pentax K1, and overall I was pleased with the results from the Astrotracer feature in camera.  This photograph is a combo from a 2 minute Astrotracer shot for the MilkyWay, and several different shots for the foreground at various times.  I used a small lantern down by the bluff to add some local illumination.

Chris Kennedy and I worked for about 2 hours, starting with a very clear night sky and temperatures around 89 degrees with 100% humidity.  2 hours later the temperature was about the same, so I was sweating just standing around waiting on the camera.  But there was little to no wind so I was able to pull a nice reflection of the bluff on the river and if there had been a bit more water or a better angle by me, I might have gotten a Milky Way reflection.

Buffalo Point is one of the more popular spots on the Buffalo River, and the only campground with full electric hookups, so it will always be crowded in the summer months.  You can either reserve a campground in the lower camping loops or you can try to get a spot in loop A, where it is always first come first serve, and loop A is the original WPA worked sites.  I hope to get back to work this place in fall, both for the Milky Way and later on for Star trails.  Star Trails will be a bit more difficult due to the location of the moon and due north.

Paul Caldwell

 

06/18/16 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Nighttime skies over Falling Water Creek

Falling Water Creek
Falling Water Creek

Nighttime skies over Falling Water Creek

Taken with a Nikon D750, ISO 3200, 15 seconds with a Nikon 14-24 lens at 14mm F 2.8 for main night sky and a series of shorter exposures to blend in the lantern and water.

Working with the night sky can be easy and hard and on this night it was a combination of both extremes.  I was working with Chris Kennedy at Falling Water Falls in the Arkansas Ozarks.  Falling Water Falls is one of the more known spots and very often has a lot of folks either swimming or just hanging around.  But at midnight, I have yet to run into anyone (at least human).  I have thought about this spot many times for either star trail work or the Milky way and have successfully taken many star trail shots here, but have never worked the Milky Way.  The conditions for the best Milky Way shooting are a moonless night or as close to it as you can get.  On this night Chris and I were working with a very small amount of moon less than 16% and we both hoped that this amount of light would not effect the Milky Way’s luminace, but we were wrong.  As soon as the last of the sunlight was gone, we could quickly see that there was quite a bit of light being provided by the 16% moon, which was setting directly behind us.  On this night, June 8th, the Milky Way was due south and very faint at first.  This was as strange night as there was too much moonlight to really see the Milky Way but the stars were amazingly bright.  Also this small amount of moonlight did not provide very much light to the falls and surrounding area, so we quickly fired up a lantern.

The night was very muggy and dead calm.  Normally I want dead calm, but as soon as I fired up the lantern every bug in the area made a bee line for the light and for the rest of the night we were covered in bugs.  There were also a lot of lightening bugs and they added a strange effect to a lot of the star stacks.  We kept looking for the Milky Way to the southwest as both of our star tracer apps were pointing us that direction but we could not see it.  After working for about 1 hour I happened up to the top of the falls and for the first time could really see that the Milky Way was off to the southwest and very low on the horizon.  Strange!, but still possible to shoot.

We quickly left out spot on the far side of the falls.  We had set up here as it was the only only place to really get a clear view of the sky below the falls.  Once on top on the large ledge that creates Falling Water Falls, we could clearly see the Milky Way just over the tree line.  The moon was so low in the sky now that it was not providing any illumination at all, so Chris walked out on the ledge and held the lantern.  It really made the shot in that the lantern provided just enough light to the immediate parts of the trees and gave a very nice fade out.  The trick was holding the lantern totally steady for the 17 seconds required to shoot the sky.  We actually both tried this for each others shots and it came out very nicely.  I have left one piece of lens flare in this shot as it’s not really hurting the shot.  The 14-24 will flare always, when given any chance.  This will be an easy one to take out later.

I used the Nikon D750 for this shot and I was very impressed!  The ambient temperature was around 70 degrees F and the relative humidity had to be 100%.  I shot the entire sequence at ISO 3200 with the 14-24 wide open at F2.8.  The longest exposure I used was 20 seconds and there was just a bit of trailing on the far sides which I did take out with a custom brush in Photoshop.  At 20 seconds I was just able to get enough of the unique color of the Milky Way, however the rest of the frame was totally blown out due to the lantern.  So I then shot a series of short frames the shortest exposure @ 6 seconds and then combined various elements from 3 different shots to get the final work.   There was no wind blowing or very little most times so the leaves are not blurred and can add a nice effect.  The lantern added a very warm tone to the trees and water so I also tweaked that back to a more neutral tone.

Overall I am pretty happy with this attempt.  If there had been much more water coming over the falls, then all the trees below the falls and on the side would have been moving due to the force of the water.  The lantern captured the nice green color of the water which is common to all Arkansas streams this time of year.  For the Milky Way, I spent the most amount of time as it was just barely showing so I used several different adjustment brushes in Lightroom to help bring out the colors and different tones common with the nightsky.  The stars were very bright this night and they add a very nice contrast to the night sky above the Milky way.

 

05/25/16 Six Finger Falls on Falling Water Creek–Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography

6 finger falls Arkansas

A late springtime view of six finger falls on falling water creek.

Taken in two frames with a Phase One IQ100 and Phase One 35mm LS lens, raw files developed in Capture One, panorama stitching in Lightroom.

We had driven up to 6 finger falls to attempt a night shoot, which did not work out due to the clouds that rolled in, however during the sunset, the light did allow for a wonderful series of photographs.  I love to get down low on the creek, below the falls and attempt to grab some short pans, as the normal medium format of 4:3 does not allow for very much to work with.  I am not a big fan of cropping out the center of a shot to get to a pano, as you loose so much image in the process.

Normally, I would have used my rail to get a nodal solution, but I had forgotten it.  Using the Arca D4 geared head, it was easy enough to get level for each shot, then go back to Lightroom to let it work it’s magic on the panorama.  Lightroom with the new panorama feature does a great job on single row stitching and now they have added a feature called boundary warp, which really does a great job.  In the past, I had always used software like Ptgui or Kolor’s panorama software, to get a cylindrical solution, as I am panning with a wide lens, (the 35mm in medium format is equivalent to about 22mm with a 35mm camera), still not that wide.  The 35mm LS has a pretty good hyper focal range by F11 and I took this at F14.  Due to the subject range and distance, I was not worried about losing details to diffraction.

For these shots, I used both a circular polarizer and a Neutral Density filter.  The polarizer was from B+W and the ND filter from HiTech, (their new Firecrest line).  This allowed exposure times of around 1 sec, at an ISO of 50.  There was little to no wind blowing so I was able to get away with just two exposures.

The addition of the boundary warp in Lightroom has really made this type of photography more fun and much quicker to get to a solution.

 

05/05/16 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Springtime sunset over Pinnacle Mountain

A strange combination of light for springtime in Arkansas, but it made for a wonderful shot.

A strange combination of light for springtime in Arkansas, but it made for a wonderful shot.

Taken with a Nikon D800e, Nikon 14-24 @ 14mm F 8, ISO 100, exposure bracketed in 3 frames and worked up in Lightroom with Topaz Clarity

The evening I took this, I have hoped for a bit more cloud cover, but the spring colors were out in full so I went ahead and worked up the shot.  This was taken from one of my all time favorite spots over looking Pinnacle mountain.  Here you are looking due west, so depending on the time of year, you can sometimes catch the sun setting right on top of Pinnacle.  As I recall the best times for this are in late March and September, but it’s been a long time since I went after that shot.

 

Even with Nikon I went ahead and bracketed this shot, I feel many times that in protecting the shadows, I will blow out the highlights and they will never be recoverable.  I worked this shot up once before a couple of years ago, but never got it where I liked it.  Now with the HDR feature within Lightroom, I went back to the raw files and worked them up again.  This time I got much better results and then worked on the file just a bit in Topaz Clarity.  I am not sure why the sky went black at the top, but that is just how it worked out, I kinda of like it!

The HDR feature in LR has it’s problems, but most of the time I can do what I want and get the effects I am looking for so much easier than any other HDR tool I have ever used.

The spring colors in Arkansas just looked great on this evening so it all came together for me.

 

Copyright © Paul Caldwell, Photos of Arkansas