12_02_15 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Autumn afterglow at Sam’s Throne
Sam’s Throne Afterglow in the Arkansas Ozarks
Taken with a Canon 1ds MKII (16MP), multishot bracket for exposure, Canon 24-70 @ 24mm F 11 iso 200
This an example where it pays to work with older files, in this case, way back 2004, with more modern software. I have taken a lot of sunsets at Sam’s Throne, however this is still one of my all time favorites. When I purchased my Canon 1ds MKII, which had 16MP, I started retracing many of trips to places I loved to go as I felt that 16MP would be about the maximum in resolution for a long time to come. We all know that changed pretty quickly. However on this evening, I found the best shot was after the sun set as it painted a wonderful afterglow in the sky. Sam’s Throne was just starting to change for fall but there was plenty of color around. To make the shot perfect, the couple of clouds that rolled into the frame helped to breakup the solid sky.
Sam’s Throne is one of premier climbing spots in Arkansas but it’s also one of the best for photography. You have a huge bluff line that runs at least 1/2 mile or longer and allows for wonderful views of the Big Creek valley. In this view you can see the Throne itself and all the rolling hilss that work their way off into the distance. The forest here is a good mix of both pine and deciduous trees, mainly Oak, and Gum but there are also some nice Maples scattered though the valley. One of the best aspects of Sam’s Throne is the fact that you can drive very close to the bluffline and you only have about a 1/8 of a mile walk to get started. Sam’s Throne is a great place to camp also as there is now a primitive campground with about 10 sites.
As this series of shots was taken with an older Canon Digital camera, the noise in the shadows was excessive. The 1ds MKII was not noted for extreme dynamic range. Back in the day, I shot almost everything in brackets knowing I would need multiple shots to get the exposure coverage I needed without excessive noise even at base iso or one step up. I had worked this image many times with various HDR software toolsets, but never really received the output I was looking for. Now that Adobe Lightroom has an excellent HDR tool, I decided to go back and try this shot again. The result was impressive and I found a much better overall image. The big advantage to HDR in LR is that Lightroom leaves that output as an .dng, in essence a raw file. This means you have all the flexibility of a raw file but with the added exposure blend, and you can still use the excellent Lightroom Toolset. I have started going back to a lot of my early Canon photography and working it back in LR and the results have been impressive.
11/18/15 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Foggy view of Roark Bluff
Foggy morning at Roark Bluff on the Buffalo River
Taken with a Nikon D810, Nikon 24-120mm Lens, hand held @ 320iso for 1/100 of second, F 5.6
When I think of the Buffalo River, I tend to think about Roark Bluff and the beauty around that part of the river. Here you have two of the largest bluffs on the river, Roark and Bee both of which are well over 300 to 400 yards long. Each bluff has a unique character to it and the colors of the limestone comes alive in the early morning. At this time you have the valley totally fogged in. The fog will last for a while after sunrise and the best time to photograph the mornings is when the sun has started pop through the fog and adds a very unique light to the scene. Now add fall colors you have a real prime setting for sure.
On this morning, I was amazed to have the entire beach to myself, and I will take that when I can get it. It was a Sunday morning and the colors on the top of Roark Bluff had already turned brown, however there was still excellent color along the river. The top of the bluff seems to be mainly hickoy and maple, but on the riverbank there is a lot more variety. Here you will find oak, sweetgum, maple and gums. The display this morning was perfect. I had a tall gum tree on the upper left of the frame still showing the brillant yellows and reds, and across the river was another gum tree, but in pure yellow. In the foreground the river birch is starting to turn from green to yellow so overall it was a nice setting. I framed the shot with just a bit of the fog on the top of the shot. I still wanted to be able to see through the fog to make out the colors along the top of the bluff.
Roark is a great place to drive and spend the entire day. You can watch the sun move across the valley and enjoyed varied shooting situations during the day. Roark is one of my favorite spots for night photography, either star trail work or the milky way.
11/15/15 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Autumn afternoon at Pinnacle Mountain State Park
Autumn in Arkansas—Pinnacle Mountain State Park
Taken with a Nikon D800e, Nikkor 24-120 lens @ F8, ISO 100. Image taken in 3 parts and stitched together in PtGui and Photoshop.
This was just one of those days. I had been out a few times previously, but the conditions did not equal this afternoon. You have to wait until around 2:00 pm to get this shot as you want the sun over the back of your shoulder. The light was perfect and Little Rock had a much better fall than other locations in Arkansas. But the clouds, oh the clouds. They started out as just some small swirls but as I continued to shoot they grew into this massive line that was turned upwards. To get this type of a panorama, even with a 36Mp camera, I knew I would need to stitch. However since my subject (main subject) was all off in the distance, I did not worry about a tripod, or setting my nodal point. I didn’t need to, just aimed and shot. I was using the Nikon 24-120, and was in the 90mm focal range. The colors that afternoon were perfect also, but I did add a circular polarizer to help pop them some more and cut the glare. You can clearly see the exposed part of the trail heading to the summit. Pinnacle to me is best photographed from below as the view from the top is impressive, but surround by homes, roads and the like.
To make this image happen, I first converted the raw files in Adobe Lightroom, then opened them up in PtGui, (a panoramic stitching software). The image came together perfectly and at first I thought I was done. But on closer inspection, I found that during the stitching I had allow for blur on the center image. It was only on the right edge and looked like a VR user error. VR is Nikon’s vibration reduction that is built into some of their lenses. If you are panning you have to be care with VR as you can confuse the system and it will not be totally finished. When you take a picture like that the blur looks more like a rolling issue as some of the file will be fine but usually towards one edge you will pick up some vibration induced blur.
So I had to manually go back to another image and pull that one part back to this stitch. It was not as hard as I thought it would be and the overall came out fine.
11/12/15 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Haw Creek falls in Autumn
Haw Creek Falls in Autumn, what could have been for 2015
Taken with a Canon 1ds MkI, and and Canon 24-70 lens, iso 200.
I had to dig back a few years to find this, as it goes back to 2004, but since Arkansas had such a terrible fall in 2015 I have found myself doing this a lot lately. Haw Creek has some wonderful fall color displays but catching the falls with water in them and fall colors is one of the harder things to do. On the afternoon I caught this shot, I have been driving around looking for late fall color, stopping at both Falling Water Falls, and Richland Creek, but neither of them had much water. For some reason the rain that fell the night before did hit the Haw Creek drainage harder and the falls were running. I almost did not make the driver over from Lurton on Hwy 7, but was glad I did.
I was able to setup and get this shot before the sun moved over to the lower left of the frame. As it was the sun was perfect hitting on both the falls and the pool below. Note the green color, which is common to all Arkansas Ozark streams, but seems to be more prominent in the fall and winter. I have always assumed it’s due to the limestone content in the water.
I shot this photograph in 3 separate segments as I was wanting to get more overall resolution. The older Canon 1ds MKI only had 11MP and that’s just not enough for a large print. Now that Lightroom has added a stitching solution, I am going back to a lot my older Canon work, either from the 1ds or 1ds MKII as both cameras captured great color, but I was using either a totally manual stitching method or a Zork adapter. Using Lightroom’s new solution makes for a much faster stitching process and you are left with a dng file. This allows you still use Lightroom’s excellent tools on the image as if it was a raw file.
This year, the colors were terrible at Haw Creek, mainly brown. The water level was actually pretty good for a few day’s and I ran into a few photographers up there, but I didn’t even get my camera out. The trees just didn’t have any life to them.
11/10/15 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Springtime View of Haw Creek Falls
Springtime View of Haw Creek Falls in the Arkansas Ozarks
Taken with a Phase One IQ260 and Arca rm3di tech camera/40mm Rodenstock lens
This is a typical day at Haw Creek falls, and I was again lucky to be there without anyone else to stand around and get in the way during the shoot. Haw Creek is a lovely smallish creek that runs in the Big Piney Creek, not far from these falls. The falls are impressive since there is a large ledge that runs all the way across the creek and in higher water conditions the water will start to consume the entire ledge. I like to catch water about like this, just enough to keep most of the ledge in play but not too much to flood out the rocks below the falls. To get this shot, I used my Arca rm3di camera which allows movements like a large format camera with my digital camera back. The shot is actually a composite of 3 images, Left, Center and Right. The Left and Right segments represent 16mm of shift in those respective directions. This allows you to create a very high resolution panorama without any of the issues like parallax. The lens I used was as 40mm Rodenstock HR-W which allows for an excellent field of view when shifted.
You have to be careful when working Haw Creek as there tends to be a lot of wind blowing down the creek. In most cases, I prefer to take a 1 to 4 second exposure of the water which in most cases will have a lot of wind blur in the trees. So you have make sure to cover the tree movement with a second series of exposures around 1/125 to 1/250 to stop the wind movement. It’s a simple process to combine the files later since I am using a tech camera and the movements are very precise. To allow the longer exposures I used both a Circular Polarizer and a Neutral Density filter. The polarizer will help with glare on the water and rocks and adds about 1.5 stops of exposure to the shot. As this was a bright day, I had to use a 1.2x ND filter. When I was taking the faster exposures for the trees, I left the polarizer on, but took the ND filter off as I no longer needed the extra exposure compensation.
As I already mentioned, Haw Creek Falls, tends to be overrun with people during the peak times of the year. The best day to go is a Monday as there will not be as many people at the campground and thus less traffic around the falls. There are some great swimming spots above the falls in the large pool that is created by the ledge. It’s a great place to head to when you know you have some water running in the creek.
Early fall morning along Richland Creek–05/29/15 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography
- At May 29, 2015
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
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Taken with a Phase One IQ160 and Arca rm3di camera and Rodenstock 28mm lens @ iso 50 for 1/2 second exposure.
I am a huge fan of Richland Creek, having spent at least the last 20 years or so exploring it’s vast reaches. I was lucky enough to Kayak this creek for over 10 years as that one of the best ways to get to know a creek. Richland (the name comes from the fact that the mouth of Richland near Woolum Ford on the Buffalo was excellent farming land) has some beautiful features throughout it’s length as it moves towards the Buffalo, but by far the best scenery is found in the 5 miles of the creek above Richland campground. This shot was taken on a fall morning and the sun was popping back and forth between the clouds. I was setup and waited on the best light for at least 20 minutes and only got about 2 minutes before the next bank of clouds rolled in. The level of water in the creek on this day was low but in many respects this is an excellent level for photography as you can safely stand in the middle of the creek for the best vantage points. One aspect of creek photography, if you don’t plan on getting wet, don’t bother.
This spot is directly below one of the larger rapids on Richland called, Shaw’s Folly. In this shot, look for the large rock on the upper right which is about the size of a small house. This marks the end of the rapid and all of the creek in the picture is just the run out. But in this shot you can see why I love Richland as it’s just full of huge rocks and each one has it’s own unique shape and color. The water was gin clear this day so I was able to feature some of the bottom of the creek by using a polarizer to cut the glare.
Springtime sunset from Mt Magazine–03/23/15 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography
- At March 23, 2015
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
Springtime sunset from the summit of Mt. Magazine
Taken with a Nikon D800e, single exposure with 0.9 ND grad filter on a Nikon 14-24 lens, F7.1 for 1/6 of a sec @ iso 320. The views from Mt. Magazine are some of the best vistas in Arkansas. The valley to the south, which is featured here looks towards Blue Mountain and below it, Blue Mountain lake. It’s easy to see where the timber industry has harvested all the natural hardwoods, below the Mt. Magazine as the deciduous trees run down the mountain to the park boundary. Springtime is a special time in Arkansas, I like to call the power puff period as all the trees will have different shades of green for about 2 weeks. After that, all the leaves will take on a similar dark green hue until fall.
This shot features the most famous tree on Mt Magazine, the bonsai shaped juniper. I would have loved to make it up to this spot when the huge dead cedar was still alive as it is a huge tree. It’s interesting still standing there and when you look at the roots, you have to wonder how it managed to live as long as it did as the vast majority of them are above the ground on the rock. Mt Magazine is the tallest spot in Arkansas at around 2,700 feet high.
Richland Creek in Autumn–12/18/14 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography
Richland Creek in Autumn below Shaw’s Folly Rapid
Taken with a Phase One IQ160, Rodenstock 28mm HR lens, F11 for approximately 1 second, iso 50. Richland Creek, which runs from Newton County to the Buffalo River near Woolum Ford, has some of the most beautiful photographic subject matter in Arkansas, if you love creeks. Here you can find huge rocks that have ended up in the creek that had to have originated up much higher on the bluffs. Some of these rocks are the size of a small house and most are the size of a car. Richland creek has several sections that run over flat bedrock and this spot is one of them. This spot is about 100 yards long and starts out directly below Shaw’s Folly Rapid. The foliage on the left back, which is featured in this shot, is full of oaks, maples and hickory trees which on this day were all in full color. There was just enough water in the creek to allow for a movement shot. Normally, I like to have bright sunny days to work Richland, but on this day which was overcast I was able to get one of my best shots of the creek. Using tilt, I have gained quite a bit in overall depth of field so I was able to keep the details of the large rock on the left foreground in focus along with the trees in the background. This was a magic day for sure.
10/14/14 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Sunset at Roark Bluff on the Buffalo River
Sunset over Roark Bluff on the Buffalo River
Taken with a Canon 5D MKII, Canon 14mm F 2.8 lens, in a bracketed series of exposures @ iso 200 This one is a special shot as it was one of those photographs that was just pure luck. I was up on the Buffalo River with Bob Shull, mainly to work the night skies, and we were just up on the river setting up our cameras. I had been looking downstream as the moon was starting to rise and it was in a very nice position. I had left my Canon 5D MKII setup for a upstream shot of Roark bluff for later that night. The evening skies had been cloudless, so I was not very interested in a sunset. I remember for some reason I looked around, probably due to a noise on the river, and wow, all of a sudden a bank of clouds had rolled at just the right time and they were on fire! I had to shoot the 5D MKII in a series of bracketed exposures as I knew that I would not be able to pull in the entire exposure with just one frame. This scene only lasted about 6 minutes and then the sun dropped below the bluff. My first series, missed the reflections of the sunset on the water at my feet. The river was not dead calm, but I still was able to pull in the reflection of the sunset on the water and the river rocks.
This was one of those once in a life time lucky lighting shots, that unless you happen to live on the river and can be out there everyday, just doesn’t happen very often. This was one of the last major photographs I took with the Canon, as I was in the process of transitioning to my Nikon D800, however I was much more familiar with the Canon at the time, so I shot with it.
09/28/14 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Midnight at Haw Creek Falls
Haw Creek Falls at Midnight in Searcy County
Taken with a Canon 6D, Canon 16-35 lens, at F4, iso 400, 2 hour time lapse photograph. This photograph was obtained by taking a series of 2 minute exposures from 10:00 pm to 12:15 am at Haw Creek Falls in the Arkansas Ozarks. I used a Canon 6D and a focal length of 18mm to take a series of 2 1/2 minute exposures. Each exposure was taken as raw file and developed in Lightroom, then I stacked them in Adobe Photoshop to capture only the motion of the earth over 2 hours which created the “trails. The blue color to the sky is from the moon, which was just a bit past 1/2 waxing. The moon adds both excellent ambient illumination to the night sky, giving it a blue hue, and also greatly adds to the landscape portion of the photograph. There was no light painting used on this photography, it’s all the light from the moon. I prefer this greatly over using artificial lighting, by painting as the moon just works better. You can read more about this technique in an article I wrote: Stacking for better nighttime photography. This photograph was taken in April of 2014, and spring was very late this year as can be seen in the trees on both banks of the creek.
I been working for a shot like this from Haw Creek for over 3 years. Catching the conditions all together can be harder than you think. You need a good flow of water, but not too much, as was present in March. The moon needs to be waxing for this shot, not waning or you will be up way to late waiting on the moon to appear. A clear sky is needed, with no clouds if possible and this does not always work out, as over 2 hours it’s quite common to see a front blow in. Also it work best if there is little to no wind. But since I am stacking I usually can find one of the stacks that has less wind noise than the rest.
This shot has it all, as you have great water, running over most of the ledge, and excellent play of shadows on the foreground. I am looking to the northwest, you can barely see where the north star is up in the upper right corner of the shot. It’s not very easy to get a good shot of the falls and the north star from below the drop, but the wide angle lens I was using did grab a nice portion of the sky. Of all the photograph I work with, nighttime stacking takes by far the greatest amount of time, both in the capture of the images and post processing, however I love the look of what I can create.
From the Blog
- X2D Firmware 4.0 (What it missed) November 7, 2024
- 01/24/24 Sunset over Walton Heights and Pinnacle Valley January 24, 2024
- 01/22/24 Looking through the Keyhole on Roark Bluff–Autumn January 23, 2024
- 01/14/24 Sunset from Pinnacle Mountain Little Rock, AR January 12, 2024
- 01/14/24 Winter View of Pinnacle Valley January 12, 2024
- 01/12/24 Fall Scene, Pinnacle Mountain January 11, 2024
