It snowed again on Friday and I went out to Pinnacle Mountain to take some photos of it.

Somehow a bunch of giant bald cypress trees escaped the ax along the Little Maumelle River. Like most of Arkansas, the Pinnacle Mountain area was cut over (probably more than once) in the last 150 years or so. These trees are on Arkansas’ Historic Trees list. From the historic trees website:

Arkansas core-dated 21 Bald Cypress trees in 1985. The trees were dated within ranges of 1531 to 1889, plus or minus 30-50 years. The trees are hollow and are likely to be more than 100 years older than the cores indicate.

I’ve shot two other historic trees, and I keep meaning to begin a quest to visit all of them.

The old Highway 300 bridge.

Some pretty wicked thunderstorms have kicked up the last two days. Abby and I went out looking for some on Tuesday. We found this one booming across the river at Pinnacle Mountain State Park. Lightning was flashing but it’s impossible to hit the shutter button quick enough to catch it. On our drive home another one caught up with us and put on a light and sound show as we drove down Chenal Parkway. Click on the photos to fill the screen with scary storm goodness.

I had a great idea for photo of the rising full moon from the top of Pinnacle Mountain, so on Friday I set out to complete the first part of my idea, which was to get to the top of the mountain. The trail is only .75 of a mile long, but it’s uphill all the way. Pinnacle Mountain State Park is only a few miles west of Little Rock and it’s a very popular place. The trail traverses great expanses of huge rocks and so many people have been over the trail the rocks are worn slick in most places. Slick enough to slip on even when dry. The mountain is about 1,000 in elevation (the highest hill around) and provides a commanding view of the Arkansas River, Lake Maumelle and other lesser mountains to the south and west.

I got to the top about an hour before the moonrise and about two hours before sunset, so I had some time to kill. In wandering around the peak looking for something to shoot, I was drawn to the ubiquitous graffiti. I decided to make a little photographic study of the marred rocks.

The graffiti is pretty poor. Most of it was applied with Magic Marker™, though some used actual paint, and a few hardy souls have actually carved into the rock, like Bill in the top photo.

I used a little fill flash to bring up the names on the rock on this one.

My plan was to use my 70-300mm telephoto lens to shoot the moon just as it got above the horizon with the Little Rock skyline in the shot. I kept watching for the moon to rise, but I was concerned the haze on the horizon would obscure it until it got too high in the sky. That’s exactly what happened. “Best laid plans” and all that I guess. All I had left was to wait for the sunset.

This is the side of the Bill rock lit by the setting sun.

This is a six-shot panorama looking down the Arkansas River Valley toward Little Rock. Click the picture to make big and see the all the detail.

For the Bill shot I blended three shots of different exposures using a technique I learned from Tony Kuyper’s Web site.

After my run Wednesday at Two Rivers Park I headed over to Pinnacle Mountain to see if there was anything worth shooting. I stopped at the arboretum off Pinnacle Mountain Road thinking I might get a shot of some cypress knees down by the Little Maumelle River. I did something to my knee during my run and I was limping pretty heavily. (I later made the self diagnosis of ilotibial band syndrome.) I barely made it to the river and to add insult to injury I couldn’t find anything swampy that I wanted to shoot.

On my limp back up he trail I came across this dead armadillo and decided to try my hand at a little Strobist style off-camera flash. I underexposed the ambient light and let the flash provide the correct exposure on the carcass. It didn’t turn out quite as I had envisioned. I envisioned a well-lit corpse with a goodly expanse of dark forest in the background. But hand-holding the flash while trying to get low on a badly hurting knee while enduring the stink of a dead armadillo is harder than it sounds. I gave up after two frames and this is what I got.

I headed back up the trail trying the technique on various plants and signs. I don’t think these are very good shots, but they’re the best of the many I tried for.

I spend a lot of time in the park because it has one of Abby’s favorite playgrounds, but I haven’t really found a good place to shoot the mountain itself. As I was leaving the arboretum at dusk I looked back to the left and saw the mountain looming and the road curving in front and got the idea to try for some car-light trails. Again, this isn’t much of a shot, but I did get some light trials. I think this would be much better at dawn because the rising sun should light the mountain while the road stays quite a bit more in the dark. I don’t know if I can get up that early, though.