15 Featured Arkansas Photography

Sunrise from the Junction Bridge in Little Rock Arkansas

Taken with a Canon 5D MKII and Canon 24mm TS-EII lens iso 100, F8. The Junction bridge in Little Rock, which is now only for foot traffic, offers a great view of downtown Little Rock. I love to catch the early morning sun on the buildings. This is best done right before the sun has risen so that the glare on the glass is not extreme and it also allows you to still get the pre-morning blue sky off to the west. The Junction bridge is lit up at night and I made a point of getting this photograph taken before the lights were off. I took this shot in a series of images to stitch together later. I used a 24mm TS-E lens, but did not shift as the shifted portion of the image was not enough to capture the full panorama look I wanted. Instead I found the nodal point of the lens, and rotated it through 3 different locations and bracketed the exposures with each. Canon’s cameras have excellent color, but pretty poor dynamic range even at the base iso, so if you don’t want a lot of noise in your shadows, it’s always best to bracket your exposures. The lens I used, the 24mm TS-E is by far the best lens in this class, and has excellent details to the corners even at F 4.5. After working up each segment, I then used Ptgui to stitch the scene into one large panorama.

02/21/14 Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography–Moonset and sunrise over Downtown Little Rock

Sunrise and moon-set over Downtown Little Rock

Taken with a Nikon D800 Nikon 14-24 Lens at 20mm, F 7.1, 1/20th of sec exposure, ISO 200. Photograph developed from a single file. The view of Downtown Little Rock is a great place to catch a sunrise especially if you can find the Arkansas River still to allow for the best reflections. I made this trip with Todd Smith, another noted photographer in Little Rock. Todd and I were also very lucky to have a setting waning moon directly over the city. This when combined with the sunrise rise lighting the clouds in the background made for a wonder shot. Once again the Nikon D800 did not disappoint me in that I was able to work up this from a single raw file, something that would not have been possible in my days with Canon. In the distant background you can also see a flock of birds that were flying down river. What I liked the most about this shot is how the sun was just starting to rise and was only hitting the Regions and Stephens buildings. In the foreground is the Junction bridge and the Main street bridge is directly behind it. Since late December, Little Rock has been lighting all the bridges at night with a bright red light. Some of this light is responsible for the color on the water in the foreground.

08/28/12 Featured Arkansas Photography–Nighttime stars over the Big Dam Bridge in Little Rock Arkansas

Cloudy Day on Richland Creek, Newton County Arkansas

Nighttime stars over the Big Dam Bridge in Little Rock Arkansas

Taken with a Canon 5D MKII, 14mm Lens, F4, approx 20 seconds, iso 400. I don’t spend too much time down at the big dam bridge, but it can be an interesting night shot on a clear cool night. On this night, it was pretty warm, over 85 degrees so I picked up some rose streaking in the sky. However the stars themselves stand out very well. I picked a night when they were running a bit of water through the dam so the 20 second exposure was plenty to blur out and smooth the water. The lights on the top of the dam took on a nice starlight look due to the 14mm lens. I recently sold the 14mm Canon since I am in the process of moving to Nikon, but I will miss that particular lens.

The Big Dam Bridge runs across the Terry Lock and Dam and allows cyclists, walkers and runners to cross over the Arkansas River to the North Little Rock Side of the bridge. I took the shot from the North Little Rock side, looking back towards Little Rock.

If you look closely over the middle of the bridge, you can easily spot the constellation Orion. The belt is very easy to see. I also liked the way the rose colored sky blended in near the tops of the hillsides.

06/24/12 Featured Arkansas Photography–Sunset over Pinnacle Mountain State Park

Image taken with a Canon 1ds MKII, Canon 24-70 F2.8 @ F11, ISO 100, 5 shot combination for exposure. Back in 2009, which seems to long ago to remember, we were having almost nightly thunderstorms in July. I can only hope that Arkansas gets some this type of weather soon in 2012. We are about as dry as I can remember for this time of year and soon you will start to see tree going into stress, then dropping leaves. The area around Pinnacle State Park is photographers paradise in that there are some many great vistas to work from. One of mine is the view directly to the west from the summit of the quarry ridge at the Pinnacle State Park visitors center. Here you get an unobstructed view of the summit of Pinnacle mountain and can often catch an evening storm coming in from the west. This sunset was taken as 5 separate exposures then blended together to get the final image.