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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