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A Tale of two creeks Richland and Falling Water–02_21_19 Featured Arkansas Photography

Posted on February 22, 2019 //

Fall scene featuring Richland and Falling Water Creek at their confluence.

A tale of two Creeks, Falling Water and Richland Creeks, Newton County Arkansas taken November 2018. 

Taken with a Nikon D850 and 24-70 lens.  Image capture in 3 horizontal images @ 24mm.  I used both a CL-PL and ND filter to slow the exposure for the water.

If I had to pick a favorite spot in Arkansas, it would have to be Richland Creek.  Most defiant a love/hate relationship as Richland alone has cost me more in camera gear than any other location I like to photograph.  Just this fall I lost both a Nikon D850 and 24-70 lens upstream from where this shot was taken.  Totally my fault and lucky for me, the creek was much lower so I was able to recover the gear and Nikon USA was able to repair it at a reasonable cost.  But that’s another story. 

Richland Creek is one of the fascinating creeks in Arkansas.  At medium to high water levels it’s a great kayaking stream.  The creek is lined with hardwoods most are 2nd generation growth as the creek was logged back in both the great depression and again in the 60’s-70’s.  Most of the old growth trees are long gone but if you hike far enough upstream where the mules and loggers never reached you can still find some huge white oaks.

The creek also winds through some of the most remote parts of Arkansas, that are still remaining.  Most of the watershed is now a wilderness area.  There is a primitive hiking trail that works it’s way up the left side of the creek (left side facing upstream).  This trail will lead all the way to Twin Falls and Richland Falls, well worth the trip.

For most the season, Richland hold water, but in the fall it’s very rare to find a good flow like the one shown in this image.  Instead the creek is usually barely covering the rocks.  The fall colors are getting tricky to catch also.  In the past the peak display tended to be around the middle of October now the peak seems to be more in the first week of November.  But the display is now hard to catch in full.  Notice in this shot most of the larger trees on the left have dropped their leaves, but the willows and smaller hardwoods lining the creek are still in full color.  However upstream many of the larger trees are still hold leaves.  So you just have to go and see what you have.

To take this shot, I had to wade out into the creek to mid thigh deep.  I found a rock that allowed me to place my tripod and camera safely above the creek.  Still after the disaster I had just 1 week prior, I was a bit shaky on working in the creek.   Still it was just too much not to get out and risk the shot.  There was little to no wind and just as I arrived the deeply overcast sky started to breakup and gave me some nice mixed light.

Due to the high water levels, I was able to catch Falling Water Creek on the left of the shot.  Falling Water Creek runs into Richland at the Richland Campground.  Falling water breaks into several channels near the it’s mouth with Richland and this one is the smallest.  It hardly ever flows unless Richland is running at a high level.  So I was grateful to catch both creeks in the same shot with some of the most amazing fall color I have seen on the creek.

 

Written by Paul Caldwell for www.photosofarkansas.com.  Please contact the author before using any part of this in a separate publication. 

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Dawn Light and Full Moon from Summit of Flatside Pinnacle–11/29/18 Featured Arkansas Photography

Posted on November 28, 2018 //
Flatside Pinnacle Images of Arkansas

Dawn light from the Summit of Flatside Pinnacle

Nikon D850 & 24-70 Lens, ISO 800 and bracketing 3 stops, 2 frames 6 exposures total

Arkansas abounds with scenic wonder and one of the best spots to catch a fall dawn is from the wind swept summit of Flatside Pinnacle.  The hike is a short .2 miles from where you park, to the summit.  All up hill and you will gain about 150 feet in those .2 miles.  The last 20 yards of the trail is the steepest pitch and is more treacherous descending than climbing since it’s all sloping rock which tend to be quite slick.  The great thing about Flatside is the view.  You basically have a 360 degree view of all the surrounding terrain.  Looking back towards the east you can see Pinnacle Mountain and Lake Mamuelle (on a clear day) and to the west Forked mountain (which is the peak out to west in this shot) then to the north, Petit Jean, Spring, Mt Nebo and Mt Magazine all line up.  What a view.

Flatside’s summit is almost always windy, it was the morning this shot was taken.  Expect winds of over 10 mph standard and gusts that can approach 20 mph.

In the fall, the sun will rise off to the left and when it starts to pop over the horizon, the light that lasts for about 5 minutes is amazing.  It’s a muted looks but adds a lot of overall saturation to the scene.  You can also turn directly around and catch a great sunrise, but that shot takes practice as odds are there will be wind blowing to cause the need for faster shutter speeds.

On this day there was fog in every surrounding valley besides Flatside, and I had hoped for a bit more.  The only fog I had was way out by Forked Mountain and beyond.  But during the early morning hours the fog did advance a bit.  Looking behind me the entire view to the east was all fog, and the summit of Nebo, Mt. Magazine and Petit Jean (Stouts Point) all stood out over the fog.  Great scene.

For this shot, I took 6 frames in two different positions knowing I would stitch the 2 frames together later into a short panorama.  There was very low light overall and about 10 mph wind blowing as can be seen by the grass in the foreground.  Knowing that the D850 has a dynamic range boost from ISO 800 up, I jumped right to ISO 800 for the shots.  I still was keep in a pretty slow exposure range due to the aperture I wanted, F8.  The resulting files were cleaner than I expected.  I used Capture One to convert the raws, and Photoshop to stitch.  The moon was troublesome as to capture it’s exposure correctly meant that I had to totally under expose the rest of the scene.  So I took a series of separate shots of the moon then pulled them back into the shot with corrected exposure.  Just makes the work a bit easier.

Flatside is well worth the 1 hour drive from Little Rock.

 

Written for www.photosofarkansas.com by Paul Caldwell 11/28/18.  Please contact me before anything in this post is used for either reprinting or printing. 

 

 

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09/23/16 Fall is starting a bit early in Arkansas–Buffalo River Trip

Posted on September 26, 2016 //
Late afternoon light creeping along Roark Bluff on the Buffalo National River

Late afternoon light creeping along Roark Bluff on the Buffalo National River

Another example of the amazing Dynamic range of the Phase One IQ100 digital back.  This is one exposure and I was still able to hold my shadows and keep the highlights in line.  This camera still continues to amaze me. What an amazing improvement over the CCD technology of the past.

On my recent trip to the Buffalo, I was surprised to see that the fall colors have already started to display.  This shot was taken on the upper end of the Buffalo River at Steel Creek featuring Roark Bluff.  The water is low, as expected for this time of year, but I was surprised by the amount of color already starting to show.  Along with several tree species that have just turned brown.   In this shot you can see that the Sycamore tree on the right side has a nice golden brown color and the trees to the immediate right edge are also showing some color.

The trees on the left are all Maple and Gum trees and since the sun was setting through them, I really could not see enough to tell what the colors might be.  But looking upstream you can see that several oaks are getting the same yellow look.

This is tough shot to take in the late afternoon, since the sun will set right at your left side.  But the reward is that the entire bluff will be lit up briefly by the sun.  In the summer months, the effect is more pronounced since the sun is higher in the sky, but in the fall you can still catch a nice yellow tint to the rocks.  I love to see the transition from yellow to grey on the bluff.

If you are lucky, you will not have any wind and can catch a wonderful reflection.   This shot is also an excellent photographic study in the morning as most times there will be some fog on the river.  You can catch the reflection and the fog both.  I opt for the other solution which is to climb to the top of the bluff and catch the same shot but from the top of the bluff.  Either way you can expect to find excellent shots.

This part of the Buffalo also is close to the Boxley Valley, which offers Lost Valley, and Elk among other great things to photograph.

Filed Under: Arkansas Landscape Shooting Information, Phase One Cameras // Tagged: , , , , , , ,

11/19/15 Red Sky at Night Sailors Delight!!, Wonderful evening shot from the upper Piney Creek Wilderness Arkansas

Posted on November 19, 2015 //
Piney Creek Arkansas

Sunset from a bluff in the Piney Creeks Wilderness

This is a shot that I like to think, puts all things back into perspective.  For 2015, the Autumn in Arkansas the colors were just terrible.  We also had a lot of rain late in October, which was too late for the streams.  All the streams are running now, but of course they look like they do in winter, just bare trees.  I like to work some of the smaller creeks in Arkansas during fall as the combination of fall colors and running water can be additive.  Arkansas has so many streams, one could never work all of them in a lifetime.  But what we found this year, were mainly cloudy skies, and dry creek beds.  The spring and summer had been so promising.  We had record amounts of rainfall and cool conditions.  But then July, and August.  Basically Arkansas recorded almost no rainfall during these months and it was hot.  Basically what happens, the trees start to go dormant and into protect mode.  If this continues for a long period of time, it will have a negative effect on the fall colors. 

What we basically saw in the fall in most of the spots, were trees turning a dull brown, even in early October.  But even worse, some trees, were staying green much longer so there was no balance in the colors.  I have seen shots from all over Arkansas, and in most of them you are still able to see quite a bit of green trees and most of the trees that have turned are just brown, or dull red.  Gone from the woods this year were the bright yellows, and reds, mainly from the Black Gums, Maples, Black Gums, Hickories and Golden browns from the Oaks. 

I had found a great new spot in the upper Piney Creeks wilderness thanks to Chris Kennedy.  Chris had found this place a week before during the opening of Arkansas Deer season.  I had been here a lot during my kayaking days in Arkansas, but had never taken some time to go look for fall color.  This is a great spots as you are looking due south on one side of Parker Ridge Road and if you cross over and take a short hike, you are looking north.  Either view gives an expansive view of the valley of Big Piney Creek.  If we had been here just one week earlier, the possiblites were endless as it was apparent that the trees in this part of the state did not go into as much stress.

Chris and I drove back to this spot a week later, and most of the color was gone, at least in the trees.  We had a mixed sky with only partial clear patches, but Chris felt it was worth staying around until about 20 minutes after the sun had set.  He had been here before and felt we might get a great play on the afterglow.  He was right, as you can see in this shot, the sun’s angle was just at the right position to really pop the clouds and just painted the sky red.  Chris took this shot with his phone, and it’s a good one even from a phone.  You can see both cameras setup and a good bit of the view from the place were were setup. 

In the spring, this might be another great place to setup, and I hope to come back here for both a milky way shoot and star trails shoot.  It’s not far from the road so working at night will not be a big danger to the photographer. 

But back to my opening, yes this shot did put things back into perspective for me.  I had been chasing color on and off for 30 days and just had not found anything to feature for this year.  In fact this will the first year I have basically no photograph from the fall in Arkansas.  Maybe I am just tired of it, and don’t have the energy anymore as the market I am shooting in has changed dramatically in the past 3 years.  But it was nice to sit on this bluff edge, and think back over the years that I have enjoyed in Arkansas’s outdoors.  We have a beautiful state in many ways. 

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11/10/15 Springtime at Haw Creek Falls–A great place to spend a day in Arkansas

Posted on November 12, 2015 //
Haw Creek Falls, waterfalls in Arkansas

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.  Also the Ozark Highlands Trail runs right by Haw Creek falls, so if you are planning a hike on this part of the trail make sure to stop and take a look.

The falls run year round, but the best times to photograph them are in the early Spring and winter when water levels are more consistent.  In the summer and fall you can sometimes get lucky after a locally heavy rainstorm and catch the falls running.  The fall display here is wonderful if you can catch it at the right time.

Filed Under: Arca Swiss Equipment, Arkansas Landscape Shooting Information, Arkansas Outdoors // Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,