04/12/13 Featured Arkansas Photography–Midday autumn calm along the Buffalo River

Autumn midday view of sweet gums and maples on the Buffalo River

Taken with a Nikon D800e, Nion 24mm 1.4 lens @ F7.1 1/250 of a sec shutter speed, iso 200. On this day, the conditions were constantly changing. I had been up on top of Roark Bluff most of the morning, but a large mass of clouds rolled in and pretty much shut things down for the morning. I had gone back to my truck and I was figuring out where to head next when the clouds started to part. The blue sky came out and within 20 minutes all of the clouds were gone! I prefer to have some clouds in the sky when working with large masses of blue since the clouds will help break up the sky and allow for the use of a polarizer on a wide angle lens. If I had just been shooting a solid blue sky, even at 24mm, due to the angle of the sun I would of had the classic dark to light polarized effect that wide angle lenses can create. However on a day like this with muted sunlight, you really want to have a polarizer on since it will make the colors in the leaves really stand out. The polarizer also defeated any refection I was going to get on this shot but I felt it was a fair trade off.

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.