03/13/13 Featured Arkansas Photography–January Night skies over Roark Bluff

Night skies over Roark Bluff on the Buffalo River–click on image for a larger view

Taken with a Nikon D800e, Nikon 14-24 lens @14mm F 4.5, iso 400. Image taken in a series of 2 minute exposures and stacked to capture motion. This was my first trip with the Nikon D800e for night photographic capture. I had used the D800e throughout the 2nd half of 2012 but was never able to coordinate a good night for a shoot. I prefer to have a clear night with a 1/2 to 3/4 moon and on the 20th of January in 2013 all of this came together. There was also very nominal wind for the entire night. This particular shot was taken looking downstream so I can featuer Roark Bluff and still capture Bee Bluff, the next bluff down river. All of the on the bluff and riverside trees is from the moon and no light painting was needed. The moon is a wonder ally with night photography, giving you a great blue hue to the sky along with adding just enough illumination to see the foreground details i.e. bluff, trees, etc. I was very pleased with the results of the D800e at night. The 14-24 lens at F4.5 still was extremely sharp and the corners of the shot were very useable. I noticed no coma in the stars and very little chromatic aberration. I used Capture One 7 to convert the raw files and stacked them in Photoshop CS6 to capture the star motion. I then combined various versions of the foreground image until I got the best overall image.

03/10/13 Featured Arkansas Photography–Sunset from Flatside Pinnacle

Sunset from Flatside Pinnacle in the Eastern Ouachita Mountains

Taken with a Canon 1ds mkII, Canon 70-300 lens, F11, iso 200, Composite shot taken as a manual exposure bracket. If you get a chance to visit this area you won’t be disappointed by what you find. Flatside is the 3rd in a series of pinnacles that I consider to be the gateway to the Ouachita mountains. In Pulaski County, you have Pinnacle Mountain, then just a bit east from Flatside, there is Northside Pinnacle. These are followed in turn by Flatside and then Forked Mountain. Forked mountain can easily be seen in the distance from the summit of Flatside. Forked Mt. is a considerably harder climb than Flatside but the view from it’s summit is worth the hike. I like to shoot to the west from the summit of Flatside after the sun has dropped below the horizon as you then can pick up the rolling hills out towards the west. I worked this shot up from 5 separate exposures in a classic exposure bracketed series, which was required back when I was shooting with the Canon 1ds series of cameras, now with Nikon’s newer cameras like the D800, I should be able to get the same shot with 2 or 3 frames max due to the extra dynamic range of the Nikon sensors. The trail runs up the back of Flatside mountain and right now there are several large trees down that make the hike take a bit longer. The trail is an easy 1/4 hike from where you park your car.

08/09/12 Featured Arkansas Photography–Richland Creek Reflections

Cloudy Day on Richland Creek, Newton County Arkansas

Taken with a Canon 1ds MKII, Single Exposure with a Canon 24-70 Lens @ 35mm, F11, iso 200. This is better than Richland Creek will look in the the for 2012 unless Arkansas starts to get a lot more rain. Currently the creek is dry for almost it’s entire length. There might still be a bit of water in the deeper pools along the lower creek below the campground bridge. However I doubt that most of the pools above the bridge have any water left in them. The USGS guage has not reported any level for Richland for about a month now, so I feel that the large pool at the campground bridge is dry also.

On a cloudy day you have a much harder situation to work with since your sky will attempt to go white or light gray. Personally for my work I don’t prefer to see the white sky effect and since I don’t tend to combine images, i.e. take the sky from one and the scene from another, when shooting a scene like this most times I will move in closer and take the sky out of the frame. On this day the light was very neutral, no visible highlights and the shadows were all pretty even. I still liked the visible color on the creek so I walked up looking for a scene that might work. This group of rocks is called Cindy’s Hole Rapid and is quite a fun drop when there is a bit more water in the creek. I like the way the rocks work all the way across the creek and have such distinctive shapes. Richland creek is a great day hike for any photographer looking for the beauty of Arkansas’s outdoors.

07/27/12 Featured Arkansas Photography–Sunrise throught the trees

Sunrise through the trees in Pulaski County, Arkansas

Click on the photograph for a larger image.

Taken with a Sony Nex-7, Sony 18-200 Zoom lens @ 30mm, F5.6 1/125th of a sec, iso 400. I like to drive along the rural roads in Arkansas to look for scenes like this one which was taken in western Pulaski county, Arkansas. This image was taken in late April before the effects of the drought began to really show in the state. This is a typical rural county road, which is only about 1 lane wide. The state of Arkansas has thousands of miles of roads like this and such roads are a great place to head out and look for a spot to photograph that is off the beaten path. I used a tripod to take this shot and it’s not a HDR composite which I would normally do in a scene like this. The Sony Nex-7 was able to handle the exposure range fine at iso 400 with a single exposure.